[Imc-uk-process] [Imc-uk-features] copyright

[Chris]

Hi

On Thu 17-Aug-2006 at 02:20:46PM +0100, GarconDuMonde
wrote:
> 
> the site currently says:
> 
> Copy right
> 
> All contributions are considered availiable for re-use
> without seeking permission from author as long as those
> that re-use them allow further free re-use of the
> derivative work. This is know as copyleft. In future for
> clarity we may add a facility with which you can specify
> the terms of publication from a range of off-the-shelf
> licenses. You can of course specify this in a post now,
> perhaps by stating that your work is contributed to the
> public domain or by using specify licenses from
> http://creativecommons.org/license/ and
> http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html ( a link to that
> url should do rather than copying whole license ).
> 
> from: http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/static/help.html
> 
> i am not sure that this is correct

Right -- when we this agreed? This text is different from
the (agreed?) text on the publish form which has:

  We consider, as a rule, that material contributed to
  this site free for non-profit re-use in the spirit of
  Copyleft [
  http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/copyleft.html#WhatIsCopyleft
  ]. If you want to change that for your material posted,
  please give your conditions in the summary.

> so maybe we should think about updating this a little
> bit, especially following on from the recent STW tshirts
> thing. what do others think?

It is an issue that has come up several time before and
there is a wiki page about it (docs is down, the google
cache version is recent, the internet archives copy is
old):

  http://docs.indymedia.org/view/Local/ImcUkCopyleft#Discussion

  http://google.com/search?q=cache:docs.indymedia.org/view/Local/ImcUkCopyleft#Discussion

  http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://docs.indymedia.org/view/Local/ImcUkCopyleft#Discussion

As far as I have been able to work out there has never
been a formal agreement on the copyright wording on the
site (I could be wrong, I haven't been around since the
start of the project) and it has changed several times:

  The publish page has not always had the above spirit of
  copyleft statment, in 2001 it said:

      We consider, as a rule, that material contributed to
      this site is free for non-profit re-use. 

  The current text was adopted in 2003.

  In 2001 the front page had this at the bottom:

      (c) Independent Media Center. All content is
      free for reprint and rebroadcast, on the net and
      elsewhere, for non-commercial use, unless
      otherwise noted by author. 

  But this text was lost with the switch from the active
  codebase to the mir cms in 2003. 

  http://google.com/search?q=cache:docs.indymedia.org/view/Local/ImcUkCopyleft#History

Personally I think that the only 3 options that make sense
are the GPL, Public Domain and a anti-copyright statement,
though I guess giving people the option to state whatever
copyright terms they like is essential (without this
commercial photographers would probably never post etc).

Chris

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