I agree with this. This also suggests the need to make it clear to the users that “choose your own license” does not mean “do whatever you want”. [As an aside, there’s actually a “license” (named WTFPL) which says exactly that – albeit in unflowery language. The author eventually admitted that it was meant to be a parody of “free” licenses, but it has nonetheless been upheld as a valid license by a few courts.]
Let’s be realistic, nobody is going to read through 20 help pages before they make their first post. Hence, the implications of licensing should be explained to them in an easier way. When things go wrong, we want to avoid the users being “pleasantly surprised” and saying “oh, wait, I didn’t know that is what you meant by that” and so on.
This is where professionals (aka lawyers) would be helpful because they deal with these kinds of scenarios all the time. However, given that this costs money, and the site is still in early days, we most certainly don’t need to look into this right away.
I have seen the WTFPL and actually used a few libraries that are WTFPL licensed.
The problem with lawyers (OK, one of the problems Though they actually make good customers. Which reminds of a NSFW joke. But I digress), is that they can take something simple and make it complex. Not so good at the other way around.
One possible solution is to set up a “license guide” page (I’ve seen things like this before) that lists all the license choices we are providing and gives a grid of the key differences - e.g., Commercial Use, Attribution Required, etc.
You actually raise an important point here. Let’s say (for example) I’m not comfortable with the “or later” license, then I would refrain from doing collaborative editing on your content, to avoid the whole “providing consent” business in future.
This also implies that before I start editing someone else’s content, I should first understand the license associated with that post and then decide if I want to contribute or not.
That approach isn’t scalable on a “huge” site (such as our equivalent of Stack Overflow - if we eventually get one) which could have a bazillion licenses in use. A meticulous user will avoid editing content altogether if they don’t understand the license. Typical users would simply do the “I agree” without full consideration of the license. Both scenarios come with problems, though I cannot think of how we could solve them.
Users can choose from a list. They can’t add arbitrary licenses.
Site admins can add options to that list, after some “does this break our network?” vetting. For example, on codidact.com we wouldn’t enable a license that wouldn’t allow us to host the content; that would be silly. If others set up their own instances, they can do whatever they want. (For example, if you were hosting an instance within a company and not on the public Internet, you might have different opinions about licenses.)
While licenses are important for some users, let’s also keep in perspective that the vast majority of users don’t give a crap, and don’t want to even deal with licenses. Whatever is done, please keep all the license stuff out of people’s faces to the extent possible. If I see prominent licenses, or even lots of links, all over the place, I’d probably figure the place is too lawyer-infested and run away.
The license details need to be there for those that care and want to drill down, but let’s please make that subtle.
Frankly, when you post something on a public web site, it’s “out there”. Get over it. Just assume people can and will copy it, and that at best you get an attribution on the off chance the copier follows the rules. If you don’t like that, don’t post. Real simple.
It might be worth having a different optional license for something like pictures on a photography site, but we should also think carefully what problem that actually tries to solve before making the site more complex. People asking “why does this picture look too xxx” and the like aren’t going to care about copying since they clearly don’t think the picture has much value. A professional might use a “valuable” picture in a reply to illustrate a concept, but they’d post a low-res version that isn’t much use except to make the point in the post. We might loose a tiny fraction of would-be posters, but is that really worth the added complexity and confusion of proliferating licenses?
I pretty much agree with this. Basically, most users (even technically advanced/knowledgeable users) don’t know/care much about licenses.
I think the one big exception, which could be handled much more with a per-Category default, is contests. If you post a best-picture contest - whether in Photography or Outdoors, or a writing contest - whether in Writing or WorldBuilding - there is a reasonable expectation that people are going to submit the good stuff and want a reasonable level of protection. That is the case despite the actual enforcement being nearly impossible. But at least it provides nominal protection against somebody plagiarizing and submitting to a real-world contest or publishing it as their own.
While licenses are important for some users, let’s also keep in perspective that the vast majority of users don’t give a crap, and don’t want to even deal with licenses. Whatever is done, please keep all the license stuff out of people’s faces to the extent possible. If I see prominent licenses, or even lots of links, all over the place, I’d probably figure the place is too lawyer-infested and run away.
Yeah, I agree with this too.
A professional might use a “valuable” picture in a reply to illustrate a concept, but they’d post a low-res version that isn’t much use except to make the point in the post.
This is a perfect example of a “gotcha” for CC-BY-SA for photographs. Creative Commons believes with some reasonable justification that changing resolution does not create a new work (there is no originality or creative choice). When you attach a CC license to one of your works, you are applying it to the work, not just to the particular instance you are sharing. So, in theory, by providing a low-resolution version you may be irrevocably offering the full-resolution version of that image under the same terms.
Interesting. That logically applies to “upload high resolution to web site, web site can provide it, mechanically/automatically resized, in low resolution without being accused of creating a derivative work”. But would that really apply to author creates high resolution work but only uploads low resolution to a web site? Would that really give anyone-out-there rights to the high resolution work that was never uploaded to that web site?
Though they actually make good customers. Which reminds of a NSFW joke. But I digress), is that they can take something simple and make it complex. Not so good at the other way around.