License

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This is draft! Discussion about this document is opened from April 21st, 2009 to May 31st, 2009. Please, use talk page for discussion.
For the background, see License change.

Anarchopedia licensing is per page. If you see a licensing template at the bottom of the page, you should follow those licensing rules. If you don't see any template, you may use content without any restriction (in some jurisdicitons it means that you have to mention the author(s) of the page).

Rationale

Anarchopedia is edited mostly by anarchists and the most of anarchists don't care about copyright. However, Anarchopedia is an Internet site hosted by the collective Tachanka in the United States of America. While state force may damage Anarchopedia (ultimately, to shut down Anarchopedia), it has to follow the minimal set of rules described inside of the USA copyright law. Following those rules is related just to the adoption of the external materials and materials which non-anarchists (and anarchists who care about licensing) contributed to Anarchopedia.

Anarchopedian community will not try to impose any of the copyright restrictions toward third parties. Any licensing restriction related to Anarchopedia content is strictly connected to adopted material from external sources, as well as to materials contributed by particular contributors who care about licensing. Thus, just those persons and entities in such cases may try to impose copyright restrictions.

Using the content

Default values

If there is no any licensing template at the article page (usually, at the bottom of the page), you are able to use Anarchopedia content without any restriction. In Anglo-Saxon jurisdictions it means that you are able to use it as public domain content, while in the Continental jurisdictions you should treat that the content is published under attribution-only license (the example of such license is Creative Commons Attribution License).

Even you don't need to say that you adopted the content from Anarchopedia, the part of scientific culture is to do it, so the source of information may be traced. However, in such cases, it is fully up to you would you or not do that.

Reading the content and personal usage

You are able to read and use for personal purposes any material without any restriction. No license is acceptable for Anarchopedia which forbids those rights.

On site modification of the content

You may modify content on Anarchopedia. No license is acceptable for Anarchopedia which forbids that right.

Terms of use related to anarchists

Anarchopedia content may be licensed "for Anarchopedia only". If you see such template at the (bottom of the) article page, you shouldn't distribute particular content.

Anarchopedia content may be licensed under the "terms of anarchist solidarity". If you are not an anarchist or anarchist organization, you shouldn't distribute particular content.

Anarchopedia content may be licensed under the terms of any other acceptable solidarity (socialist, anti-authoritarian etc.). If your political positions are not as described or you don't belong to such organization, you shouldn't distribute particular content.

Commercial and non-commercial usage

The vast majority of Anarchopedia content may be used commercially, too. If you don't see that it is explicitly written that content may not be used for commercial purposes (if the template at the bottom of the page doesn't contain word "non-commercial" or abberviation "NC"), you are able to use the content commercially, too.

Contributing the content to Anarchopedia

Note that we should try to make our content more useful by default. Even we don't care about licensing of our content, entities and persons which care about statist and capitalist rules -- do care. If we don't allow them to use our content, they won't do that. And free society is not possible without free access to knowledge.

Because of that, here is the list of licenses from the most acceptable to the least acceptable:

  1. Public domain / attribution-only (depending of jursidiction). This is Anarchopedia default. If you don't put any license template at article in which you contributed, article will be published under those conditions. Content licensed in such way is compatible with any other license.
  2. Attribution-only forced. We may use and create content explicitly licensed under attribution-only terms of use or under some license which defines it. Such licenses are, for example, CC-BY and GNU Lesser General Public License and BSD revised license. Content licensed in such way is compatible with any other license (except public domain).
  3. Copyleft license. Examples of copyleft licenses are GNU Free Documentation License, Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike License, GNU General Public License and so on. In brief, such licensing allows any kind of usage, distribution and modification of the content while the content stays under the same license. Content licensed in such way is not compatible with other licenses.
    • Important note: If you choose to license your content (or if you adopted licensed content) which is licensed under the terms of Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike License and GNU Free Documentation License (or under the first two licensing types), Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects would be able to reuse our content. This is not true for the types of acceptable licenses below.
  4. Solidarity terms. "Solidarity terms" mean that the content may be used just by a particular group related to anarchists and Anarchopedia. We may adopt materials which may be used just by anarchists, socialists, anti-authoritarian and so on. Content licensed in such way is not compatible with other licenses.
  5. Non-commercial attribution-only licenses. We may use non-commercial content as Anarchopedia is not a commercial project. The example for such licenses is Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License. Content licensed in such way is not compatible with other licenses, except with non-commercial share-alike licenses.
  6. Non-commercial share-alike licenses. We may use this type of licenses, too. The example of such licenses is Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license. Content licensed in such way is not compatible with other licenses.
  7. Anarchopedia only. This is the bottom of the sum of acceptible licenses. Note that such content shouldn't be used anywhere else and, because of that, it doesn't allow spreading of free access to knowledge.

If there is a similar content licensed by two different types of licenses, we should prefer more acceptable options.

Not complete list of unacceptable license types is:

  1. Non-derivate licenses. Such licenses are not acceptable for Anarchopedia because writing articles on Anarchopedia assumes constant changing. The examples of such licenses are Creative Commons Non-Derivative licenses.
  2. Time-limited license. If someone is giving content to Anarchopedia, it shouldn't be limited by time of usage.
  3. Unacceptable "solidarity" terms. There are no "solidarity" terms of use which assume any kind of ethnic, cultural etc. segregation or discrimination.
  4. Any kind of limited usage not described as acceptable.

If you have any doubt related to licenses, or you want to be informed better about them, see the the description of the licenses at GNU.