Manual talk:Copyright

Implementations of more nuanced/localized copyright licensing
I have a few recommendations for adopting more nuanced/localized copyright licensing:

Namespace licensing
I have a wiki that has licensed itself as public domain, but would like to license a particular namespace as Creative Commons, because an allied organization that prefers Creative Commons will be using that namespace.

We were trying to figure out the best way to implement this; one option might be to set the sitewide copyright notice (similar to Mediawiki:Copyright) to say that everything on the site is public domain unless the page says otherwise; and then putting a template analogous to Template:PD Help Page on pages in the Creative Commons licensed namespace.

However, it is kinda cumbersome to continually tag all new pages in that namespace with a template; and such a notice would also be subject to unauthorized vandalism/removal. A more elegant solution would be to have the footer show a different notice depending on what namespace the user is reading. The default (e.g. Mediawiki:Copyright) would show unless the user were in a namespace with an overriding notice. I am considering submitting a bug for the implementation of this.

Page licensings
This is the same as the aforementioned namespace licensing, except it would be on a per-page basis. Perhaps pages created in a particular namespace could be automatically placed under the namespace's default license (or, in its absence, the sitewide license), which would appear in the footer; however, this could be overridden by the page's license. Pages with only public domain contributions could automatically appear as public domain licensed; see next suggestion.

Contribution licensing
Also, I think some wikis have experienced issues in which they have been trying to migrate their content from a more restrictive license (e.g. GFDL) to a less restrictive license (e.g. public domain). I think we should allow each edit to be made under a particular license, which will appear in the page history. The user preferences could specify a default licensure, which all of that user's edits would appear under; however, he could override it on an edit-by-edit basis. Some pages, namespaces and sites could bar certain licensing (e.g. a public domain page might prohibit contributions from being licensed under the GFDL).

It should be permitted to re-license one's prior contributions to a less-restrictive license. Also, each user should be allowed to irrevocably relicense all his contributions under a less-restrictive license in one fell swoop, in a way that will appear in the page history. Contributions released into the public domain should not be allowed to be relicensed as GFDL or Creative Commons, however, unless the initial release was made inadvertently.

For instance, I would prefer that all of my edits be licensed as public domain; accordingly, I could set that less-restrictive license in my preferences, and anyone reading a page I had written would know that it was okay to copy my contributions freely for any purpose. Basically, we would be doing the same thing for all edits that we do now with images – allowing the contributor to license his contributions in whatever way is compatible with the site's purposes. Nathan Larson 19:24, 26 November 2008 (UTC)