5 ms·

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 t

by 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.
drdaeman 12y ago
For (2) you need users consent to that. That generally means, such provision must be reasonably visible and explained to user when he registers or starts editing. Linked post had shown the only thing user seems to consent before she could start editing to is that she's over 13 years old. Edit: Oh, also. Everyone, please don't downvote parent post. While one may well disagree with what it says, that post is certainly relevant to the discussion, so pushing it down the comments page isn't a good idea. Even if what said there is plain wrong.
- putlake 12y ago
  You are right that it's not enough to have ToS; the users should actively accept them. But what was plain wrong about my post? It said typically this is how it's supposed to work, in which the wiki has a right to change its licensing. Not that TVtropes ToS is like that or that what they did was right. If the only provision of the ToS that you're accepting is that you are over 13, then the wiki has no rights to even distribute your content under CC-BY-SA. So the conversion to NC isn't even relevant. And in any case, you own copyright to anything you author, unless you expressly transfer them to someone else in exchange for some sort of compensation. Absent that, the blogger of OP is fully able to release his work under any license he chooses. And he did that on his blog. So what's wrong?
lifthrasiir 12y ago
No. The text below the edit page reads: > TV Tropes by TV Tropes Foundation, LLC is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available from thestaff@tvtropes.org. Donation of text is irrevocable and appreciated. While not explicit, this implies that the editor should make it sure that the contributed text can be legally merged to the existing CC-BY-NC-SA license (for the obvious reason). This clearly does not include a relicensing grant and you are not permitted to do so. Actually, I've had a similar cause in another Korean wiki similar to TV Tropes (Rigveda Wiki). In this case the wiki temporarily condemned that its mirroring website does not have a legal right to do the mirroring, and pointed out that the mirroring website has ads attached. A funny thing is that, the wiki itself was licensed as CC-BY-NC-SA and also had ads! While it is debatable if website ads are considered commercial activities or not, the same logic directly applies to the wiki, but the wiki admin replied that it (thinks that it) has a relicensing right when I've asked for that. :(
- kevinpet 12y ago
  "Donation of text is irrevocable" seems to be the only thing that implies a license from contributor to TV Tropes. It's pretty vague and I certainly wouldn't want to sue claiming a license with that to back it up. It's also unclear whether that text existed before the switch to CC-SA-NC. Obviously it was updated, but was just the license changed? This is significant because contributing under CC-SA to someone using it commercially is possible. Contributing under CC-SA-NC to someone using it commercially doesn't make any sense, so they would need to have another license.
  - lifthrasiir 12y ago
    Good points. I don't know if the edit page had a mention about irrevocable relicensing back then though (the Wikipedia description seems to suggest that it wasn't the case).
- TuringTest 12y ago
  That text was added in November 2013, way after the re-licensing took place. The first nine years of contributions to the wiki didn't include such provision.

by putlake 12y ago

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.

drdaeman 12y ago

For (2) you need users consent to that. That generally means, such provision must be reasonably visible and explained to user when he registers or starts editing. Linked post had shown the only thing user seems to consent before she could start editing to is that she's over 13 years old. Edit: Oh, also. Everyone, please don't downvote parent post. While one may well disagree with what it says, that post is certainly relevant to the discussion, so pushing it down the comments page isn't a good idea. Even if what said there is plain wrong.

putlake 12y ago
You are right that it's not enough to have ToS; the users should actively accept them. But what was plain wrong about my post? It said typically this is how it's supposed to work, in which the wiki has a right to change its licensing. Not that TVtropes ToS is like that or that what they did was right. If the only provision of the ToS that you're accepting is that you are over 13, then the wiki has no rights to even distribute your content under CC-BY-SA. So the conversion to NC isn't even relevant. And in any case, you own copyright to anything you author, unless you expressly transfer them to someone else in exchange for some sort of compensation. Absent that, the blogger of OP is fully able to release his work under any license he chooses. And he did that on his blog. So what's wrong?

lifthrasiir 12y ago

No. The text below the edit page reads: > TV Tropes by TV Tropes Foundation, LLC is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available from thestaff@tvtropes.org. Donation of text is irrevocable and appreciated. While not explicit, this implies that the editor should make it sure that the contributed text can be legally merged to the existing CC-BY-NC-SA license (for the obvious reason). This clearly does not include a relicensing grant and you are not permitted to do so. Actually, I've had a similar cause in another Korean wiki similar to TV Tropes (Rigveda Wiki). In this case the wiki temporarily condemned that its mirroring website does not have a legal right to do the mirroring, and pointed out that the mirroring website has ads attached. A funny thing is that, the wiki itself was licensed as CC-BY-NC-SA and also had ads! While it is debatable if website ads are considered commercial activities or not, the same logic directly applies to the wiki, but the wiki admin replied that it (thinks that it) has a relicensing right when I've asked for that. :(

kevinpet 12y ago
"Donation of text is irrevocable" seems to be the only thing that implies a license from contributor to TV Tropes. It's pretty vague and I certainly wouldn't want to sue claiming a license with that to back it up. It's also unclear whether that text existed before the switch to CC-SA-NC. Obviously it was updated, but was just the license changed? This is significant because contributing under CC-SA to someone using it commercially is possible. Contributing under CC-SA-NC to someone using it commercially doesn't make any sense, so they would need to have another license.
- lifthrasiir 12y ago
  Good points. I don't know if the edit page had a mention about irrevocable relicensing back then though (the Wikipedia description seems to suggest that it wasn't the case).
TuringTest 12y ago
That text was added in November 2013, way after the re-licensing took place. The first nine years of contributions to the wiki didn't include such provision.