7 ms·

Edge of the Creative Commons (2013)

172 points by TuringTest 12y ago

le_meta 12y ago
I generally don't find TVT interesting, but I'd love to hear more about these tropes that make these kind of people uncomfortable.
- JetSpiegel 12y ago
  http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/content_violation_reports.php?r=1 http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/content_violation_reports.php?r=1 I'm at work, so I won't follow the inner links. The page itself is OK.
- smackfu 12y ago
  Well, they have anime, so why not hentai? And if they have hentai, why not extreme hentai like incest? And then you end up with a "Heartwarming" trope where someone sleeps with their mother. https://web.archive.org/web/20110118061340/http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BoysEmpire https://web.archive.org/web/20110118061340/http://tvtropes.o... I think porn examples are banned now.
- wwwwwwwwww 12y ago
  nsfw language warning - afaik the monster girl quest articles proc'd the big porn cleanup fiasco https://web.archive.org/web/20110908191300/http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/MonsterGirlQuest?from=Main.MonsterGirlQuest https://web.archive.org/web/20110908191300/http://tvtropes.o...
smackfu 12y ago
This is 6 months old, so it doesn't seem like it went anywhere. Probably because the greater internet has no motivation to oppose moving content to a non-commercial license.
- mikeash 12y ago
  I think it speaks to a different mindset from what we as programmers are used to. Licensing is a pretty big deal for us. Virtually every programmer has some sort of opinion on GPL vs BSD vs public domain vs whatever. Open source projects can live or die because of their license. Wikis are basically open source projects with natural language instead of code. But I get the impression that few wiki contributors care that much about licenses. If I had to guess, I'd say that it's because code is more modular and flexible. If you write a useful open source library, the license you put on it can have huge implications for what products end up using it. There's no wiki equivalent to e.g. large quantities of BSD code being used to build a smartphone that sells hundreds of millions of units.
  - bunderbunder 12y ago
    In programming, when you reuse others' work product it's considered good engineering practice. We call it "not reinventing the wheel." In most professions where the work product is in a natural language, reusing significant portions of others' work is called "plagiarism", and is considered a serious ethical violation. Reusing small portions for the sake of making a point, on the other hand, is covered by fair use rules. So yeah, licensing concerns might be a mostly irrelevant detail. The big questions about when you can and cannot reuse others' work product are already covered by a rigorously socially-enforced ethical standard, and the law. Both of those are more powerful than mere contracts in their own way.
    - dllthomas 12y ago
      Think about free textbooks, which may be commercially printed (of course you have to pay for a physical object) but are also available online under CC-BY-SA. If something is well explained in, say, Wikipedia, I can lift it and put it directly into the textbook, with a credit, making only the small tweaks necessary to make it flow in context. This can be hugely valuable, but tacking on NC means no one can ever sell those physical copies (which some people prefer). I kind of hope this situation doesn't arise with TV Tropes, but you never know...
    - 12y ago
TillE 12y ago
What about the attribution clause? If I copy an article from a CC-BY-* wiki, am I expected to cite every contributor? That doesn't seem reasonable. How does Wikipedia (CC-BY-SA) deal with this?
- capnrefsmmat 12y ago
  Because Wikipedia makes the complete edit history of every page available, they suggest simply giving a link to the article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citing_Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citing_Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reusing_Wikipedia_content https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reusing_Wikipedia_co...
  - blueskin_ 12y ago
    Wouldn't giving a pointer to the specific point in the edit history you sourced it from (so people can dig backwards if they care to) be enough? I'd have guessed so (IANAL, etc.).
- nandhp 12y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reusing_Wikipedia_content#Re-use_of_text_under_Creative_Commons_Attribute_Share-Alike https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reusing_Wikipedia_co... It looks like a link is sufficient, or a list of all authors, optionally omitting those with only trivial edits.
- rmc 12y ago
  That was one of the reasons OpenStreetMap moved from CC to the ODbL. There are ~1 million OSM contributors and it is unclear if they all had to be attributed. So they changed the licence. http://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/License/Why_CC_BY-SA_is_Unsuitable http://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/License/Why_CC_BY-SA_is_U...
- mikeash 12y ago
  I'm curious, why would it be unreasonable to cite every contributor to an article you copy? They are the ones who made it, and it only seems reasonable to me to give credit where it's due.
putlake 12y ago
I'm the founder of a wiki so I know some of these legal issues better than most (although, of course IANAL). Typically how this is supposed to work is: Wiki's terms of use say (1) Users own the copyright to their contributions (authors always do; TVTropes appropriating this is not right) (2)Users grant wiki a non-exclusive irrevocable license to do use the content in any way Wiki likes, including specifically a right to distribute it under CC. That's where author of OP felt cheated. He wanted to contribute because he felt the content will be licensed CC-BY-SA but Wiki changed it. But this is fine. Author owns the copyright to his personal contributions so he can always publish it under any license he wants. (like he did in his blog post, where he declared all his contributions to be available under CC-BY-SA). The only wrinkle is for someone to be able to find specifically the author's contributions. If the author built upon someone else's work, the result might still be fine to use under CC-BY-SA because at the time the original work on the wiki was under CC-BY-SA. But any edits after the author's contribution are off limits for CC-BY-SA. Wiki is legally within its rights to change the licensing of its content.
- hdevalence 12y ago
  What the article points out is that (2) is actually not the case, which is why the question arises.
- zokier 12y ago
  > Wiki is legally within its rights to change the licensing of its content. Would be if they had proper terms of use/service in place. But TVtropes has no terms as far as I can see, which makes the situation whole lot muddier. Basically we are working on an implicit grant of rights to TVtropes from content authors. The disagreement stems on what those rights include.
  - putlake 12y ago
    No argument there. My post said "Typically how this is supposed to work". It doesn't mean TVTropes works like that. Their current terms of use also have no bearing on their legal right to change the licensing from CC-BY-SA to CC-BY-NC-SA. That depends upon what terms of use they had in place before the conversion. Their current terms are: if you contribute, we own (the copyright to) all your contributions. That's not only unfair to users, it may even be illegal because in a contract you have to provide some compensation in exchange for the release of copyright.
perlpimp 12y ago
It seems that contributors care about availability of the content most, licencing issues less so. There are mirror tropes wikis so I don't see a problem. Clone that data and run your own version if you like. http://tropes.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page http://tropes.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page That move is a bit scummy, but then they are in the business and best business is one that delivers profit at least cost. my 2c
blueskin_ 12y ago
TV Tropes is total crap now. I also departed around the time of one of the big censorship debacles, and honestly, don't miss it. PS. thanks for indirectly sharing a link to All The Tropes (linked author's fork of TVTropes) too; might have a poke around there.
- malnourish 12y ago
  Can you expand? What happened with the censorship? As a casual, occasional browser I don't know where to start looking.
  - blueskin_ 12y ago
    They've had a couple of rounds of deleting anything that might be considered sexual, NSFW, or controversial reference or language, as well as renaming articles. This is to make the site more attractive for advertisers because the admins want moar moniez. It's also worse on tvtropes than most wikis because there is a very limited revision history on most pages (might be the weird software they use rather than admin-imposed), and anything that falls of the end of it after long enough is gone forever.
    - wwwwwwwwww 12y ago
      I'm still mad about them going and removing all the monster girl quest articles during that spiel. That was pretty much the end of tvtropes for me.
      - hga 12y ago
        Trying to learn about that game so I could understand a good fanfic was what alerted me to the problem, and not surprisingly the first fork of the site I looked at, back when it was announced on HN (can't find the link, unfortunately), the front page (Wikimedia) highlighted that title.
  - aliakbarkhan 12y ago
    I would appreciate some more detail, too. I've noticed that I find TVT much less engrossing than I did a few years ago, but I thought I'd just grown out of it. If there's an explanation for the decline I would be very interested to hear it. edit: How accurate is the Encyclopedia Dramatica article on TVT? I normally avoid ED, but I gave in this time because it seems to be pretty comprehensive. edit 2: I found this blog: http://tvtropeshistory.blogspot.com/ http://tvtropeshistory.blogspot.com/ Obviously it's hard to verify histories like these, but it seems pretty in-depth.
paulgb 12y ago
Internet Brands tried something similar with WikiTravel (also CC). When they bought the popular wiki and slapped their ads all over it, some contributors forked it as WikiVoyage. IB sued. It was eventually settled in favor of WikiVoyage. http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/02/16/wikimedia-internet-brands-wikivoyage-settlement/ http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/02/16/wikimedia-internet-...
fredup 12y ago
In trying to "fix" this problem have TVT potentially made themselves liable for all the content posted there? They now assert "ownership" of all the content. In order to be protected by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act courts have held that they must not be "information content providers"[1], but TVT asserts full rights over all the content, including relicensing and use without attribution. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communications_Decency_Act http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communicatio...

172 points by TuringTest 12y ago

I generally don't find TVT interesting, but I'd love to hear more about these tropes that make these kind of people uncomfortable.

JetSpiegel 12y ago
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/content_violation_reports.php?r=1 http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/content_violation_reports.php?r=1 I'm at work, so I won't follow the inner links. The page itself is OK.
smackfu 12y ago
Well, they have anime, so why not hentai? And if they have hentai, why not extreme hentai like incest? And then you end up with a "Heartwarming" trope where someone sleeps with their mother. https://web.archive.org/web/20110118061340/http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BoysEmpire https://web.archive.org/web/20110118061340/http://tvtropes.o... I think porn examples are banned now.
wwwwwwwwww 12y ago
nsfw language warning - afaik the monster girl quest articles proc'd the big porn cleanup fiasco https://web.archive.org/web/20110908191300/http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/MonsterGirlQuest?from=Main.MonsterGirlQuest https://web.archive.org/web/20110908191300/http://tvtropes.o...

smackfu 12y ago

This is 6 months old, so it doesn't seem like it went anywhere. Probably because the greater internet has no motivation to oppose moving content to a non-commercial license.

mikeash 12y ago
I think it speaks to a different mindset from what we as programmers are used to. Licensing is a pretty big deal for us. Virtually every programmer has some sort of opinion on GPL vs BSD vs public domain vs whatever. Open source projects can live or die because of their license. Wikis are basically open source projects with natural language instead of code. But I get the impression that few wiki contributors care that much about licenses. If I had to guess, I'd say that it's because code is more modular and flexible. If you write a useful open source library, the license you put on it can have huge implications for what products end up using it. There's no wiki equivalent to e.g. large quantities of BSD code being used to build a smartphone that sells hundreds of millions of units.
- bunderbunder 12y ago
  In programming, when you reuse others' work product it's considered good engineering practice. We call it "not reinventing the wheel." In most professions where the work product is in a natural language, reusing significant portions of others' work is called "plagiarism", and is considered a serious ethical violation. Reusing small portions for the sake of making a point, on the other hand, is covered by fair use rules. So yeah, licensing concerns might be a mostly irrelevant detail. The big questions about when you can and cannot reuse others' work product are already covered by a rigorously socially-enforced ethical standard, and the law. Both of those are more powerful than mere contracts in their own way.
  - dllthomas 12y ago
    Think about free textbooks, which may be commercially printed (of course you have to pay for a physical object) but are also available online under CC-BY-SA. If something is well explained in, say, Wikipedia, I can lift it and put it directly into the textbook, with a credit, making only the small tweaks necessary to make it flow in context. This can be hugely valuable, but tacking on NC means no one can ever sell those physical copies (which some people prefer). I kind of hope this situation doesn't arise with TV Tropes, but you never know...
  - 12y ago

TillE 12y ago

What about the attribution clause? If I copy an article from a CC-BY-* wiki, am I expected to cite every contributor? That doesn't seem reasonable. How does Wikipedia (CC-BY-SA) deal with this?

capnrefsmmat 12y ago
Because Wikipedia makes the complete edit history of every page available, they suggest simply giving a link to the article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citing_Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citing_Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reusing_Wikipedia_content https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reusing_Wikipedia_co...
- blueskin_ 12y ago
  Wouldn't giving a pointer to the specific point in the edit history you sourced it from (so people can dig backwards if they care to) be enough? I'd have guessed so (IANAL, etc.).
nandhp 12y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reusing_Wikipedia_content#Re-use_of_text_under_Creative_Commons_Attribute_Share-Alike https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reusing_Wikipedia_co... It looks like a link is sufficient, or a list of all authors, optionally omitting those with only trivial edits.
rmc 12y ago
That was one of the reasons OpenStreetMap moved from CC to the ODbL. There are ~1 million OSM contributors and it is unclear if they all had to be attributed. So they changed the licence. http://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/License/Why_CC_BY-SA_is_Unsuitable http://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/License/Why_CC_BY-SA_is_U...
mikeash 12y ago
I'm curious, why would it be unreasonable to cite every contributor to an article you copy? They are the ones who made it, and it only seems reasonable to me to give credit where it's due.

putlake 12y ago

I'm the founder of a wiki so I know some of these legal issues better than most (although, of course IANAL). Typically how this is supposed to work is: Wiki's terms of use say (1) Users own the copyright to their contributions (authors always do; TVTropes appropriating this is not right) (2)Users grant wiki a non-exclusive irrevocable license to do use the content in any way Wiki likes, including specifically a right to distribute it under CC. That's where author of OP felt cheated. He wanted to contribute because he felt the content will be licensed CC-BY-SA but Wiki changed it. But this is fine. Author owns the copyright to his personal contributions so he can always publish it under any license he wants. (like he did in his blog post, where he declared all his contributions to be available under CC-BY-SA). The only wrinkle is for someone to be able to find specifically the author's contributions. If the author built upon someone else's work, the result might still be fine to use under CC-BY-SA because at the time the original work on the wiki was under CC-BY-SA. But any edits after the author's contribution are off limits for CC-BY-SA. Wiki is legally within its rights to change the licensing of its content.

hdevalence 12y ago
What the article points out is that (2) is actually not the case, which is why the question arises.
zokier 12y ago
> Wiki is legally within its rights to change the licensing of its content. Would be if they had proper terms of use/service in place. But TVtropes has no terms as far as I can see, which makes the situation whole lot muddier. Basically we are working on an implicit grant of rights to TVtropes from content authors. The disagreement stems on what those rights include.
- putlake 12y ago
  No argument there. My post said "Typically how this is supposed to work". It doesn't mean TVTropes works like that. Their current terms of use also have no bearing on their legal right to change the licensing from CC-BY-SA to CC-BY-NC-SA. That depends upon what terms of use they had in place before the conversion. Their current terms are: if you contribute, we own (the copyright to) all your contributions. That's not only unfair to users, it may even be illegal because in a contract you have to provide some compensation in exchange for the release of copyright.

perlpimp 12y ago

It seems that contributors care about availability of the content most, licencing issues less so. There are mirror tropes wikis so I don't see a problem. Clone that data and run your own version if you like. http://tropes.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page http://tropes.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page That move is a bit scummy, but then they are in the business and best business is one that delivers profit at least cost. my 2c

blueskin_ 12y ago

TV Tropes is total crap now. I also departed around the time of one of the big censorship debacles, and honestly, don't miss it. PS. thanks for indirectly sharing a link to All The Tropes (linked author's fork of TVTropes) too; might have a poke around there.

malnourish 12y ago
Can you expand? What happened with the censorship? As a casual, occasional browser I don't know where to start looking.
- blueskin_ 12y ago
  They've had a couple of rounds of deleting anything that might be considered sexual, NSFW, or controversial reference or language, as well as renaming articles. This is to make the site more attractive for advertisers because the admins want moar moniez. It's also worse on tvtropes than most wikis because there is a very limited revision history on most pages (might be the weird software they use rather than admin-imposed), and anything that falls of the end of it after long enough is gone forever.
  - wwwwwwwwww 12y ago
    I'm still mad about them going and removing all the monster girl quest articles during that spiel. That was pretty much the end of tvtropes for me.
    - hga 12y ago
      Trying to learn about that game so I could understand a good fanfic was what alerted me to the problem, and not surprisingly the first fork of the site I looked at, back when it was announced on HN (can't find the link, unfortunately), the front page (Wikimedia) highlighted that title.
- aliakbarkhan 12y ago
  I would appreciate some more detail, too. I've noticed that I find TVT much less engrossing than I did a few years ago, but I thought I'd just grown out of it. If there's an explanation for the decline I would be very interested to hear it. edit: How accurate is the Encyclopedia Dramatica article on TVT? I normally avoid ED, but I gave in this time because it seems to be pretty comprehensive. edit 2: I found this blog: http://tvtropeshistory.blogspot.com/ http://tvtropeshistory.blogspot.com/ Obviously it's hard to verify histories like these, but it seems pretty in-depth.

paulgb 12y ago

Internet Brands tried something similar with WikiTravel (also CC). When they bought the popular wiki and slapped their ads all over it, some contributors forked it as WikiVoyage. IB sued. It was eventually settled in favor of WikiVoyage. http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/02/16/wikimedia-internet-brands-wikivoyage-settlement/ http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/02/16/wikimedia-internet-...

fredup 12y ago

In trying to "fix" this problem have TVT potentially made themselves liable for all the content posted there? They now assert "ownership" of all the content. In order to be protected by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act courts have held that they must not be "information content providers"[1], but TVT asserts full rights over all the content, including relicensing and use without attribution. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communications_Decency_Act http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communicatio...