[okfn-discuss] Licensing and attribution

Wed Aug 20 15:51:48 UTC 2008

On 18/08/08 09:19, Iain Emsley wrote:
> Morning,
> 
> I'm doing some research for a couple of planned presentations at work  
> and out of curiosity as well into the importance of licensing and  
> attribution to the end user - be it machine or human readable - to  
> enable transfer, use and re-use. The work presentations are  
> science-orientated but the curiosity stuff is mainly arts and  
> humanities.

Generally attribution (one of the 'moral' rights) is very important, 
especially in academia or the arts. While it is included in copyright it 
is clearly distinct from the exclusive control over reproduction and 
reuse which is is perhaps the major reason for copyright. I would note 
that many open licenses have precisely the effect of reducing copyright 
to a requirement to attribute by removing the exclusive control of 
reproduction and reuse.

> Part of this was kicked of by Danny O'Brien's blog item [1] linked to  
> by BoingBoing. Are there any sites or blogs or online articles that I  

I hadn't seen this before but Danny seems to be arguing along the same 
lines. While I understand the attraction in an online move of moving to 
a default in which control of reproduction is removed but attribution 
retained a) I don't think this is likely to happen any time soon b) 
those who want this for their own works can already achieve it using an 
open licence.

> really ought to ensure tht I've read? I know of Rufus's IPPR paper and  
> the Creative Commons details.

What kind of thing exactly are you looking for? Most IP textbooks will 
have something on 'moral rights' including on attribution.

~rufus