[okfn-discuss] If my reports are "free, libre, open", can someone else claim they wrote them?

Sun Jul 14 04:53:30 UTC 2013

The previous post about copyright licences is slightly not accurate. They
tend not to only relate to commercial rights and do not typically affect
moral rights, such as the right to be named as the author.

If you put an authored work into the public domain, then you are also
giving up your moral rights. (What your actual moral rights are is specific
to your own jurisdiction, but are typically weaker in common law
jurisdictions than civic law jurisdictions). The point raised originally,
that is someone claiming to be the author of a work fraudulently, is
somewhat different though. Depending on where you are from, the tort of
passing off and local fraud statue law would come into play. More
realistically though, the fight would become political rather than legal.

Tim McNamara
@timClicks <http://twitter.com/timClicks>

On 14 July 2013 14:10, Aaron Wolf <wolftune at gmail.com> wrote:

> Aside from the issues of different licenses (yes, some require attribution
> and others do not), it is *fraud* to claim false authorship. This ought to
> be completely unrelated to copyright, but it has been legally conflated in
> the past. People used copyright law and copyright arguments to address
> plagiarism. However, copying and false claims are 100% unrelated. I can
> claim false authorship without doing any copying! And copying on its own
> has nothing to do with authorship claims.
>
> Think of it this way: Mozart's music is public domain. You are still
> absolutely fraudulent and plagiarizing if you simply claim that you wrote a
> piece by Mozart.
>
> However, because Mozart's music is public domain, you aren't legally
> liable for writing his name next to a copy of it. Still, you ought to.
>
> In absolutely no case ever is anyone given permission by a FLO license to
> lie about anything. The questions about different licenses are purely about
> the extent of public credit that must be included or not and other factors
> such as requiring modifications to be clearly identified and have any
> endorsements removed so as to not imply that the original author said
> things that were in fact newly changed.
>
> At any rate, all of the CC licenses except for CC0 (which is a waiver of
> copyright, not a license at all) will do everything you want. They include
> full support for marking modifications, giving original credit and more
> details. The only other issue is you should never use the ND or NC elements
> of CC because those are non-FLO and problematic. Thus, you simply choose
> CC-BY or CC-BY-SA. The first requires credit and otherwise is permissive.
> The latter also requires that new derivatives retain the same license. I
> personally use CC-BY-SA.
>
> Cheers,
> Aaron
>
> --
> Aaron Wolf
> wolftune.com
>
>
> On Sat, Jul 13, 2013 at 6:33 PM, Gene Shackman <eval_gene at yahoo.com>wrote:
>
>> Thanks for the info. I'll look more at CC.
>>
>> Gene
>>
>>   ------------------------------
>>  *From:* Chris Sakkas <sanglorian at gmail.com>
>> *To:* Gene Shackman <eval_gene at yahoo.com>; Open Knowledge Foundation
>> discussion list <okfn-discuss at lists.okfn.org>
>> *Sent:* Saturday, July 13, 2013 9:04 PM
>> *Subject:* Re: [okfn-discuss] If my reports are "free, libre, open", can
>> someone else claim they wrote them?
>>
>> Hi Gene,
>>
>> Good question. It's one that comes up quite often.
>>
>> The short answer is that some FLO licences require attribution. For
>> example, CC Attribution requires credit to be given to the original author
>> and for the creator/distributor of the derivative work to take 'reasonable
>> steps' to identify that changes were made to the work. The original author
>> cannot dictate the exact language to be used, however.
>>
>> However, the question was about a work in the public domain. The Creative
>> Commons Zero licence specifically renounces the author's moral rights
>> (which, despite their name, are legally enforceable), which would - I
>> believe - allow a plagiarist to claim that they are the creator of the work
>> without legal repercussions. Other public domain declarations might not.
>>
>> However, plagiarism is forbidden by every reputable university and
>> journal. Copyright law will not punish a plagiarist, but he or she will
>> potentially suffer severe academic and social consequences - just as I
>> would if I submitted the public domain *On the Origin of Species *as my
>> PhD thesis*, *even though it would not be a violation of copyright law
>> for me to do so.
>>
>> Hope this helps,
>> Chris
>>
>>
>> *Chris Sakkas
>> **Admin of the FOSsil Bank wiki <http://fossilbank.wikidot.com/> and the Living
>> Libre blog <http://www.livinglibre.com/> and Twitter feed<https://twitter.com/#%21/living_libre>
>> .*
>>
>>
>> On 13 July 2013 20:20, Gene Shackman <eval_gene at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>> This is probably in some document, but can someone explain briefly? We
>> wrote a number of reports about global social trends. If these reports were
>> to be made free, libre, open (FLO), does that mean that another person, not
>> connected with us, can pretty much publish them elsewhere and claim
>> ownership or authorship of the reports?
>>
>> My colleagues and I wrote them, and I want to retain the claim of
>> authorship. I don't want anyone else to claim them, since we put in the
>> work to write them.
>>
>> For example, this webpage about copyleft explains the issue "The simplest
>> way to make a program free software is to put it in the public domain,
>> uncopyrighted. This allows people to share the program and their
>> improvements, if they are so minded. But it also allows uncooperative
>> people to convert the program into proprietary software. They can make
>> changes, many or few, and distribute the result as a proprietary product.
>> People who receive the program in that modified form do not have the
>> freedom that the original author gave them; the middleman has stripped it
>> away."
>> http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/
>>
>> I'm happy if people share our reports. If they make a few changes, I'm
>> okay with "This is a slightly modified version of "report name" by
>> Shackman, Liu and Wang. If they make a lot of changes, I'd be okay with
>> "This report is based on "report name" by Shackman, Liu and Wang, but is
>> significantly revised".
>>
>> So what are my options?
>>
>> Gene
>>
>>
>>
>> Gene Shackman, Ph.D.
>> The Global Social Change Research Project
>> http://gsociology.icaap.org
>> Free Resources for Methods in Evaluation and Social Research
>> http://gsociology.icaap.org/methods
>> ----------
>> Applied Sociologist
>> ----------
>>
>>
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