Talk:Terms of use/Creative Commons 4.0

We are asking for your input on a proposed change to the Wikimedia Terms of Use, namely to use the latest version of the Creative Commons license. This proposal will be available for at least the next thirty days (until November 8, 2016).

The copyright license on the Wikimedia projects makes it easy for everyone to access, share, and remix the material on our site. We've prepared a note explaining some of the changes for Wikimedia in the 4.0 version of the Creative Commons license.

To get involved, browse the comments made below and participate there.

If you have additional questions or thoughts, please click here to join the discussion below. We look forward to your comments.

This process is not a vote.

If you just wish to voice your agreement, but do not wish to make a long comment, please add it here: support, opposition, neutral.

(Help with translations!)

Creative Commons 4.0 upgrade

Legal note FAQ Share your thoughts

Frequently asked questions

(Help with translations!)

How will this affect Wikipedia?

Wikipedia will continue to be available freely with attribution and sharealike requirements. Wikipedia is currently available under the 3.0 version of the license, and this upgrade will mean that new additions are submitted under the 4.0 version. People who use content from Wikipedia will continue to be able to provide attribution as currently described in the Wikimedia Terms of Use.

What is different between Creative Commons 3.0 versus 4.0?

The license will continue to have the same basic requirements—providing appropriate credit and distribute remixes under the same license.

In the legal note, we highlight some of the most important differences for Wikimedia, including new official translations, increased readability, a revised description of the attribution requirement, an opportunity to correct license violations, and more. Creative Commons has also published a comparison of the changes in the license.

How can we "upgrade" the license?

If we choose to amend the Terms of Use, the 4.0 version of the license will apply to new edits submitted to Wikimedia projects. After a page has been edited, it can be reused under the latest version of the license according to the attribution requirements in the Terms of Use. Revisions of pages before the upgrade to the 4.0 version will continue to be available under the version 3.0 of the license.

Was the 3.0 version available in other languages?

CC BY-SA 3.0 did not have official translations of the unported license text, although it had translated license deeds and a number of international ports. The ported versions of CC BY-SA 3.0 were substantially similar to each other, but included some legal modifications to reflect the local jurisdiction. Creative Commons' new license translation policy will allow them to set official translations of the version 4.0 license. CC BY-SA 4.0 International is intended to be legally effective everywhere.

How will this affect English Wikinews and other projects that don't currently use CC BY-SA 3.0?

English Wikinews may upgrade to CC BY 4.0 International, without adopting the version 3.0 of the license. Projects may continue to opt-out of the default license where appropriate.

How will this affect Wikidata (which currently uses CC0)?

Wikidata will continue to use CC0 for contributions, which will make it easy to add and share factual data on the project.

Why do the proposed amendment to the terms of use mention sui generis database rights?

CC BY-SA 4.0 International includes new requirements for database rights, in jurisdictions where those rights exist. To avoid introducing new ambiguity around the requirements for factual contributions of data sets, which may be covered by database rights in certain jurisdictions, we've proposed waiving these rights under the license. This is outlined in more detail in the legal note.

Can I use version 4.0 for images and other non-text contributions?

Yes! You can upload media to Wikimedia Commons under the 4.0 version of the license.

Why does Wikipedia use a "sharealike" license like CC BY-SA?

The sharealike clause in the CC BY-SA license helps promote the values of free culture. It asks users to continue to share their improvements and modifications to works that are offered to them freely under the Creative Commons license.

If the license were just CC BY (without a sharealike clause), people would be able to use content from the Wikimedia projects for any purpose, but if they made changes, they could put those changes under additional copyright restrictions and forbid others to use them. The ideal is to make the world's knowledge available for everyone, and using a license that makes sure contributions to that knowledge remain available for everyone helps work toward that goal.

When deciding which license to use, the Wikimedia community for the most part chose CC BY-SA instead of BY because the CC BY-SA license helps promote the values of free culture, as described in Creative Commons's statement of intent for the attribution-sharealike licenses. For historical reasons, the CC BY-SA license was also chosen for its compatibility with Wikipedia's previous GNU Free Document License. Some other projects, such as English Wikinews, choose to use the use the CC BY license.

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Announcement page - Terms_of_use/Creative_Commons_4.0

General support and opposition

Support

• I agree to the change because an international and more readable and accessible license strongly correspond with Wikipedias goals. The license also gives a bit more freedom to re-users. One thing that I am not decided on is the 30-day correction time. One the positive side of things, it gives people, who may not have been aware that they violated the license an opportunity to correct the mistake - this would, of course, be assuming good intent -, but those without good intent could just hope they are not discovered and if they are, well, they won't get into any trouble, because they still have the opportunity to fix it. There is already enough violations of the license, we don't need to encourage more. I agree to the change anyhow, though my last point should definitely be considered in the final decision if there are more opposition. --GABRIEL FILMSTUDIOS (talk) 19:16, 6 October 2016 (UTC)
• Why Not? Makes sense to me. I think CC should become the standard for licensing all works. A world where everything can't be reused is terrible. Totally Swich! --Johnnyg150 (talk) 18:31, 6 October 2016 (UTC)
• I support this cuz im smart and dont want people stealing my work-TheGuyFromM.I.T.
• I very much support this. Cavestory116 (talk) 17:24, 6 October 2016 (UTC)
• (Italian) Mi piace tanto questa idea. Spero venga approvata. Se ne parla anche sulla it.wikinews qui
  • (English) I Like this proposal. On it.wikinews we talk on it here.--Ferdi2005 (talk) 15:36, 5 October 2016 (UTC)
• Sigan adelante con la idea, es maravillosa. Héctor Angel
•  Support For me it is a very good idea to change the licence to Creative Commons 4.0. --NiridyA (talk) 20:15, 5 October 2016 (UTC)
• За. —Niklitov (talk) 20:26, 5 October 2016 (UTC) (Member of Wikimedia RU)
• I recommend it. Tyseco (talk).
• Seriously, why not?— The preceding unsigned comment was added by A Wikipedian on Wikipedia (talk) 21:06, 5 October 2016 (UTC)
• I would appreciate the change to v.4.0 --Bodhi-Baum (talk) 21:31, 5 October 2016 (UTC)
• I think this is a "no brainer", aka, obviously a good idea. --Bodysurfinyon (talk) 23:21, 5 October 2016 (UTC)
• It can bring some practical benifits for more openess and involving more commons to take part. Therefore, I say 'Yes'. But, I suggest to conclude all licenses before into this new category as parts belonging to this one, and give some declarations. It would not waste resources and energies Jason M. C., Han (talk) 14:39, 6 October 2016 (UTC)
• I believe you should go to Creative Commons
• pienso que seria de gran aporte para los usuarios que buscamos contenidos bajo licencia, y que no tenemos la intención de afectar a los demás, sino darle crédito al autor de la obra y Poder reutilizarlo. 186.149.201.230 01:01, 6 October 2016 (UTC)
• Yes absolutely! Upgrade Upgrade!
• My name is Charles Kickham. I live in Hallandale Beach Florida. I like to be called Charlie. I support the move to Creative Commons 4.0. Good Luck!!!! Lol!!!! Thank you. Sincerely, Charlie Kickham.
• The licence should be updated to all of the Wikimedia projects, I support the change. Else it will not solve lot of problems.
  acagastya  ✉ Dicere Aliquid :) 03:01, 6 October 2016 (UTC)
• For Aaron Swartz and For an Open Web idealism, let's support it!
• i think it is an important step forward. i come from an Oriental culture where traditionally, knowledge has been always in the public domain. Copyright and commercial exploitation of knowledge is an Western, capitalist concept.
• fully support, donate every year to Wiki and think this is a good move in the right direction
• I agree to move to Creative Commons 4.0
• it's an Upgrade , an Improvement ! Wikipedia should've been available under CC 4.0 long ago. But it's not too late . let's do this ! :) MohammadtheEditor (talk) 04:39, 6 October 2016 (UTC)
• I really hope the censorship on many topics goes away one day on Wikipedia. Some topics facts are dead wrong and certain people or paid companies do this a lot! Changing the facts is a form of bullying! We the people desrve the truth about things. And yes I support the move to creative commons 4.0.
• Yes, I will go with it. It's time to upgrade Creative Commons 4.0 - Mindcap (talk) 07:11, 6 October 2016 (UTC)
• I think the upgrade is for the better. So, go ahead and upgrade to CC4.
• It's is good to have a new CC4. I think we should do that 27.3.254.167 11:05, 6 October 2016 (UTC)
• Update is not bad IMHO, but the authors shouldn't forget about their earlier slogan: "Free encyclopedia". Thank u. 212.193.78.27 11:13, 6 October 2016 (UTC)
• I would support the change to 4.0. DisillusionedBitterAndKnackered (talk) 11:52, 6 October 2016 (UTC)
• 4.0比3.0更加完善，可避免钻空子等现象发生。G760420431 (talk) 11:57, 6 October 2016 (UTC)
• Oui bien Tvtabit (talk) 12:05, 6 October 2016 (UTC)
• I agree to licensening under creative commons.. :)
• Provided the team thinks this is a stronger - more robust - free (as in free speech) version of clauses for open management, it seems pretty much a right move. Creative Commons are widely recognised here (Western Europe), largely accepted, a good stable starting point to expand :) Nice free day to you all!
• Cool, please try it. I'm totally on your side as far as this project is getting better for mankind. -Daisuke from Tokyo
• I think it's good to use the new CC4. We should do that.
• Yes. this would be free of use.
• Yes. Now, let's move on. --Elitre (talk) 15:02, 6 October 2016 (UTC)
• Admittedly, I have minimal comprehension of the language set forth to describe the proposed change. But from what I gather it is merely an upgrade from currently used practices and procedures, generally improving accessibility for international audiences and simplifying annotation by regular users. It sounds good to me. I support the proposed upgrade. - Gale B Hagerty--Galehagerty (talk) 16:15, 6 October 2016 (UTC)
• I think it's great policy to be changed time to time according to the world's progress 2405:204:A401:43F7:0:0:196E:50B0 16:17, 6 October 2016 (UTC)
• I've got no problem with the proposed change. Seems reasonable, so I support it. Ks0stm ^(T•C•G) 15:53, 6 October 2016 (UTC)
• I support it because of the international clarification.If a user who's language is not available in the licence does something that violates it,he/she would blame the licence for not having international clarification.So licence 4.0 would prevent this happening.
•  Support—Christopher.ursich (talk) 16:04, 6 October 2016 (UTC)
• Estoy de acuerdo con la Creative Commons 4.0. --Micnous (talk) 16:26, 6 October 2016 (UTC)
• I think it's a very good idea. Go for it! SapphireWilliams (talk page • contributions) 13:41, 6 October 2016 (UTC)
• Any Wikipedia version that will improve clarity and international accessibility sounds like a good thing to do.
• I support the upgrade. In particular the translation to non-English languages is an important improvement.
• I support the upgrade.
• I welcome the upgrade to CC BY-SA 4.0. A top-notch BY-SA license will help Wikimedia better support its mission of creating and disseminating libre knowledge. --Isacdaavid (talk) 17:26, 6 October 2016 (UTC)
• Strongly support adopting the updated Creative Commons 4.0. I think the move to Creative Commons 3.0 was one of the best decisions of the Wiki community, and it should be updated. Forpeterssake (talk) 17:24, 6 October 2016 (UTC)
• I support the change. --Bezanson (talk) 17:55, 6 October 2016 (UTC)
• Support Before people blindly support or oppose, I think they should see the actual changes (which can be seen here). So, stop hearing or reading theories and vote what you think. --QEDK (talk) 18:27, 6 October 2016 (UTC)
• Support Oefe (talk) 18:47, 6 October 2016 (UTC)
• +1 Mitar (talk) 19:00, 6 October 2016 (UTC)
•  Support Wikimedia projects need a modern copyright standard, and they've proven that Creative Commons is viable for everyone to use worldwide. Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International has demonstrated its own stability 3 years after its release, though when we pushed for 3.0 there was only a 2 year span. I feel that giving the new version this much time to work itself out has really done well for the global community, as Porting finally becomes International. I can't wait to edit with this new version. Good luck, team. FosterHaven (talk) 19:38, 6 October 2016 (UTC)
•  Support Of course! The CC 4.0 licenses are issued in 2013. Why did we wait so long?--Ctac (talk) 20:25, 6 October 2016 (UTC)
• You have my support for this change, it is a good change to all of wikipedia
• support
•  Support Sounds like a good step forward, it's better to use the latest license version than the older one. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 20:30, 6 October 2016 (UTC)
•  Support Hi I agree that u should upgrade btw halp I need help!!!!!!!!!
• As long as the proposed change represents progress in openness and not suppressing similar efforts — The preceding unsigned comment was added by 216.9.12.37 (talk)
• Support --BarrierBuilder (talk) 21:58, 6 October 2016 (UTC)
•  Support About time :) Thanks for explaining the diff for people new to the idea. –SJ talk  22:43, 6 October 2016 (UTC)
• I fully support this, and it is nice that it will be translated for other users.
• Agree David S. Hwang (talk) 00:31, 7 October 2016 (UTC)
• Support. For the ones asking what the point is of switching, it is because the 4.0 license specifies that re-use must be under 4.0 or later. While we publish under 3.0, this prevents us from re-using 4.0 content that is licensed out in the world, so we're preventing an ever-increasing amount of content from being used here. Crow (talk) 00:39, 7 October 2016 (UTC)

Opposition

• Tentatively  Oppose the ToS changes. I'm not OK with abandoning copyleft for data, though I am OK with a move to CC BY-SA 4.0. CC BY-SA 4.0 fixes a problem in earlier licenses with respect to sui generis database rights that the proposed ToS changes UNfix! I read the justification at Luis Villa's blog (linked to from FAQ Why do the proposed amendment to the terms of use mention sui generis database rights?, above), and notice that there are no examples presented to back his claims.
  What could convince me to change my !vote? A real or realistic example where straight CC-BY-SA-4.0 is a problem, but this weird special version wouldn't be, that I would actually want to support. See #Elvey for discussion. --Elvey (talk) 23:04, 6 October 2016 (UTC)
• It seems to give another non-profit power and control over wikipedia, in the long run. 2601:1C2:1300:D091:1FA:2FFD:DACE:D94D 05:29, 6 October 2016 (UTC)
• IDK if Wikipedia should do this68.12.229.92 03:29, 6 October 2016 (UTC)
• Wikipedia works fine the way it is. Don't try to fix things that aren't broken. That's what government does and look where that's got us. Just leave Wikipedia as it is.
•  Oppose because of waiving sui generis database rights and moral, personality, and privacy rights. —MarcoAurelio 15:36, 6 October 2016 (UTC)
• Segregation of knowledge commons is tomorrows biggest industry. Goodbye By saving changes, you agree to the Terms of Use, and you irrevocably agree to release your contribution under the CC BY-SA 3.0 License and the GFDL. You agree that a hyperlink or URL is sufficient attribution under the Creative Commons license.
• Thw old knowlegr base (which is older,let say, years) sould not to be licensed
• The juvenile delinquents who sold us computers and software always ask for an "upgrade" that diminishes application functionality and restricts and eliminates rights first purchased by the user, they have now turned their smartphones and computers to the task of advertisement platform to sell the unneeded and unwanted. Please WIKI don't go down that evil path. Extraneous Note: By the way, same thing happens with learning curves, up the hill,, up the hill again, and again, and again until the last becomes insurmountable so that the functionality of the hardware and software is not only degraded it becomes totally dysfunctional. You could chart the economic outcome along the glut of plder, less gymnastic, elders are there.
• I agree withthe below comment. Bschandrasgr (talk) 08:49, 6 October 2016 (UTC)kn:ಸದಸ್ಯ:Bschandrasgr
•  Oppose - Don't fix what's not broken. And user who gave something free under a lower license, must that all be changed? Let it stay like it is. - Richardkiwi (talk) 18:46, 6 October 2016 (UTC)
• Don't do it would be a waste of time and it might screw up peoples accounts — The preceding unsigned comment was added by Demoscout (talk)
•  Strong oppose - We risk striking discord with EU-law if we forcibly upgrade any content licenced under CC-3.0 due to the clause concerning personal and privacy rights. At the same time any benefits are at best hypothetical, seeing as we are entirely unable to police the breaches of licence that already exist. Hence we are stuck with a very time-consuming task that has very little positive impact, and which potentially could get us stuck in a whole slew of legislative battles. Neither am I comfortable with signing off my moral rights or with decreasing the attribution requirements of my work. CFCF 💌 📧 20:52, 6 October 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose - I do not understand why creatives should waive their "moral, personality, and privacy rights". I don't exactly understand what these rights entail, but Wikimedia projects have a 15 year history of free content without waiving those rights. Over the last several years, I have approached multiple third parties regarding free-use media releases for Wikimedia Commons, and have always recommended CC-BY-SA 3.0 because it retained these rights. If content can be shared freely waiving these rights, they should be retained. - hahnchen (talk) 21:39, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Neutral comments

• Having looked through the faq and legal note sections, it seems some of the changes are decent, although most of it seems to be directly punishing regular users such as myself (That is my take on this, but should not be construed as true). But since i don't understand this stuff to well, i am going to remain neutral on this subject. AryaTargaryen (talk) 10:01, 6 October 2016 (UTC)AryaTargaryen

• I think Wikipedia should be Public Domain. (For some reason, Wiki editors will bash and harass me for stating my opinion, but this is my opinion.) Allen750 (talk) 19:31, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Comments about this process

• We shouldn't use the notice board for that, we are seeing a lot of comments from who do not understand the question... at least are this only visible for Autoconfirmed?? Rodrigo Tetsuo Argenton ^m 09:19, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

  @R.T.Argenton: Per the Wikimedia Terms of use (section 16), this is necessary to inform our users of this proposed change and to allow for it to be debated in this sort of format. The Legal Team aims to answer some of the key questions and concerns people have. :) Joe Sutherland (WMF) (talk) 20:48, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

• I think wikipedia should do a poll/vote popup. That way, a large number of people can give quick feedback without spending time on commenting. -Meg

Other changes to the ToS being considered

• User:JSutherland (WMF) , why do you say "Other than the changes below, Section 7 will not change."? What changes are being considered for other sections of the ToS? Where are they being discussed? I think some other changes are badly needed and should be considered. --Elvey (talk) 17:25, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

  Hi Elvey - The only section with changes proposed is section 7. I apologise for the poor wording there; I'll fix that now. Joe Sutherland (WMF) (talk) 20:48, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

• Also, when we create 2 headings by category 'For' or 'Against' it compartimentalizes the discussion. But overall good process: nice ad to bring me here, information about the issue, possibility to read the verbatim, then everybody's free responses... those are all good things to keep. Also btw I'm for the change :) — The preceding unsigned comment was added by 78.229.134.90 (talk)

  Hi 78.229.134.90 - this dicussion's format attracts quite a lot of general support/oppose comments, so while it'd be ideal to stick to discussion itself, it's necessary for ease of navigation and discussion to separate these out. Joe Sutherland (WMF) (talk) 20:48, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

I don't see any reason why it's not a good idea yet, but then again I've only read this page and haven't done much of my homework in this area.

Discussion

Proposal page is blatantly biased

The proposal page is clearly biased mentioning only "improved clarity" and "more international" and assumes passage by stating "Once the final change is made". It does not mention any details of the differences between versions 3 and 4 which are listed in detail here. I hope this information will be provided in the upcoming legal note but this should be more prominently displayed and not on a subpage. BethNaught (talk) 09:45, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

We'll post the legal note later today when the discussion opens, and it will include more details on the change along with links to the Creative Commons resources. Thanks, Stephen LaPorte (WMF) (talk) 16:11, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

I agree, thanks for the extra information. No point in a discussion if not all the points are given. CaptainGummyBearz

We posted more information on license changes in the legal note along the questions and answers above. If you have any other good resources on the 4.0 version of the license, please let me know and I'll gladly incorporate them. Thanks for joining the discussion. Stephen LaPorte (WMF) (talk) 21:19, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

Фред-Продавец звёзд

Да что тут думать - переводите, и всё тут! Если некоторые будут упираться - вспомните про редизайн ВК: такой шквал недовольства был, потому что "привыкли", а потом поняли, что старьё не нужно, и успокоились. Привыкайте к хорошему, отвыкать не придётся. Фред-Продавец звёзд (talk) 20:17, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

• хоть один минус новой лицензии приведёте - тогда я буду за неё.--Saramag (talk) 20:39, 5 October 2016 (UTC)
  • какие могут быть минусы у небольшого косметического обновления, слегка перефразировавшего пару слов? Была версия 3.0, стала версия 4.0, тут даже не требуется отвлекать ресурсы сообщества на подобный многокилобайтный флуд. Фред-Продавец звёзд (talk) 05:50, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

BethNaught

I do not view the "opportunity to correct license violations" as an advantage. People already abuse, misunderstand and ignore our license quite enough already. I have great distaste for automatically giving them their rights back even if they do fix their use. Likewise the "updated attribution" should be described as "loosened attribution".

All that aside, as long as the WMF does not support the community with the resources to chase license violators, who cares? Why not give away more of our rights as contributors, since nobody respects them anyway? BethNaught (talk) 20:36, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

@BethNaught: The opportunity to correct the licenses is something that should make it easier to correct problems if somebody misunderstands or ignores the licenses. If a reuser can correct without getting in trouble, there's more incentive for a person who has made a mistake to fix that mistake. In our experience, most people do want to comply with the licenses, and the challenge has been that people get confused or make mistakes, rather than intentionally abusing them. I would also encourage you to report instances of someone improperly reusing Wikimedia content to the legal team. While we, unfortunately, don't have the resources to provide support in every case, there are some cases we receive (especially in combination with trademark abuse) that we're able to fix. -Jrogers (WMF) (talk) 21:15, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

A reuser who fails to comply with the license is already in trouble, even under v4, where legal remedies still appear to be allowed for the violation period.

While I recognise that you may be able to help in some cases, my "who cares" feelings stem more from my experiences at Commons where I uploaded a few dozen images to help illustrate Wikipedia. One of my images was illegally reused here and here without any attribution or indication of license whatsoever. Another example (of someone else's work) is ArsTechnica. Their treatment of CC is inconsistent but doesn't always link, sometimes it attributes images to "Creative Commons" and not the author. Even in this comparatively good example, they use a BY-NC-SA image from Flickr (despite being a commercial outfit), without any on-page mention of the license, where there is enough space on the page for the reasonability clause not to kick in. For big automatic reusers of WP, yes, maybe they care, but for Commons images, it seems that if you want to contribute there and have your rights respected, you have to be open about your real-world identity and be prepared to take legal action. I know WMF legal doesn't have the resources or standing to support uploaders, but it's a sorry state. I guess you know this already, but I've typed this now. BethNaught (talk) 22:00, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

The proposal covers text only. Wikimedia Commons has used CC4 as default licence for the Upload Wizard for some time already. However, users have always been and always will be able to choose from a variety of free licences and licence versions when they upload non-text media. You can carry on using CC3.0 for images if you prefer. For text that has been collaboratively edited, like Wikipedia, I'm not sure there are effective mechanisms for those author(s) to sue copyright violators -- neither WMF nor CC own the text so I don't think they can take a case to court (IANAL). The 30 day forgiveness period seems entirely practical for genuine mistakes that are quickly fixed. Surely WMF should be spending its time encouraging folk to property attribute content rather than participating in court cases for petty sum of money. How much is a paragraph of text worth suing for? -- Colin (talk) 10:37, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Change of licence to existing texts?

I think, that all granted licences become invalid as soon as you change the licence later. The foundation has made the same mistake once, taking advantage of a loophole in the text, which allowed another version of the GDFL-licence, but with a complet different "spirit" and text. --Eingangskontrolle (talk) 20:39, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

I'm not sure I understand. Section 4b of CCBYSA3.0 states that one can distribute an adaptation under the terms of the license or of a later version of the license with the same License Elements (so CCBYSA4.0). This is why WMF can change the license and our reusers can still reuse previous content under CCBYSA4.0. The only thing that changes is that reusers can no longer distribute newer versions under CCBYSA3.0.

GFDL2CCBYSA was a big change and the way it was done, by introducing the loophole with dedication to Wikimedia, was repulsive, for me as well. Upgrading the version number does not seem to come anywhere close to that.--Strainu (talk) 21:10, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

It does state that the license will apply only to new articles and articles edited after the introduction date. I assume that a bot can be used to place the licensing information on the relevant articles. However, with the occasional outlier that will remain unedited until the end of time, I think it's safe to assume that in a reasonably short space of time, most - if not all - of the old articles will be updated.

This is more an issue for derivative content (any content derived from an older 3.0 license may be distributed under 3.0 [EDIT: pretty sure the license still stands on derivative content from 3.0 content, whereas as you say, 4.0 could not be distributed under 3.0, which IS more restrictive[EDIT #2: in that 3.0, depending on jurisdiction, may not cover sui generis databases]] or newly under 4.0 - a "not more restrictive license", as per the terms of 3.0). But then the onus for retaining and stating the license is on the creator of derivative work as per the Attribution-Share Alike terms, which require derivatives to display the appropriate license anyway. Benjitheijneb (talk) 23:02, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

Brachney

I contribute to Wikipedia mostly for this reason: Its information is freely available to all, and can be reproduced by anyone. I am not clear about the details of the proposed changes. If the new revision improves upon this feature of openness, I'm all for it. If the proposed revision undermines openness, I'm against it. If it goes beyond a certain point and undermines the concept of a free market of ideas, I'll have to find another hobby and stop contributing to Wikipedia. Brachney (talk) 20:59, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

I think the differences table linked to above explains very well the differences between license, including openness and others: [1] - you can make up you own mind if the new license is as free as you want.--Strainu (talk) 21:10, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

Error

The link in the first paragraph, under the words "expressed very strong support", rather obviously goes to the wrong place. Revent (talk) 21:00, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

I fixed it, I think. It went to Wikpedia by mistake, instead of Wikimedia, where there is an article. "Wikipedia:Licensing update" (no such article) → "Licensing update" --A876 (talk) 21:05, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

Thanks a lot! Sorry, that was my error. Joe Sutherland (WMF) (talk) 21:08, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

Patronize the Creative Commons 1.0 version

CC 4.0 should be allowed to bring the creators to upload their works. That secures a big amount of works. But Wikipedia should always campaign for the Creative Commons 1.0 version to patronize the concept of (literal) open-source.--Bluemel1 (talk) 05:59, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Support (don't vote in this section)

Sensible move to clearly superior license, although as BethNaught mentioned there are some slight subtle changes - a slightly less dense version of the changes is available here. Wikipedia should be a universal encyclopedia freely available for everyone around the world as far as possible and I believe the changes made in relation to creating a international license help Wikipedians reach this goal. Domdomegg (talk) 21:09, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

I agree --Sargoth (talk) 08:45, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Domdomegg - I agree, that page should be linked to from the FAQ or announcement page. But the place to vote support is here, not here, Sargoth. Changed section title so we don't have two with the same title. And fixed link. --Elvey (talk) 21:28, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Big reusers that cannot move?

In principle I support the move, as I consider v4 much clearer and with many important new "features", such as the database rights. However, it seems natural to ask if there are any big reusers that will not be able to move with us and will be hard hit by the change? If anyone can name such a case, it should clearly be investigated in depth, to see if we can help, including with legal device or delaying the move.--Strainu (talk) 21:13, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

We don't see any major re-users that would have trouble complying with the new version of the license, but this is an important point to consider. Reusers will benefit from the clear language in the license. Creative Commons is encouraging platforms to offer CC 4.0 as the default license, so we will likely see more adoption around the web. As for our responsibilities to reusers, we should ensure that we provide notice when content is available under the new license, and provide updated resources on the new license's terms. Stephen LaPorte (WMF) (talk) 21:52, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

(Back)compatibility of licenses

Maybe my thoughts are related to the previous section. I received a dataset together with some copyrighted material under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licenc, and I was very happy. Then I realized (if I am right), I cannot use neither in Wikipedia under CC BY-SA 3.0 (or in Wikidata under CC0), because the license is not back-compatible. If most of the Wikimedia projects move to 4.0, many third party sites cannot use the content under 3.0 license version. While Wikipedia will be able to use their 3.0 licensed content (I would be happy to see a confirmation for this). Samat (talk) 21:58, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

Samat, yes, you're correct. Just like we could use v2 content from, say, Flickr, we will be able to use v3 content from now on.--Strainu (talk) 06:38, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Hi, I'm no legal pro, so I'm always a bit in the dark with reusing loops. The evolution around data-mining and data-bases do not help me in shedding some lights on the matter. There is a very wide range of licences and be only discussing v3 to v4 seems quite limited to me. I keep checking w:Comparison_of_free_and_open-source_software_licenses and w:Permissive_software_licence and yet I haven't this big meta-picture in mind yet. As I'm always balanced between virality and full liberty, so it's not always clear to me what option I consistently prefer.

Fig.A A license compatibility chart for combining or mixing two CC licensed works.

Couldn't we elaborate some frame (2D or cube, or hypercube) with planes such as this picture Fig.A. Some arrows could be added to complete directional compatibility ([from Licence-x to Licence-y]OK ; [from Licence-y to Licence-x]Not OK), or we could agree on a reading direction (lines toward columns), bringing a non-symmetric matrix. Thinking while striking the keyboard I think a table would be more appropriate for the time being (and the delay for the decision). Not-OK marks could be associated with 'footnotes'

Line VS Column
	0	OK
	Not-OK (1)	0

With explanations linked:

(1) With <ref> One can produce content to be sold and modified from 0-licenced content... but the source must be open... + links toward permissive licenses (opposition between copyleft and copyleft) <- Do correct me cause I'm not even sure. What I'm sure of is there are, in wikipedias, passionate and expert persons quite up to the job (almost rand pinking, in fact from 'view history' and editor statistics.). Shaddim, Wickey-nl, Farmer21, Yug, Cantons-de-l'Est Does the proposal appeal to you or any friends ? (1) explanation dots may need to be -> (expl) linked to [[w:Confronting licences#CC confrontations#Cc-zero VS Cc-by-nc-nd]] for more complete documentation.

By the way a code for folding tables would be great (show - develop columns), cause it's gonna be a wide one. Folding CCs and GPLs and BSDs, or categories by rights and so on, would help reading in my opinion. No idea how to wikicode that however. (same pinking) Whatamidoing (WMF) any idea ?

In anyway, this would be the occasion to complete and improve some pages in the wikipedias.

Hope it might help the debate. --RP87 (talk) 10:01, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Tables such as the design in w:en:Template:Navbox with collapsible groups – on some wikis, for most users. However, collapsing content (including, but not limited to, tables) is an accessibility problem, because it hides things from some people (e.g., anyone using ⌘ Command+F to find the collapsed content on the page). Also, it doesn't work if your web browser and/or the local wiki doesn't support it (almost certainly more than 10% of WMF wikis, and probably much more than 10% of them). So it's possible, but I don't necessarily recommend it. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 16:14, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Spanish

escribanlo en español

Una traducción española es disponible aquí. --LMixter (WMF) (talk) 21:50, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

Compréhension - Understanding

Hello all. Je ne suis pas sûr de bien comprendre l'intérêt de ce changement. Désolé.
I'm not sur to really well understand the interest of that change. Sorry. Gerardgiraud (talk) 21:51, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

Infographic request

I request that a very straightforward infographic be created explaining the key differences between this version of CC and the previous. I was alerted to a helpful licensing tutorial infographic during a discussion on Facebook where several editors (including myself) bemoaned the inscrutability of photo licensing requirements to the average person. Funcrunch (talk) 21:56, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

I like the idea of providing an infographic, but I'll need to see if anyone at the Foundation is able to work on something like this. Over the long term, I do agree that it would be helpful to have more simple and plain explanations of our licensing terms. I think that Creative Commons provides a good overview of what's new in CC 4.0, although it isn't quite an infographic. This would be a good project to discuss as part of our copyright strategy. Stephen LaPorte (WMF) (talk) 01:29, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

That infographic is awful. The problem is the information is false. It's clear and easy to understand. It falsely states, for example, that these logos were all improper uploads!--Elvey (talk) 00:10, 7 October 2016 (UTC)

Will the new terms apply to existing articles?

Does changing the license affect the terms for existing content licensed under 3.0? For example, could the new provisions explicitly allowing URLs as valid attribution be used for articles already licensed under 3.0?

If not, are we going to have to track extra licensing information for every piece of content, and show a different license per article? --Yair rand (talk) 22:06, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

• The first question is no, but the problem for me now is about the "how-to-mark-the-articles-in-a-way-that-is-neat-enough" question...--1233 | Questions?| Tools | He left the message at 01:58, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

CC0 is the best

It does not matter what is the license if it is so good as CC0. It is very bad if WIKI images in the most cases cannot be used in a small commercial projects. Grand everything in WIKI to everybody for any purpose! CC0 must be set as the default rule for each new upload. (sory my bad english) PavelSI (talk) 22:19, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

@PavelSI: You can use works licensed under BY-SA 3.0 or BY-SA 4.0 in a commercial project. What you have to do, though, is to give people attribution under BY-SA, which isn't required under CC0 (there's also the bit about relicensing derivative works, which I discuss in reply to a few other people below). We think it's good to have that attribution requirement so that everyone who contributes to the Wikimedia projects receives acknowledgement for their awesome work. -Jrogers (WMF) (talk) 02:09, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

@Jrogers (WMF): the problem with every other licence is that you need to interpret its limitations to see if they apply to your case. for example attribution. what is proper attribution? there always will be borderline cases. who should i attribute to? what if i don't have author's name, and i have to research first? i should be vigilant not to cross any lines. with cc0, there are no lines to cross, and using the information is as easy as possible. therefore, cc0 is superior to all licences. that said, i don't think that wikipedia should enforce cc0, because it will exclude some contributors who insist on other licences. but setting as default or recommended is not a bad idea. Krisztián Pintér (talk) 09:05, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

People does not use WIKI data in commercial projects because it is too much work for maintenance all the references to the WIKI and attribution. It work only in theory, practically NOT. PavelSI (talk) 18:24, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

I think it's a fair balance for people to be giving attribution for their commercial projects, but still be able to use things in most cases. While there can be borderline cases, one of the things that is helpful about CC4.0 is that is uses more clear language so that hopefully more people will understand the attribution requirement and get it right while still being able to use all this material. -Jrogers (WMF) (talk) 18:32, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

I agree with Jrogers (WMF). So I don't support the proposed move toward CC0 licensing. (The "Where you own Sui Generis Database Rights covered by CC BY-SA 4.0, you waive these rights..." language). (See #Elvey.)--Elvey (talk) 23:59, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

70.73.222.180

Late joiner here :( Just to ask has the ? of is the issue of sole rights and prop etc. been hit on yet . Upspeed me pls? This is a large topic to me as well, as a writer. Gary P. Wolfe 70.73.222.180 22:39, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

Internation

The CCBYSA4.0 license will help us in our efforts to collaborate with the World Health Organization. So in that way it is a good thing. The 3.0 held people to national jurisdiction the 4.0 does not. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:42, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

What's the point?

We're like the kid at school with the latest toy, always wanting a better one. Can we please, for the love of G-d, pick a license and stick to it? It's hard enough to understand the licenses already, without you keep changing them! Sunil The Mongoose (talk) 22:53, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

The license hasn't been changed in over seven years. Back then, CC 4.0 didn't exist. — Earwig ^talk 23:22, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

Z3itG3izt

Pas touche ! Ne touchez pas à mon WikiPedia !! Ne touchez pas la ruche !!! Are we going to be paid like the youtubers ???
Les nombreuses vérités sont déjà citées et donc déjà sous une protection quelconque : le droit de citer n'est pas questionable.
WikiPedia n'est pas une personne morale mais un lieu virtuel qui regroupe en un centre, comme une bibliothèque, la connaissance collective.
WikiPedia n'est pas une école, un culte, un organisme, un journal ou un média en soi car elle ne reflète aucune opinion : elle n'est pas suggestive.
- @Z3itG3izt Maât Lab
PS: Si vous faites ça, vous supprimez la moitié de mes 21000 tweets ...
C'est quoi ? Ça va prendre "un permis" pour inscrire de l'information ici ? Donc l'information va devenir plus rare ?
23:25, 5 October 2016

about licensing in general

I find all the various licences annoying. More so than most other things about media.
I've always subscribed to the need of 4 licenses and not a single more.
Free: do whatever you want
free with attribution: do what you want with credit as due
paid for commerce:pay to get paid
and finally
pay period:you use/access/etc you pay.
All these various licences and the incompatibility they cause makes me have to recompile software almost daily to add in an incompatible this or that which was removed for licensing reasons, to add that feature back. Everything I've ever coded on my own has been given away under my made up free software as in free license. And I don't care what anyone does with my wiki.xxx.yyy postings. I think the open movement and copy LEFT is becoming as much of a joke as the copy RIGHT industry. Apache, cc 2, 3, 4?, open, share alike; give me a break!!!! Lostinlodos (talk) 23:27, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

HipercubesHunter11

CC4.0 DOESNT have to be obligatory, because The WikiMedia Proyects are "Free and accesible for everyone" and this "everyone" includes all copyright, copyleft, CC, GNU, PubDom(CC0), ect. Understood?

Scope of License and Purpose of this discussion?

As I read through this proposal, I get two things I don't understand: You list impact to Wikinews and Wikidata. How does this affect Wikipedia / should I understand that Wikipedia content will thus be licensed under 4.0? ETA: Now I am seeing the banners on WP, so I assume it does affect Wikipedia - that should be clearly spelled out in the FAQ, though. (And, for example, I do not upload anything to Commons but all my work seems to get ported for inclusion there by others.... So if this has anything to do on Commons or Commons-only, then I'm not all that interested except for any potential differences in what I upload to WP. If this affects Wikipedia, why isn't there announcements on Wikipedia about this discussion - or did I miss something?) Second: I'd have questions about the impact of 4.0 "enabling more anonymity" provisions and how those might apply to WMF projects..... but honestly, if this is a, "Yep, it's going through and this is our last chance to give you buy-in, but we won't change anything at this late phase of adoption no matter what," then I think I'm just wasting my time here.... Not saying I am or I'm not, as there's nothing to indicate what this 'feedback' will do in terms of adoption. LaughingVulcan (talk) 23:35, 5 October 2016 (UTC) Edited by me: 00:50, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Hi LaughingVulcan, the most recent version of the terms of use was prepared after a thorough discussion in 2012, so we plan to listen to the feedback and discussion here and revise the proposal accordingly. I think Wikimedia's policy documents like the Terms of Use benefit greatly from close review. Thanks for taking the time to provide feedback.

On your first question, we can modify the question and answer section above the explain how this will affect Wikipedia. On your second question, the current Terms of Use explains attribution will be provided according to your username that appears in the revision history in an article. Removing this material is technically difficult for Wikipedia, so we will need to see if this is possible if the case comes up. Stephen LaPorte (WMF) (talk) 01:49, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the answers. First question, I think there may be other Wikipedians dropping by who will wonder, so thanks for that. The feedback, thanks for replying to that point. The second question, I think what I was wondering was since the anonymizing customizations are one of the differences linked in a 4.0 change document I saw here, I was wondering if anything would be changing based on that new feature. I don't mind having my identity associated with what I contribute at all, but wondering if WMF has any plans to tell other mirrors and copiers "Yeah you can copy, don't involve the WMF or Wikipedia's name in it so it looks like we approved your copy." Again, thanks for the answers! LaughingVulcan (talk) 02:50, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

GFDL?

Going forward, fine, but does the CC v4 pose any problems with the GFDL? I remember the discussions around the time we moved from GFDL to CC, it wasn't backwards compatible (I think). Won't we have to stop using GFDL content? Is CC v4 backwards compatible with GFDL? Oaktree b (talk) 23:55, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

Is CC v3 backwards compatible? I don't think so, but I'd be interested if you know of a discussion stating otherwise.--Strainu (talk) 06:44, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Even if you are correct about it not being backwards compatible what content do we use that use the GFDL? Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 11:02, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Bahumat

PLEASE do not include Share-Alike in this upgrade. Doing so entirely guts most commercial uses. CC0 whenever possible, please, or at least CC4-BY, but just say NO to share-alike. A lot of small businesses are trying to survive on the niches that CC-BY and CC0 allow us. Share-Alike requires us to share, instead of sell, our labours.

I strongly oppose this. Free content should stay free and there should be no backdoor to monopolize it. Chaddy (talk) 00:14, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

In addition to the point from Chaddy, there are a couple reasons why the Share-Alike part is needed here. There's license compatibility. Going from the current BY-SA 3.0 to BY-SA 4.0 is compatible and therefore can be done just by upgrading the terms of use and editing articles, as the legal note explains. Upgrading to BY, on the other hand, would not be compatible with existing articles and would require some kind of really difficult to implement split where older contributions are still under 3.0 BY-SA and only new changes would be on BY. I think that's probably messy enough to just be unworkable. On top of that, the values of the Wikimedia movement have been supported by having BY-SA. It's still possible to use any content licensed under By-SA commercially, for example by drawing upon it in a larger work. The SA part means that if you take the CC licensed content and change it, your new adaption has to be freely licensed, which prevents people from copying part of a Wikipedia article, improving it, and then claiming that nobody is allowed to access or reuse their version of it. -Jrogers (WMF) (talk) 02:05, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

I agree with the other replies. Strong support for including share-alike. It's a key part of the Wikimedia ecosystem and the community that has developed. --QuixoticLife (talk) 04:11, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

I agree with the anonymous OP philosophically, but I agree with the other users that it would be impractical if impossible. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 11:04, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Yes tough luck OP it really should stay share-alike imho... That's the whole idea of it in the first place, that's what makes Wikipedia work and spread the love. That's one of the reasons many contributed. Perhaps there are other data/knowledge bases for other uses you can tap from ? Perhaps you can change your product to include proper links and open its content and still do the buisiness of providing it ? By facing those obstacles we keep knowledge free and its spread free too. It's important is the reason.

117.235.212.96

Wikipedia is doing a wonderful job. Any cynicism about Wikipedia is to be termed illegal thoughtless and biased. Governments initiating illegal activities are to be condemned worldwide. Superior power should have superior understanding of their action. Commons version is warmly welcomed. Personally I have benefited from Wikipedia immensely. Any punitive action against Wikipedia members is condemnable. Independent and people friendly ideas are always welcome. BRAVO WIKIPEDIA. LONG LIVE WIKIPEDIA. ALL MY SUPPORT..WHOLEHEARTEDLY. PLEASE KEEP GOING. HEARTY THANKS.

+1

Sylviatoyindustries

"Share alike" is so much more clear for borrowers of content. But it is also clearer and more helpful for donors of content. When you donate content, you let go of it. The extent to which you let go is not always clear, which can be unpredictably problemmatic down the line. Sylviatoyindustries (talk) 00:23, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Oppose CC BY-SA on Wikinews

It should be updated to CC BY 4.0, not BY-SA. Because I hate re-using online news only according to the original license. --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 00:56, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Jrogers (WMF), are you (the WMF folks including you, not just you singular) trying to force Wikinews to replace their current cc-by license with the more restrictive cc-by-sa? If you're not, this is a simple but significant typo; if you are, this is a disingenuous move that deserves to be announced widely to the Wikinews community whose content will become less useful for many potential reusers. Nyttend (talk) 01:48, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

You are correct, Wikinews can upgrade to CC 4.0 and continue to use the CC BY license. I have updated the FAQ to reflect this point. Can you help clarify this point with the Wikinews community? I am curious to hear if there is interest in CC BY 4.0 on Wikinews. Best, Stephen LaPorte (WMF) (talk) 02:05, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Curious, who is reusing Wikinews content, and where? It's a positive thing if it's happening, but I'm just a little surprised. -- Zanimum (talk) 12:30, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

HirnSpuk – About sui generis stuff and commercial use

I would strongly recommend thinking about the example: "As an example, this means facts you contribute to the projects may be reused freely without attribution." Excuse me? Then, why all the fuss about the license anyways? Or am I misunderstanding something? What qualifies as a "fact": A word? A sentence? A paragraph? A page? An image? I for myself do not understand, what's the matter with this latin database stuff... I'm no lawyer and I'm not going to become one. This should get some clarification.

Second, above, some guys asked, why they can't use the stuff commercially, but as far as I understand, they should (otherwise the License would be nc?), right? HirnSpuk (talk) 00:58, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

@HirnSpuk: Let me go in reverse order. Yes, both the current BY-SA 3.0 and the proposed By-SA 4.0 allow for commercial use. There's an attribution requirement though, and if somebody makes a remix, they have to freely license it under the same or an equivalent license (that's the SA part, and we have it because there has been consensus from early in the movement that it would be bad for people to take parts of Wikimedia projects, improve them, and then lock them up so people can't access them). As far as the database rights thing, it is a bit complicated, so I'll try to do my best to explain. If you're really interested, we have a wikilegal post about databases that goes into more detail. The short version is that under copyright law, facts can't be copyrighted. A "fact" for this purpose is some true statement about the world, like the date of a historical battle or the chemical composition of a material.But in some places that have these database rights, the limitations on reusing the database can go beyond just copyright. Facts are an example where database sometimes hit that copyright doesn't, and we wanted to explain that we have that waiver language to make sure that things like facts that aren't covered by copyright aren't limited by database rights either. That said, if you think the example sentence is more confusing than helpful, I'd be curious to know that, as we could change it or take it out. -Jrogers (WMF) (talk) 01:46, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

@Jrogers (WMF): So they may sell it as long as they attribute the author and include the license, right? Concerning the database: Thanks for the link, I suppose the problem is with waiving the rights. If we interpret the ideals of wikimedia extremly strict (which is exactly what is done in german wikibooks, where the statement "we are only accepting verifiable knowledge" is always referred to as an absolute not discussable statement, that needs to be followed under all circumstances) every information within the database of wikimedia-projects could be considered a fact. So if we consider every information in the wikimedia-project-databases being a fact and if a contributor waives all the rights for facts, there is actually nothing left, that the license could be applicable to. In this regard, yes I think it's really confusing. But I think the problem is with the rights-waiving not the example itself. If it is really clear, that sui generis database rights are only and solely concerned with the database in total, or with compiling large portions of a specific database, than I'll agree it's fine (so nobody needs to attribute every contributor of wikimedia projects, if he/she is just doing statistics or something). But as far as I'm understanding it, with the new sentence "Where you own Sui Generis Database Rights covered by CC BY-SA 4.0, you waive these rights. As an example, this means facts you contribute to the projects may be reused freely without attribution." means: somebody makes a dump. Everything in the dump are facts → no license needed, no attribution needed, go for it and sell it. I would expect something like: where you own specific Sui Generis Database Rights you waive these rights in favor of the Wikimedia foundation. I don't know if I was able to clarify, because I'm not a native speaker. And I'm totally unsure if I even understand everything correctly. I just wanted to point out, that Wikimedia or whatever should be needed to be attributed and nobody can dump the database and say: well you just waived all your rights of the database and it's just mere facts, so you can't complain (as the example-sentence could be understood in my opinion). Regards Axel --HirnSpuk (talk) 02:52, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

@HirnSpuk: I think maybe taking out or rewriting the facts sentence would be good. Most of what's on Wikipedia isn't "facts" in the copyright or database legal meaning of the word. Specific bits are facts, say the date of birth of Alexander Hamilton for example. But a paragraph about Hamilton's early life is creative because it contains a particular way of expressing many facts about Hamilton's life and there are many different ways those same facts could be laid out. One could not copy and sell that whole paragraph without proper attribution, but one could take a fact (the birthdate) and use that without attribution. In places without database rights, one could even take a lot of facts, say the birthdates of every major figure in the American revolution, and compile them from Wikipedia without needing to include a thousand different attribution links (extra edit: even in countries with database rights, you might be able to do this without attribution, depends on the database and whether you've taken a "substantial" portion of it, which is a word nobody knows the meaning of here). I think that's a good thing, myself. Copyright is meant to protect creativity, it stops someone from copying a whole Wikipedia article verbatim and pretending that they wrote it. But someone who puts together a list of dates, or a table of molecules for a school report shouldn't be forever obligated to include hundreds of different links and license text with it.

So that's what the database rights waiver is doing. It's not giving up huge chunks of Wikipedia at all. In the example you give, the purpose who copied the data dump would need to attribute Wikipedia properly. What the waiver is doing is giving up this small right in the overall organization or structure of a database that only exists in some places and not others. We think it makes sense to do that because it means that Wikipedia will be consistent worldwide (instead of people needing to check what country something came from for how they can use it), and it will keep consistency with how data has been used under 3.0, which does not mention database rights. -Jrogers (WMF) (talk) 03:37, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

@HirnSpuk: When asked about database rights, I always mention census data. Now, census data is not under copyright in most countries, simply because it's not creative work, but a series of facts. However, European Union countries protect that data by database rights for 15 years from the date the database structure is "finished" (which is very slippery IMO, but whatever". Say that a single wikipedian collects all the historic census data from the beginning of censuses to 1995 for all countries in the world. He might say that this is a new database and that it is protected by this Sui Generis rights. What the license says is: you're giving away this right, so if company X only copies that data (and not any surrounding text, which might be protected by copyright), it can do so freely.

@Jrogers (WMF):: I don't think taking out the fact sentence would be good. The users need to know even of the most obscure corner cases of this license. More examples would probably help.--Strainu (talk) 06:52, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

@Strainu:: I suppose a "good" lawyer could change your opinion about what is a "fact" ;-). Especially regarding the "threshold of originality".

@Jrogers (WMF):: I agree with Strainu. With a clarification, what a fact is in this regard (maybe even how it is normally stored), and a clarification, that database-entries containing creativity are not in focus, it would be fine. Regards Axel --HirnSpuk (talk) 09:54, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Change my mind? Not really likely. Force a court decision in the direction he wants, possible, unfortunately. :) It has happened before and will happen again.--Strainu (talk) 09:57, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

A more enforceable license

I share concerns from some of the earlier comments concerning mainly the lack of enforcement of existing licenses. Clearly time and effort has been expended regarding the "upgrade" of licensing rather than enforcement of existing licenses. However, some of the more egregious license violations I've encountered have appeared on non-English sites. With official translations under 4.0, I expect the license to be more enforceable internationally to potentially combat these violations. Also, I appreciate the clarification regarding the right to cure. In practice, many violations are unintentional, and I expect that some reusers will respond better to a request suggesting they cure a violation during the cure period rather than a notice that they must cure or legal action could ensue.

Utilizing the new license appears to be a good next step. If adoption is coupled with more enforcement (even if such enforcement is informal), I believe it's a step in the right direction.PolicyReformer (talk) 01:03, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

@PolicyReformer: We agree that the more international licenses will help with enforcement, and I'm glad to hear that you and several others are interested in the issue. As I mentioned above, I'd encourage people to contact WMF Legal about these enforcement issues, especially if you find some bad ones. We can't fix all of them, but we can definitely help with some of the worse ones and we can sometimes direct you to helpful resources for how you can help with enforcement as a volunteer (because a lot of the time, just letting somebody know that there's a problem can lead it being fixed). -Jrogers (WMF) (talk) 01:36, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

I don't undersand why we need this at all

Aren't Wikipedia and Wikimedia just a platform for all of this information from other places? I don't understand why we need any licencing at all if the information isn't originally from here and we have (almost) everything cited.

Hi there. Wikipedia is written using references from many places, but the text of the articles is original work by all the volunteers contributing worldwide. The licenses are there to help provide credit to all the awesome work that everyone is doing, to make it possible for other people to reuse that work to help spread knowledge around the world without needing to ask permission, and to promote the free culture values that underlie Wikipedia by ensuring that others who adapt and remix things from Wikipedia have to provide the new knowledge they're creating to the world too. -Jrogers (WMF) (talk) 01:26, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Creative Commons - By

I wonder why don't wikipedia just adopted CC-By, not CC-By-SA

We use CC BY-SA because it helps promote the values of free culture. If the license were just CC BY, people would be able to freely use content from the Wikimedia projects for any purpose, but if they made changes, they could put those changes under regular copyright and forbid others to use them. The ideal is to make the world's knowledge available for everyone, and part of the way we strive towards that is by using a license that makes sure contributions to that knowledge remain available for everyone. -Jrogers (WMF) (talk) 01:31, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

La licence à utiliser devrait prohiber tout usage mercantile,

Personnellement, je pense que nos contributions devraient se faire sous une licence d'usage non commercial : en effet j'apprécierais assez peu qu'une agence dite de communication s'appropriât mon travail pour un usage commercial. Il en de même pour les livres non téléchargeables gratuitement. Je ne remets pas en cause le droit de courte citation mais il est inadmissible qu'un livre soit du copier coller d'un article de Wikipedia sans créditer l'auteur et que l'éditeur menace toute personne qui recopierait le livre en question (qui est une contrefaçon) de plusieurs années de prison. Il serait temps que la Wikimedia Foundation se réveille et au contraire exige qu'une contrefaçon de Wikipedia devienne libre d'accès et téléchargeable. Cela serait une excellente punition car l'éditeur voyou n'aurait plus que ses yeux pour pleurer. Malosse (talk) 01:29, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Bonjour, La licence libre est l'un des 5 principes fondateurs de wikipédia : https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipédia:Principes_fondateurs cependant cela ne veut pas dire que la réutilisation est en full-open : une copie doit mentionner : d'après/copie de Wikipédia, sous licence xxxx, et encore mieux la liste des auteurs. Un plagiat d'élève pour un exposé, s'il ne mentionne pas la source est illégal, de même qu'un livre plagiant de Wikipédia le serait. En ce qui concerne votre proposition d'obliger une modification à être publiée sous la même licence, je ne suis pas sûr qu'elle soit légale partout.Tpe.g5.stan (talk) 07:09, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Does this newer 4.0 really effectively upgrade current foggy situation?

I am not sure it is really well covering and coordinating the all the possible legal situations of creative commons materials in relation to broader public usage situations. Maybe if they managed few professional lawyers write their arguments here that how this new update is good and how it is bad and let the members clarify those different arguments and making their opinions would be more effective public debate that based on professional filtration. Orgio89 (talk) 01:53, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Reasons for staying neutral for this change of Terms of Service

There are a few problems that needs to be sorted out before considering a transition to the CC 4.0. First of all, there are few problems when you want to transit to CC 4.0:

1. How can one knows the page uses 3.0 license or 4.0 license directly from revision?
2. Will there be a phrase out of the 3.0 license (gradually transit to a 4.0 license before DD/MM/YY )?
3. If yes for the question above, are there any time span? If not, why? Using two licenses will affect readers and different institutions using the WIkipedia as source, as it creates legal problems.
4. When will the change be in effect if the terms of use is passed? Immediately or there will be a buffer period (such as the change will take effect on 1 Jan 2017)
5. Who can vote for the change of the ToS?

Cheers,

--1233 | Questions?| Tools | He left the message at 01:57, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

I'd say the answer to #2 should be no. From a technical point of view, it is much simpler to just have a cutoff time: from then on, any changes are under v4. There will be a (long) transition period in which many articles will not see any edit, but my understanding is that reusers can still use the v3 text under the newer license, so it makes sense to say that the whole Wikimedia project that made the change is under CC v4.--Strainu (talk) 06:57, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Why?

Is there any problem like it was in GFDL? Is there any serious problem in redistributing, blah blah? If not, this just seems unnecessary. — regards, Revi 01:59, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

My main problem is that we can't import CCBYSAv4 text into Wikipedia right now. As more and more websites move to v4, we'll have difficulties getting outside content.--Strainu (talk) 06:58, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Danielteolijr

I gave up on you guys long ago after you deleted 200+ of my photos from Wiki Commons. They were deleted cause I only licensed them for non-commercial use. What a waste of time. Many of my photos were not available anywhere else and were the best of their respective category. But greedy Wiki only wants commercial images. I suggest you offer a number of licenses like Internet Archive does. They offer commercial and non commercial licenses. This is the license I use

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

It is international, non commercial, don't change the image and give credit where it is due. Very simple and fair license.

You can also offer some type of award to encourage commercial donations. I'd also look at how commercial is defined. Just because a photo is used in a book it does not make it commercial for me. I'd say commercial is used in advertising where a model release is needed. So, even if I say no commercial use, my photos can be used for books that are sold where they are made for educational or art reasons and not used as advertising.

Beside my own photos I have a huge, huge archival collection of rare antique / found photos as well.

https://archive.org/details/GirlPeeingInPisspotsCollage1910DanielD.TeoliJr.ArchivalCollection

Look how the Internet Archive does it and learn some lessons Wiki.

Dan —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Danielteolijr (talk)

If we allowed more restrictive licenses, re-users would have to check every single image in an article to see if any of them were non-commercial. That's impractical and unfair. LtPowers (talk) 02:00, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

That's already the case in the english Wikipedia due to the use of "fair use" images, or because of trademark restrictions or personality rights, or different copyright laws (pma for example) in different countries. And it's not unfair to check if I've got the right to use anothers work before doing so, nor is it impractical to check 10 images in an article if they are properly licensed. That's just 10 new tabs with 10 clicks and you've got the image details right in front of you. -- DerBuddybär (talk) 07:39, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Pas Touche !

Ne touchez pas à mon WikiPedia ! Ne touchez pas la ruche ! Are we going to be paid like the youtubers ??? Les nombreuses vérités sont déjà citées et donc déjà sous une protection quelconque : le droit de citer n'est pas questionable. WikiPedia n'est pas une personne morale mais un lieu virtuel qui regroupe en un centre, comme une bibliothèque, la connaissance collective. WikiPedia n'est pas une école, un culte, un organisme, un journal ou un média en soi car elle ne reflète aucune opinion : elle n'est pas suggestive. - @Z3itG3izt PS: Si vous faites ça, vous supprimez la moitié de mes 21000 tweets ... C'est quoi ? Ça va prendre "un permis" pour inscrire de l'information ici ? Donc l'information va devenir plus rare ? "BRAVO WIKIPEDIA. LONG LIVE WIKIPEDIA. ALL MY SUPPORT..WHOLEHEARTEDLY. PLEASE KEEP GOING. HEARTY THANKS." - 117.235.212.96 § Neyyattinkara : Kuzhittura Tamil ; Nadu / #India § ¤ Liberté de la presse ¤ Freedom of the Press Foundation ¤ SnowDen

Clément: tout à fait d'accord. Le contenu cite n'est pas le leur !

Sorry

I'm sorry, but I do not agree nor do I really see the need to move to Creative Commons 4.0. A lot of us have gone through a lot of trouble researching and photographing places and events with the intention of sharing our knowledge. Therefore, I believe that the right thing to do is thst those who want to use the work in Wikipedia is to at least give credit and state from where said information was obtained. Marine 69-71 (talk) 02:35, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

This is just for text. You can already post CC 4.0-licensed images on Commons and post them on Wikipedia. What's the actual problem? ViperSnake151 (talk) 15:35, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Commons media repository licenses

This plan towards CC4.0, if implemented how would it affect the media on commons? Are you proposing forcing a license update on all existing CC licensed media or will commons media files be able to retain their current license version? Offnfopt (talk) 02:45, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

This is only about the text content. Commons has already allowed content to be uploaded under 4.0 licenses for a while now. ViperSnake151 (talk) 15:36, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Support

I support this as the admin of a wiki (DoomWiki.org) which already made the same transition a while back. Another benefit that I didn't see enumerated is that the CC BY-SA 4.0 license explicitly protects your work from application of "technological measures" which would constitute DRM, such that it should become forbidden to create a locked-down eBook version of Wikipedia, for example. As an opponent of DRM, that's something I support equally as much as the other positive aspects of the license upgrade. --QuasarTE (talk) 03:30, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

This exists in the 3.0 licence as well. CFCF 💌 📧 20:57, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Strong support

As a long-time user and editor of Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, I strongly support this proposal. As a writer, artist and photographer myself, I've licensed my own works as CC BY-SA in the past, and have upgraded those to the 4.0 version because of the international support. I also join the comment just above mine in celebrating the preventative measures this license takes against DRM of our collective work. Let's keep this information free. --QuixoticLife (talk) 04:16, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

The clause forbidding DRM exists in version 3.0 as well. CFCF 💌 📧 20:58, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

115.249.130.47

if you are improving the licence, why you even ask for comments or advice its fine do it. 115.249.130.47 04:32, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Oppose

The proposal does not mention some major changes in 4.0:

• "Under 4.0, a licensee’s rights are reinstated automatically if she corrects a breach within 30 days of discovering it." Currently, a CC license terminates when a licensee violates the license terms.
• "The [4.0] licenses explicitly permit licensees to satisfy the attribution requirement with a link to a separate page for attribution information." This does not reflect global jurisdiction.
• "The 4.0 license suite uniformly and explicitly waives moral rights held by the licensor where possible to the limited extent necessary to enable reuse of the content in the manner intended by the license. Publicity, privacy, and personality rights held by the licensor are expressly waived to the same limited extent."

We work for free; everybody can use our work for free; our only "pay" is a simple attribution. 4.0 reduces these few rights even more.  Strong Oppose. --Martina Nolte (talk) 04:40, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Not sure, but I have more or less the same conclusions. I can probably accept point two, but point three worries me. It is also the question about what will be relicensed, Licenses on non-collaborative content should not be changed, that is files uploaded with a specific license. — Jeblad 05:35, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Same here.  Strong Oppose. -- Pratyeka (talk) 11:56, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

I just agree with everything that Martina Nolte just wrote, so I don't agree with this change.

I still don't like the real life situation of honest facts are removed or hidden on this site every single day. I don't agree with this change either.

I totally agree with Martina:  Strong Oppose, even after having read the response from WMF Legal. Obviously an aggravation for contributors of content whose position is already bad.--Mautpreller (talk) 18:23, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

•  Strong Oppose Fully in agreement with this, all three of these "improvement" severely detract from the rights of authors, while any benefit is at best hypothetical. CFCF 💌 📧 20:33, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Beware: you are totally losing your moral rights!!

Totally agree with Martina Nolte; all the legal blah-blah tries to hide the fact that they want to strip out ALL our moral rights, even if someone tries to harm one's reputation or honor. Check the text: "The moral right of integrity may provide creators with a source for redress if an adaptation represents derogatory treatment of their work, typically defined as “distortion or mutilation” of the work or treatment that is “prejudicial to the honor, or reputation of the author.” [...] "The CC licenses are intended to minimize the effect of moral rights."[2]  Strong Oppose. Schoenstater (talk) 15:15, 6 October 2016 (UTC).

Forget point 3

I have been editing in the Wikipedia and its sibling projects since its very beginnings many years ago. Not big changes, but every now and then small corrections, links added, and so on. Actually many hours of my life are gone into it. And you know what? I have never registered as a user! I do it for others, I do it for my future self, I do it for the sake of it. Yes, it is nice if users of your work recognise your effort, it makes you feel like humanity slowly rises into a better race, and you fell part of that too. An attribution note also gives Wikipedia more visibility (which it doesn't need anyway). But are you seriously suggesting that the lack of that attribution represents some personal insult against you? I needn't no personal reward and I dare to suggest you to learn to live without that as well. Be humble to be great. Give freely what you get for free. So forget your point number 3. Your moral rights live within you.

Response from WMF Legal

Hi @Martina Nolte: I can reply to all three of your points. I think that it is not as bad as you're worried about in all three cases, and I hope I'm able to address the concerns.

I. We want to encourage people to reuse WP content while ensuring compliance with license terms. In the cases we have seen, non compliance is usually innocent and comes from lack of awareness of the terms of the applicable license. CC 4.0 goes a long way towards being clearer and more readable and gives such good-faith users a chance to remedy their non-compliance before it amounts to a breach. Users who fail to remedy these issues in 30 days will still be subject to enforcement as is presently the case. Also, as I mentioned above, we would encourage you to report instances of someone improperly reusing Wikimedia content to the legal team at the Wikimedia Foundation. While we, unfortunately, don't have the resources to provide support in every case, there are some cases we receive (especially in combination with trademark abuse) that we're able to remedy, and we can offer direct you to helpful resources even in the cases where we can't help directly. We think the changes in CC 4.0 will put Wikimedians (and the legal team at the Wikimedia Foundation) in a better position to encourage more compliance with the terms of the license.

II. For the second point, while it is true that different jurisdictions have not agreed about the proper method of attribution for the CC 3.0 licenses, this does not affect the Wikimedia projects. This is because the existing terms of use allow attribution through a link as part of contributing to the projects under the 3.0 license, so there will be no change in that regard when going to 4.0. We think this make sense for the Wikimedia projects in particular because the many contributors to an article make it difficult to provide accurate and up to date attribution, whereas a link to the article allows a reader access to all the attribution information by going through that link and reviewing the information on the projects.

III. For the last point on moral rights, first, it’s worth noting that the license states that it waives moral rights where one is legally allowed to do that, so it does not remove all moral rights. It’s also important to be aware that the issue of moral rights varies considerably by jurisdiction. People in some countries see them as so important that they cannot be waived, whereas other countries have very weak moral rights and believe that the ability of others to change and remix content, even in ways that might insult the original author, is actually an important right for the public. You'll also see this reflected differently in the policies of different language projects. We see the role of the legal structure for the Wikimedia movement as one that creates as much opportunity as possible for contributors of different cultures to collaborate, remix works, and add to the world's knowledge. People contributing to the projects can then choose to set more strict policies for themselves as they wish, such as German Wikipedia choosing not to allow images that might be legal under U.S. fair use law, as one example.

Here, the moral rights waiver helps to preserve the structure of WP as an open and freely usable portal of knowledge that is consistent worldwide. Waiving moral rights where possible ensures that contributors (in certain jurisdictions) are limited in their ability to seek removal of content that is legal in many countries. This is consistent with how the Wikimedia projects have handled moral rights issues to date, and this waiver helps to preserve the status quo and ensure that the projects support the freedoms of users around the world. -Jrogers (WMF) (talk) 17:50, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Sadeeldr

Wikipedia is, “A free encyclopedia that anyone can edit" - AKA - A fairly steady grouping consistant with that of Facebook, Twitter, etc … I stopped using this forum because people were not attributing licensed work- And info was inaccurate, sloppy, & very bias. Careful observers will note that much “Wiki" information is through outdated media & articles…and ironically - The Internet. I’m Shocked that this is even up for discussion quite honestly.-Even in professional photography cases, “Attribution Rights” are not a given. We have a new generation of teenagers & young adults who cannot even read cursive anymore, yet demand credit for RE-BLOGGING. ??? Do you really want to contribute to knowledge? - Or is this Facebook 2 - where everyone thinks they own information and history? Good Luck and I hope you all get over your egos and start doing this for the right reasons

Was soll das denn ?

Ich bin sicherlich weltweit nicht der einzige Mensch, der in WP mitarbeitet, dessen Kenntnisse der englischen Sprache jedoch nicht gut genug sind, um das alles zu verstehen. Mit derartigen unüberlegten bzw. schlecht vorbereiteten Aktionen trägt man nicht gerade zu einer Verbesserung der Enzyklopädie bei.--M@nfred 06:16, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Wenn sich der Herr Pensionist aus der niederösterreichischen Pampa nicht sattelfest fühlt in Englisch, dann soll er sich halt nicht an Diskussionen auf einer amerikanischen Website beteiligen. So einfach. --2A02:1206:45B4:590:916B:71BA:3CD8:23C6 09:15, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Wenn der Herr Pensionist aus der niederösterreichischen Pampa hierher verlinkt wird, dann kann er doch auch nur hier und nicht anderswo etwas von sich geben. So einfach. --M@nfred 10:31, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Der Herr Pensionist aus der niederösterreichischen Pampa könnte in Erwägung ziehen, einfach gar nichts zu sagen. --2A02:1206:45B4:590:582F:7247:A9E:314F 18:28, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Hallo IP, 1. Commons ist ein mehrsprachiges Projekt! 2. Jeder darf sich an dieser Diskussion beteiligen. Manfred und andere hier ist die deutsche Version.

Do we plan to allow unedited articles and media to remain under CC 3.0 indefinitely?

We have a number of images that haven't been updated in years, and I imagine that there is other media, and maybe even articles, that are the same. Do we plan to allow these to remain under CC 3.0 indefinitely? Will they still be under this license 5 years from now? Or will we at some point in the future migrate all remaining content to CC 4.0? -Thunderforge (talk) 06:33, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

This issue needs to be addressed. Is it not possible to upgrade all Wikipedia articles simultaneously and automatically instead of waiting for an edit to occur? Having Wikipedia licensed under two different Creative Commons license versions dependant on its edit history seems clumsy at best. RobbieIanMorrison (talk) 11:24, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Any version of any article was released under a specific license, and remains under it forever. The fact that later the web site migrates to a new license doesn't change the license on any content already present before the migration. The site can only migrate in accordance with the previous license; and the migration affects all new content on the site, including derivatives of the old content with copyrightable changes. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 18:51, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Effect on Wikidata

FAQ mentions this question, but just in a way, that Wikidata keeps CC0. Significant part of the content of Wikidata comes from Wikipedia, and the data transfer between Wikipedia and Wikidata is continuous and bidirectional. It can work until Wikipedia is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0, because it has no regulation about database rights (although I always felt concerns of this data transfer from CC BY-SA 3.0 to CC0, in some countries it is strongly questionable). But what happens after Wikipedia is under CC BY-SA 4.0 with explicit database rights? My understanding is, that extracting datasets from from Wikipedia to Wikidata won't be legal anymore. Is that right? Samat (talk) 07:04, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Hi @Samat: This issue is one of the main reasons we have the sentence about waiving database rights. Even without that waiver, the upgrade to 4.0 shouldn't significantly change the process of importing from Wikipedia to Wikidata. Database rights are a small right in the overall organization or structure of a database, and they exist in some countries but not others. (You can read more in the Wikilegal post on this if you're curious.) What the clause in the 4.0 license does is clarify that those database rights, if they exist, are included in the CC license terms. The waiver language we added makes sure that copying facts to Wikidata doesn’t have the CC 4.0 limitations anywhere, so that bits of data can freely be copied over and put under the Wikidata CC0 license. Note that the way that articles are written and information is presented on Wikipedia was protected by copyright before, and still will be under CC 4.0. It’s just that the kind of copying to Wikidata that focuses on facts (in the copyright meaning of the term, which Jrogers (WMF) discussed in a couple of replies), like dates of historical events or chemical compositions of material, still cannot be copyrighted, and can be imported into Wikidata. - LMixter (WMF) (talk) 23:23, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Suggestions

I think the main page should clearly link to Creative Commons License Versions (big bold text) because the very first thing readers will want to know is what is the difference. Instead, we get text explaining why the differences are better, but really it is best if people read the differences for themselves objectively before they read your rationale for the change. In fact, the rest of the FAQ that's on this page should really be on the main page, as all of those points are important.

Although this proposal affects "default license for text" many people on this talk page have expressed concerns about images. The last FAQ entry merely states you "can" use CC4 for images. What would be a more useful FAQ is "What about images and other non-text contributions". And your answer would be that this proposal only covers text. Also you should state that the default licence on Wikimedia Commons for new uploads via the Upload Wizard has been CC4 since XXXX-XX-XX (can't remember the date, but a while ago now) though Commons has always accepted and continues to accept wide range of licences and licence versions for non-text media. In fact, stating that Wikimedia Commons has been using CC4 as default (though not mandatory) licence for many months might be worth including in the main text.

Perhaps you need a FAQ entry on retaining the -SA aspect. Fundamentally, the project is stuck with -SA since it cannot drop it while reusing existing content under the CC BY-SA 3.0 licence. That's aside from any desire to force reusers to keep the content free.

And btw, I support the change to CC4. -- Colin (talk) 07:58, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

No need to use the Creative Commons 4.0 licensing for Wikipedia!

United States Supreme Court opinion EXCLUDES Wikipedia from any and all licensing requirements under FAIR USE doctrine!

This discussion is merit less!

I rather see Wikipedia totally liquidated as thee is to many non senses and predatory abuse of Wikipedia administrators vandalizing the work of others!

The cross references in many foreign languages are contrary, misleading and in many cases completely false, while highly politicized by the prevailing political regimes in a native languages especially from the EX Eastern European countries.

off topic
As an example I would cite the April 4, 2010 assassination of Polish president by the polish government organized Coup D'Etat and executed by the soviet Special Forces under the supervision of no one else as Vladimir Putin. Tee was NO any ACCIDENT, the plane was blown in the air by at least 3 explosions of C4 installed during the plane overhaul at Samara at Aviacor owned by the close friend of Vladimir Putin,Oleg Deripaska ] a well known soviet criminal banned from the entry in to the United States!! The nonsense's promoted by Wikipedists from some countries especially on political matters and the biography of some politicians does not justify any need for existence of Wikipedia. In many cases the articles in Wikipedia are nothing else but blatant fraud. I wrote several articles in Wikipedia just to be vandalized by the members of political regimes controlling especially the polish edition of Wikipedia (members of soviet communist agentura, communist pro soviet journalist, members of special forces, polish military intelligence, some mental cases, and especially the politicians from the communist Civic Platform monitoring the political aspects of soviet propaganda in today's Poland. There was NO crash in Smolensk, it was a blatant assassination performed by the soviet OMON, on orders of soviet pupets in Polish government such as Donald Tusk, Tomasz Arabski, Radosław Sikorski, Bronisław Komorowski, Gen. Marek Dukaczewski, Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski, General Cesław Kiszczak, Tomasz Turowski, Lech Wałęsa, Aleksander Stolzman Kwaśniewski, Grzegrz Schetyna. The assassination was approved by Angela Merkel the German leading politician who than together with French Hollande awarded Donald Tusk for the well cared assassination with the seat as the President of European Consul. [[3]] There for with the deception, lies and propaganda spread by the group promoting the deception and lies I see no reason for the existence of Wikipedia! The lecture of retired Polish Navy Commander Dipl. Eng. Dr. Janusz Furkal Ph.D Chemistry, from Polish Military Academy WAT in Warsaw, the world expert on explosives, nuclear arms, and the weapons of mass destruction. [[4]] [[5]] [[6]] Based on US Supreme Court OPINION no licensing is required for use of any references for Wikipedia! United States Supreme Court SONY CORP. v. UNIVERSAL CITY STUDIOS, INC., (1984) No. 81-1687 Argued: January 18, 1983 Decided: January 17, 1984 [[7]] Petitioner Sony Corp. manufactures home video tape recorders (VTRs), and markets them through retail establishments, some of which are also petitioners. Respondents own the copyrights on some of the television programs that are broadcast on the public airwaves. Respondents brought an action against petitioners in Federal District Court, alleging that VTR consumers had been recording some of respondents’ copy-righted works that had been exhibited on commercially sponsored television and thereby infringed respondents’ copyrights, and further that petitioners were liable for such copyright infringement because of their marketing of the VTRs. The Supreme Court explained that any individual may reproduce a copyrighted work for a “fair use”; the copyright owner does not possess the exclusive right to such a use. The Court held that the recording accomplished by VTRs was only time-shifting in nature and even though 100% of the copyrighted work was copied, the use nonetheless constituted a fair use. Copyright Clause argument was so powerful was the fact that §514 fails to “promote the Progress of Science” as contemplated by the initial words of the Copyright Clause. The petitioners argued that because §514 affects only works already created it simply cannot meet the Clause’s objective. In the face of a correct and logically consistent argument like this what did the Supreme Court say? They decided that the creation of new works is not the sole way Congress may promote “Science.” In fact, the Supreme Court went on to do what they did throughout the opinion, which was say that Eldred already answered the question, which is of course nonsense. Of course, even if that were true the fact that the Supreme Court has previously made egregious mistakes shouldn’t be a legitimate rationale to perpetuate those mistakes and make wholly new egregious mistakes. If you are a creator or inventor you probably did like to read that the Supreme Court said that Congress is empowered to determine whatever intellectual property regimes serve the ends of the Clause. So I guess that means that Congress gets to both enact intellectual property laws and gets to interpret them and the Constitution, which I had previously thought was the prerogative of the Supreme Court of the United States beginning back with Marbury v. Madison. My non-Ivy League law education must be lacking because I was SURE that it was the Supreme Court that was supposed to interpret the Constitution and the limited powers granted to Congress under Article I, Section 8 were not plenary power to determine whatever ends justify the means… but I digress. Creators and inventors were also likely quite pleased to read that “Progress of Science” does not exclusively require there be incentives for creation. For example, the Supreme Court explained that Congress could determine that progress is promoted inducing the dissemination of existing works is an appropriate means to promote science. The reason this should be so well received by inventors is because everyone knows that there are a great many reasons innovations are not available on the market. For example, someone may have patented an item and was just unable to get the project to move forward for one reason or another. The next person, perhaps a generation later, who wants to patent and move forward decides not to when they learn they cannot obtain a patent. So under the Supreme Court’s rationale here in Golan v. Holder Congress could determine that progress would be promoted by disseminating the invention and the only way that can be accomplished is to grant exclusive rights to make the dissemination commercial attractive and feasible. Thus, the logic underpinning the Golan v. Holder decision (and I do say that with my tongue planted firmly in my cheek) must be that inventions that are in the public domain could be re-patented at the discretion of Congress. Even the once mighty and revered First Amendment was no match to the plenary power granted to Congress by the Constitution to do whatever they please with respect to intellectual property rights. According to the Supreme Court there is nothing in the historical record, subsequent congressional practice, or Supreme Court jurisprudence that suggests there should be any First Amendment issues associated with snatching works that were once in the public domain and granting them copyright protection. Unbelievable really. Exactly which part of “Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech” is confusing to those Ivy League educated know-it-alls on the Supreme Court? Do they actually understand copyright law at all? Do they realize that the petitioners could engage in all kinds of activity freely prior to the restoration of copyrights and then after the restoration they can engage in such activities only if they pay licensing fees to the copyright owner? [[8]] Supreme Court OKs Public Domain Works Being Copyrighted Golan v. Holder, 132 S.Ct. 873 (2012) – Petitioners, orchestra conductors, musicians, publishers and others that enjoyed the free access to preexisting foreign works in the public domain sued, Respondent, the U.S. Attorney’s Office claiming a violation of the First Amendment, as well as claiming that Congress exceeded its authority under the Copyright Clause. In 1994, Congress implemented §514 of the Uruguay Round Agreement Act (URAA) which extended copyright protection to works that were previously denied U.S. copyright protection. Prior to this the U.S. did not protect sound recordings before 1972 or when the author had not complied with certain U.S. statutory formalities. The Supreme Court, first, held that §514 does not exceed Congress’ authority under the Copyright Clause of the U.S. Constitution because the Copyright Clause does not exclude copyright protection to works that are in or were previously in the public domain. In fact, the Supreme Court pointed out that Congress has, multiple times, adjusted copyright law to allow for the protection of new categories of works and works that were previously in the public domain. Second, §514 does not violate the First Amendment because “the idea/expression dichotomy” and the “fair use defense,” were not impeded nor limited by the statute’s implementation. [[9]]

And old ones? And GFDL? And logos?

Some communities, for some weird reason, not even have the cc-by-sa 3.0, for example n:pt, you will also bring them to 2016? Here we still have "and you irrevocably agree to release your contribution under the CC BY-SA 3.0 License and the GFDL", we will remove the GFDL? And as we already updating the license, why we do not release our logos under a free license?????? We are a free Movement, with a proprietary "flag", and this is a shame. Rodrigo Tetsuo Argenton ^m 09:29, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

The logos - notably the Wikipedia 'globe' are already freely-licensed, since 2014. Wittylama (talk) 10:38, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Suggestion for improved clarity

I support the new terms of use because they improve international usability and because they are clearer. IMHO the suggested new text should be further improved: I suggest replacing "that are compatible with CC BY-SA" by "that are compatible with CC BY-SA 4.0" in c. Importing text. Adding "4.0" avoids a potential ambiguity. --Stefan Weil (talk) 09:45, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Stranger195

I strongly support this proposal. Some websites and wikis have already upgraded to BY-SA 4.0 and because we are still on an older version, we cannot import content from them. stranger195 (talk • contribs • guestbook) 10:31, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

I support the proposal. The concern mentioned above has been discussed at wikipedia:Wikipedia talk:FAQ/Copyright#CC-BY 4.0 compatibility?. Summarizing that discussion, possible content sources for Wikipedia, including wikipedia:PLOS, have migrated to Creative Commons 4.0 and are not compatible, as per wikipedia:Wikipedia:FAQ/Copyright#table, if they utilize CC BY-SA 4.0. The proposed upgrade would solve that problem. RobbieIanMorrison (talk) 11:18, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

A somewhat neutral opinion

According to what I understand, 4.0 requires you to define what you've changed from the original file. But, I don't think it is a problem at all. --ഏത്തപഴം (talk) 11:10, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Something else: But, it has more language translations than 3.0. --ഏത്തപഴം (talk) 11:13, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

French contributor

I didn't understood the argument for change ; i complain that i didn't find a french translation of ccv4. I support the idea that free contributions shouldn't be licensed for free-commercialization. I consider that Gfdl gives a better respect for what users attempt to be considered: the "author-ship" of anyone over the plain community along time. Less CC licenses, more respect for editors ; please. --Youni Verciti (talk) 12:00, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Even when the page is translated in French, French-speakers still complain, unbelievable. --Thibaut120094 (talk) 13:03, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Oppose

If it remains under the 3.0 Creative Commons license it can be reused by projects using either the 3.0 or 4.0 or future versions of the license. But putting it under the 4.0 version of the license would make it so projects using version 3.0 of the license could not use it. So this makes Wikipedia content available to less projects and reduces the license compatibility and reusability of the content elsewhere. I am for a license that maximizes the reusability of the content and has downstream compatibility with the most licenses, in particular something that would be at the very least GNU GPL-compatible would be good because there is some source code on Wikipedia and it ought to be usable in open-source software. I suggest instead we should be using the CC0 Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication on Wikipedia, but if that is not something other people agree with, at the very least we ought to stick with the current license instead of switching to one that has even less downstream compatibility with other licenses so I oppose this suggestion. Anything available under a 3.0 Creative Commons license, according to the license terms, is already also available under 4.0 and later versions of the same license, so this move accomplishes absolutely nothing productive whatsoever and I oppose it completely and suggest other people do the same. For the same types of reasons, when it comes to software currently licensed under GNU GPL 2.0 or later, when people suggest switching to GNU GPL 3.0 or later I always oppose that too, it limits downstream license compatibility if you "upgrade" to the latest license version which means less people can reuse your work. Just stick with the current license or better yet switch to a less restrictive one that is either public domain or is closer to public domain. Switching from CC BY-SA to CC-BY and getting rid of the ShareAlike restrictions would also be good, and the earlier the version of CC-BY the better, if you can't agree to CC0 license 1.0 or later, I would suggest having everything licensed under CC-BY version 1.0 or later, and by 1.0 or later I mean people will be able to reuse the content under version 1.0, 2.0, 2.1, 2.5, 3.0, 4.0, etc. of the license, whichever version they choose, I am not suggesting we use some later version of the license than 1.0, 1.0 would be best. And yes there were 2.1 and 2.5 releases of the Creative Commons license suite but I suggest "downgrading" to version 1.0 for maximum compatibility, doing the exact opposite of this move, and also getting rid of the ShareAlike restrictions. --Yetisyny (talk) 12:14, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

public domain

all content should be completely free, reusable with no strings attached. creative commons is a private initiative which should be barred, public domain is the way to go!

Will this step have any impact on other Mediawiki installations using Commons?

I created a Wiki, installed Mediawiki and chose cc-by-sa 3.0 to be compatible with Wikipedia. I also use Instant Commons. Do I have to change my Wiki licence now?

You will continue to be able to load images from Instant Commons. Wikimedia Commons currently has some images under CC 4.0 which can be displayed in articles that are released under CC 3.0. The amendment to the Terms of Use will affect text on Wikimedia sites. Stephen LaPorte (WMF) (talk) 22:25, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Sanmosa

I think using the CC BY-SA 4.0 as the new license of the Wikipedia is good.

As the Wikimedia had already using the CC BY-SA 4.0 for uploading media, Wikipedia should not still using the old version of CC BY-SA license.

Although [10] disagreed that any version of CC BY-SA license using in Wikipedia are legal in U.S.A., they are STILL LEGAL in other countries, excluding any evidence that can prove that the country/region disagreed that the CC BY-SA licenses using in Wikipedia are legal.

So I support the license change of Wikipedia.

— Sanmosa (常安者) ‧ Sanmosa的留言板 ‧ 請多一些贊賞 — 維基百科不是「罵人中心」 • 請勿「葵芳邨芳齡8年」 13:08, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

BSD for the win

BSD style license. Free should be free. Commercial, non-commercial, academic, any use. If it's posted here, it's public domain, but adding the BSD license will indemnify the Wiki foundation.

No narrative exists to support informed commenting

TLDR: The lack of a primer on the context of this proposal lowers the legitimacy of this community comment process. Part of the solution probably includes more WMF investment in doing basic documentation of topics when seeking community input.

This is a complicated issue. I am happy that discussion is started. I appreciate what the WMF has drafted on the proposal page because it is concise and easy to understand. I still wish to complain a little bit that I feel that the WMF does not provide enough community documentation to encourage informed decision making in community comments.

The point of discussions like this proposal to change copyright license is to encourage thoughtful conversation. When the WMF calls these discussions, they attract a lot of interest and community attention. Many people who would comment are eager to learn about the issue, and read how the situation came to be, and what has happened in the past. When the community discusses the past and proposals for future changes, that process builds community culture and increases the likelihood of thoughtful comments. When the WMF collects many thoughtful comments, those perspectives establish the legitimacy of community-wide changes like this one.

I regret that the WMF organizes these discussions while avoiding investment in educational materials which would help the community to understand how to comment on discussions like this. In this case, the educational materials that I would want is a rough post-mortem on what has happened in the past. Reasons why the WMF avoids creating documentation and educational materials include the risk of misspeaking, the fact that creating documentation increases liability, in general people doing projects dislike making documentation, and the difficulty of determining when it is and is not appropriate to create documentation. However, if the WMF does not create documentation, then the burden to gather the necessary information to become informed falls to the community. Some people have a fantasy that crowdsourcing solves everything, and that if a problem does not get a crowdsourced solution, then it never mattered anyway. In this case that is not so. This case is special because it attracts the attention of thousands of people, it already has received thousands of comments, the interest in understanding the issue is huge, and it is implausible to imagine the body of discussion can be organized without dedicated staff to outline where more information can be found. If the WMF is confident that it needs to summon hundreds of hours of brain power and community engagement to focus on an issue, then the WMF ought to be confident that the issue merits hiring a technical writer to draft a narrative which can give enough background information to create a possibility of informed commenting among those who read the background narrative. If the background narrative does not exist in an accessible way, then the validity of the discussion process and outcome is lowered.

Here is an example of the diversity of links which are likely to be of interest to anyone who tries to understand the issue:

• GNU temporarily makes GFDL compatible with CC, - this is on the gnu.org website
• Lessig thanks Stallman, a history-changing note from Larry Lessig on his own blog
• Licensing update Wikimedia community votes to accept Stallman's offer and switch to CC - the meta discussion
• first community-wide vote, which used SecurePoll for the purpose - election results which are stored at English Wikipedia
• wmf:Resolution:License_update is the December 2007 WMF board approval - a resolution at the Wikimedia Foundation's website

It is not feasible to expect many people to jump among all these necessary background documents to come to understand the story. They should be summarized in one place, with links, and the WMF should use staff labor to do that especially when demanding comments on a schedule.

I am not aware of a coherent narrative in existence which presents the story of our licensing, and gives a timeline, and provides links to all of these critical pieces of information. If any individual wants to know the story, they would need to jump around as I did and compile their own narrative. I am publishing a little bit here, but what bothers me is that internally WMF staff must have also compiled a narrative to make the case among WMF legal and others. Why does WMF not share? Surely WMF has the best compiled narrative, because whatever story the WMF has was good enough to convince internal staff. There is no historical narrative linked from the proposal page. Anyone who does not have memory from 2007-2010 will be lacking access to important aspects of this proposal.

Overall, I support the proposed changes but I challenge WMF to do better documentation. There is some documentation which is so complicated and boring that volunteers are unlikely to start it, but if the WMF would invest in staff to help compile boring outlines with links and simple narratives, then crowdsourced volunteers can build on that to make the educational tools which encourage informed commenting in proposals like this one. Blue Rasberry (talk) 13:26, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Does Stallman need to give permission?

Do we have to ask en:Stallman for special en:GFDL compatibility permission again? The last time, he said, "Second, this permission is no longer available after August 1, 2009. We don't want this to become a general permission to switch between licenses: the community will be much better off if each wiki makes its own decision about which license it would rather use, and sticks with that." Do we still need Free Software Foundation permission to make license changes? Can anyone get a comment from Stallman about this? I would feel better to have his comment. Blue Rasberry (talk) 13:26, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

No. No, we don't. We don't need input from him, though of course he's welcome. Reading your big comment above, I think you misunderstand what this change to section 7 entails. All the content that was GFDL-only has already been irrevocably dual-licensed. (Perhaps some guidance making it clearer that this is the case is needed?) I strongly suspect it's already at one or more of the links you provide, but you just need to read 'em. Did you look at the diff? Please consider removing or striking the GFDL-related parts of your comments, User:Bluerasberry. --Elvey (talk) 17:37, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Confirming his permission is not needed here--the only consent needed here is from the Wikimedia community. This proposal is not for a relicensing of old material; it is choosing a new default license for new material, which will be compatible with all of the existing material under previous versions of the license. (FWIW, I am an FSF board member and a copyright lawyer.) Kat Walsh (spill your mind?) 00:59, 7 October 2016 (UTC)

What is "Project"?

What is "Project", as used in TOU, Sec7a: "The only exception is if the Project edition..." and "facts you contribute to the projects may be..."? I think you mean "sister projects", like Wiktionary or Meta-Wiki, but you might mean WikiProjects. Or something else.

If the word is not defined previously in the TOU, you might add a definition or substitute "all Wiki projects" to the TOU text in section 7. Like "facts you contribute to all Wiki projects may be...". By the way, what is a "Project edition"? --RoyGoldsmith (talk) 13:26, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Project refers to a distinct top level URL. For example, German Wikipedia (de.wikipedia) is a different project than French Wikipedia (fr.wikipedia), which is different from Wiktionary. But everything on en.wikipedia is part of the same project, even if there are plenty of different subdivisions. -Jrogers (WMF) (talk) 18:40, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Database rights at Wikiquote

Insofar as Wikiquote may be considered a database (a compilation as described at Wikilegal/Database Rights), does the waiver of Sui Generis Database Rights covered by CC BY-SA 4.0 effectively waive all rights to the Licensed Material and render the License Conditions (BY, SA) inapplicable? ~ Ningauble (talk) 13:27, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

@Ningauble: No, the database waiver wouldn't render the license conditions inapplicable to Wikiquote, which isn't relying on database rights today either. Rather, copyright, just regular normal copyright, can exist in lists and compilations when there's some creativity in layout and organization. So somebody copying a whole page off Wikiquote would need to comply with the license conditions. -Jrogers (WMF) (talk) 19:01, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Article squaters

I don't like how various editors "squat" on an article and revert "good faith" additions by other editors because they don't like the fact of the information existing and therefore don't want it documented on Wikipedia - even if their policy claims for reverting aren't supported by actual Wikipedia content policies (e.g. notability). If the upgrade to CC 4.0 is going to reduce this "squaitting" or bullying behavior, I'm all for it. More information exposed enables other people with varying perspectives to clarify the information available.

Waive moral rights, as well as personality and privacy?!

The page says "Version 4.0 asks an author to waive their moral rights, as well as personality and privacy, to the extent that is legally allowed". Does this hold true only for the given edit, or do I waive my rights against the whole project and will therefore be unable to e. g. sue against insults on "my" wiki page (assumed that this page would exist)? If this is the case I'm against the change and happy to live in an country which does not allow such paragraphs. Jev12 (talk) 15:13, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Hi Jev12, the terms of CC4.0 only require waiver of these rights "to the limited extent necessary to allow [Wikimedia] to exercise the Licensed Rights, but not otherwise". In other words, these rights would only be waived for your edits and other content you upload to be used on WP. They wouldn’t affect rights exercised generally (including in relation to other wikis and the WMF). TKrishnakumar (WMF) (talk) 18:22, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

I'm concerned whether, with this baked into the license, it is even possible to upgrade the licence. EU-law is very strict concerning such rights, and since it was not specified in the original licence it might not be possible (even if the wording of CC-3.0 allows it). Do we really need a case before the EU-court for what is at best a hypothetical improvement (we can't even police the licence breaches that exist today). CFCF 💌 📧 20:39, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

It's still possible to upgrade. 4.0 doesn't actually stop the assertion of moral rights in those places such as some European countries where it's not possible to waive them. The moral rights waiver is there to provide as much freedom as possible for content that's designed to be changed, edited, and remixed without needing to consult the original author. In addition, the CC 4.0 license has what's called a severability provision in section 8 at the end of the legal language. What that says is that if one part ends up not working (like the moral rights waiver), the rest of the license still keeps on applying as much as possible. -Jrogers (WMF) (talk) 00:22, 7 October 2016 (UTC)

7.D. non-text copyrights

I believe this section is about images. This section should include a sentence explaining that the images have their own copyrights which are visible when you click on the image. After you click on the image, click on "More Details", and the copyright instructions, the institution or individual who either owns the original image and/or who uploaded the image, and a description are available in a box below the image.

Format Update Suggestion

As a person who had used Wikipedia many times, over and over, I think that if Wikipedia is making this change, they should make some other changes in their formatting. This website has become old and frail, and it is still used, but if Wikipedia wants to stay 'alive' it needs to change its layout. Now what I'm talking about does sound drastic, and I sadly can not help it (for I am no developer or professional programmer) but this website needs something a little more modern. It has been scientifically proven that people who think something is pleasing to the eye, will be more likely to stay on that page. It doesn't have to start out drastic, unless it wants too, it can just take "baby steps" towards its new beginning. People that don't want the new layout can vote on it. All that I'm saying is that Wikipedia needs to step up its game into the future.

                                                                                                 - Anonymous

ZAchaboi

I suggest that Wikipedia/Wikimedia should remain with 3.0. It's too early to go with 4.0. There is some vagueness in some of the terms, that needs to be addressed. — The preceding unsigned comment was added by ZAchaboi (talk)

987412563987744525650

No no no no. Horrible error to limit PUBLIC DOMAIN material with any kind of license. Either public domain exists, or it does not. If it exists, leave it be and let people use it freely, as it was meant to be used. There is no benefit of a CC license except to confuse people or worse, discourage them from using public domain works. Nobody understands CC licenses anyway, and the most common one demands you not profit from your work in any way. So, if your aim is to thwart creativity (new art, especially) put a license on it. Absolutely horrid idea. 186.94.136.63 20:05, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

To be clear, we already use a CC 3.0 license. This proposal is to move that to 4.0, not to implement it in the first place. Samwalton9 (talk) 22:03, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Elvey

• Here's why I !voted to tentatively oppose the ToS changes. I'm not OK with abandoning copyleft for data, though I am OK with a move to CC BY-SA 4.0. CC BY-SA 4.0 fixes a problem in earlier licenses with respect to sui generis database rights that the proposed ToS changes UNfix! I read the justification at Luis Villa's blog (linked to from FAQ Why do the proposed amendment to the terms of use mention sui generis database rights?, above), and notice that there are no examples presented to back his claims. I don't buy it. The fact is, it's common for software subject to several different licenses to be combined into one product. macOS. iOS. Windows. Linux. Each of these OSes combine software subject to many different licenses into one product. The same is true for the most widely used software packages on these platforms, like M$ Office. Yet Luis says, "Most software is either under a very standard and well-understood open source license, or is produced by a single entity (or often even a single person!) that retains copyright and can adjust that license based on their needs." This just isn't true.
  What could convince me to change my !vote? A real or realistic example where straight CC-BY-SA-4.0 is a problem, but this weird special version wouldn't be, that I would actually want to support.
• Another (relatively minor) problem is that with this new clause, The Attribution section (b) and Re-use section (g) are now misleading. They would need a

iv. Not at all, when it comes to your Sui Generis Database Rights.

not to be misleading.

Again, to be clear, the new clause that concerns me is this:

Where you own Sui Generis Database Rights covered by CC BY-SA 4.0, you waive these rights. As an example, this means facts you contribute to the projects may be reused freely without attribution.

• Also the proposed ToS changes are presented very poorly. First comes this unclear sentence, which doesn't even use the term diff! (a familiar term to all active editors):

A more detailed breakdown of these changes is available here.

It's followed by the entire ToS section, 95% of which is unchanged!

It would make much more sense to reverse this - include the entire new ToS section via a link, rather than cluttering the page with it, and include a diff showing the changes in-page.

--Elvey (talk) 23:42, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Hey, User:CFCF, The 3.0 license already allows distribution under the terms of 4.0 (per the "a later version of this License with the same License Elements as this License" language. So your stated reason for opposition doesn't make much sense.--Elvey (talk) 00:19, 7 October 2016 (UTC)

See point 4 below. CFCF 💌 📧 00:24, 7 October 2016 (UTC)

Hi @Elvey: I tried to give an example in one of my earlier replies, and I'll use a similar one here. We're worried about a few things with the database rights. First, there's the consistency. Database rights only exist in some places and not in others. A person in the U.S. could copy a huge amount of data from Wikipedia (example, the birthdates of every single person born in the 20th century) and not run into any problems at all under either 3.0 or 4.0. On the other hand, the same thing done by a person in some countries in Europe might run into trouble under database rights. We think it makes sense to be able to share data freely from Wikipedia if it's not covered by normal copyrights, so having the database waiver makes sharing and reusing data work the same way no matter where the person using the data is located. A second problem is that it's unclear when database rights would apply. Two people in a European country with database rights might copy the same data set with one claiming they need to provide attribution under the 4.0 license and another claiming they don't and it would be really hard to say which one was right because people will disagree on what a "substantial" portion of the database is. We hope with the waiver to avoid that confusion entirely and let people know that if data isn't covered by copyright, they're free to reuse it. Third, citations for Wikipedia can get really crazy really quickly under database rights. The example I gave above was to imagine that someone writes a school report where they pull the birthdates of every major figure in the American revolution. If that were substantial enough to trigger database rights, that report might require hundreds of citations for that single table. Similar issue if, say, something tried to collect the chemical formulas for a large group of compounds that all have Wikipedia articles. They'd need pages and pages just dedicated to citation information in their report. I think that's not a good result. That sort of information, which is not covered by normal copyright law because it is all facts (in a copyright law sense of the word "facts") should be freely available for anyone without having to worry about attribution requirements that can quickly become very difficult to meet. Lastly, the waiver is important for Wikidata, which takes bits of information (like the birthdates in my example) and copies them from other projects to Wikidata which is under the CC0 public domain license. We think that's just fine under either 3.0 or 4.0, but the waiver helps eliminate any possible doubt and makes sure that Wikidata can keep operating the way it is now everywhere in the world. As a final note, the attribution clauses in the Terms of Use don't conflict with the waiver, the attribution just doesn't apply to something that isn't covered by copyright law. -Jrogers (WMF) (talk) 00:42, 7 October 2016 (UTC)

Template:Can we outline the drawbacks please?

I think We have enough information about the advantages of this upgrade. Can we point out some of the disadvantages on the other hand? We need those information from different perspectives and viewpoints related to law related, user experience and many more. Can someone provide some examples if we switch to the new license regarding how it will affect most of the users?

Waiving moral rights means waiving right of attribution

I have a number of issues issues with the proposed change, and I hope they are not too farfetched to merit an answer:

1. Seeing as attribution is a moral right — does that not restrict the attribution of CC-BY-4.0 licensed content to rely solely on contract law and not copyright law for its implementation? And seeing as many jurisdictions deem breach of contract as punishable primarily as weighed against loss of earnings — does that not essentially void any action against a party which violates CC-BY-4.0 by improper attribution?
2. Licence agreements in the form EULA:s have previously been deemed unenforceable in EU court of justice cases, begging the question whether it is possible to include a clause waiving moral rights if they legally can not be waived? If a German citizen is able to waive his rights in the United States (or to the extent anyone in the US can consider such rights waived) — could that not potentially void the entire contract in Germany?
3. By waiving moral rights and relying entirely on a licence agreement do we not end up in a situation where there is potentially a loss of enforceable licence entirely if any part of it is deemed void?
4. Cannot the situation you are trying to avoid: creators asking for their content to be removed arise on the basis that they object to the transfer from 3.0 to 4.0? Is not waiving any previous moral rights in fact in violation of those rights?
5. Assuming any of the above issues hold sway — what purpose does waiving rights in certain jurisdictions serve? Does this not simply add a level of complexity when assessing whether a piece of content can be used that does nothing to help editors, readers, or others who choose to use the content? CFCF 💌 📧 00:16, 7 October 2016 (UTC)

@CFCF: Let me see what I can do for these questions.

1. The moral rights waiver doesn't affect what you can do if somebody breaches the license. If the license is breached (and the person doesn't take advantage of the new 30 day window to fix it), then the whole license is voided, so you could assert your moral rights along with any other claim you wanted.
2. Couple things on this one. First, it's pretty likely that the CC licenses are enforceable based on how they're being used on the Wikimedia projects. They're not just shown as a click through once, but rather appear every time someone makes an edit and at the bottom of every page. There's also a human readable version that helps people understand what they need to do. So it's a good chance the license under either 3.0 or 4.0 works just fine and the new moral rights section should not change that. Second, the license has what's called a severability clause at the end, which I just mentioned in one of my other replies as well. What a severability clause does is it says that if one part of the license doesn't work correctly, the rest of the license still works and applies as much as possible. So in this case, even if the moral rights clause caused problems, the rest of the license would still apply normally the same way as 3.0 does now.
3. Same answer as 2. We think it works, and even if some part doesn't, that can be ignored while the rest of the license still works due to the severability clause.
4. I don't think there's a moral rights violation of any kind by asking to upgrade the licenses, so it wouldn't be possible to make that kind of request. I'm also hopeful that having this consultation will help make sure that we have consensus about the change before we do it.
5. It might be impossible to totally avoid the complexity, unfortunately. Moral rights are highly variable by jurisdiction and users in different places may be allowed to do different things. The ideal of the waiver is actually to create international consistency by making it so that works can be shared and remixed freely with as few jurisdiction-specific limitations as possible. I'm not sure it quite manages to achieve that ideal (some places make it impossible to waive moral rights no matter what), but it at least gets closer than it would be without the waiver, which is why it was added. -Jrogers (WMF) (talk) 00:55, 7 October 2016 (UTC)