Difference between revisions of "Talk:License"

Revision as of 12:59, 18 July 2009

I like this default value. Sj 02:20, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Possible Licenses

Creative Commons: Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

CopyLeft

Rescued link

I didn't see this anywhere and had to find it through my own history. It should be posted somewhere because it contains pertinent background info: http://meta.anarchopedia.org/License_change

Added. --Milos Rancic 08:25, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Licensing: purity versus pragmatism

I find myself torn on this issue. If we want to remain pure anarchists, then of course we can't wield copyright law to our own advantage; we must release to the public domain. But why remain pure on this one count when we're not pure on so many others? We compromise with the enemies of anarchism all the time. For instance, I'm sure most of us are connected to the Internet via capitalist ISPs; but we are justified in this because we're using capitalism to undermine capitalism. And that's the entire point of copyleft licensing: using copyright to undermine copyright! In all candor, I feel less pure knowing that we're potentially contributing to capitalism by releasing to the public domain (where capitalists might capitalize on our work), than I would feel by releasing under a copyleft license like the GPL. Considering the realities of the situation, releasing to the public domain seems to be not only an empty expression of anarchist purity, but a self-destructive one; it is letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.

A topical essay

Anyone interested in the licensing discussion should read this excellent, thought-provoking essay by Anna Nimus (reading time ~1 hr; I had to break the link to get past the spam filter):

http://subsol.c3.hu/subsol_2/contributors0/nimustext.html

This is a complicated issue. Here is a summary of the problem, as I see it:

1) As anarchists, we want information to be free, so we feel compelled to release to the public domain;

2) But we don't want to empower our enemies, so we feel compelled to use their own copyright law against them by releasing under a copyleft license.

3) However, not all copyleft licenses are alike, so we feel compelled to use one with a non-commercial clause;

4) But the more restrictive we become, the more we compromise on our principles.

5) Moreover, by releasing under any license whatsoever, we affirm that which we oppose: the control of information.

So the complication is twofold: 1) can we justify using means which compromise our principles, for the sake of achieving ends which uphold them; 2) if yes, then does our desire to achieve those ends outweigh our desire to reject the very concept of the ownership of ideas. If not, then we're back where we started: we can only grind our teeth as our enemies capitalize on our efforts to spread information freely; we can only implore them not to exploit us for their own gain; we can only stand by and watch as our principles are violated, thereby facilitating their violation, and, in effect, compromising once again.

In short: We're damned if we license, and damned if we don't.