Content License and Ownership

[ribbotson]

I wanted to share some content on the laser cutter thread, and also share other content we have on Risk Assessment, safeguarding, etc. However I am put off by your license terms.

“All content within this manual and associated documentation is licenced under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license.”

“Any contributions made to this manual and associated documentation indicate your acceptance of the licence terms but also acts to assign your copyright to the UK Hackspace Foundation. We do this not because we want to remove your name or disallow you any of your rights, but to protect any content generated for and on behalf of the organisation and for the future.”

It is likely that hackspaces will use the content for commercial purposes, so would it not be better to drop the “Non Commercial” condition?

Also, I think you are asking for us to assign to the foundation title to the rights for the content, not simply to give you license. I would not be willing to do that, and don’t think such an assignment clause would work in U.K. Law. Most of the content will already have been released under existing licenses anyway

I don’t understand why the foundation needs to own the content to protect it, or even why the content needs protection, surely our objective should be to share widely under the most permissive license possible.

Thanks,
Richard

[stanto]

It is likely that hackspaces will use the content for commercial purposes, so would it not be better to drop the “Non Commercial” condition?

Copyright is complicated.
It may be likely that hackspaces will use the content for commercial purposes, and if this arose, then it would easily be discussed and agreed.

Having this protection in place should prevent companies, or magazine owners, or book writers, from re-purposing and printing the content with the intention of publicising and profiting from it without at least a discussion and accreditation. There are many people who would be duly agitated, angry and annoyed that work they had released to be open and free, was being charged for without at least, say, a donation to hackspace((s) +/- foundation)).

Also, I think you are asking for us to assign to the foundation title to the rights for the content, not simply to give you license.

Yes from my understanding also.

and don’t think such an assignment clause would work in U.K. Law.

Handing over copyright to something is, I believe, a thing that can be agreed to. Just as licensing such a thing is also. There are a number of websites that state similar things where by publishing your content onto them gives certain copyrights and/or licenses of ownership.

I don’t understand why the foundation needs to own the content to protect it, or even why the content needs protection,

This is likely semantics of wording, poorly or otherwise. The occam’s razor is that it’s simply easier for the Hackspace Foundation to defend the content on the site/etc. if it’s owned by the Foundation, as opposed to with many individuals. Legally it would involve fighting for it on their behalf or determining who has right of use, licensing, copyright, and it could get drawn out, complicated or messy. It may be simpler to say ‘Foundation owns it, company copied it, the arguments between the Foundation and the company which copied it’.

If that makes sense?

Perhaps are you actually saying that you don’t want to contribute with the rights as it stands, because you want to use what you contribute for commercial reasons?

[ribbotson]

It may be likely that hackspaces will use the content for commercial purposes, and if this arose, then it would easily be discussed and agreed.

Isn’t this the most likely use case and intent? If the objective is for hackspaces to reuse published material in their own websites, and the hackspaces being commercial entities.

Handing over copyright to something is, I believe, a thing that can be agreed to. Just as licensing such a thing is also. There are a number of websites that state similar things where by publishing your content onto them gives certain copyrights and/or licenses of ownership.

Licensing is quite easy I think, assignment of all rights is not. Usually needing a specific document and signature I understand.

Perhaps are you actually saying that you don’t want to contribute with the rights as it stands, because you want to use what you contribute for commercial reasons?

This is absolutely not what I am saying, most of the material already published and that I would contribute would be under a license which allows commercial use. What I don’t want is to assign my rights to a commercial entity (UK Hackspace Foundation) which has only defined its license for Non Commercial purposes while the clear intent is to use it for commercial purposes. This means UK Hackspace Foundation can can exploit the material for commercial purposes without regard to my intent.

So a contributing hackspace could end up paying to use material which they created.

If UK Hackspace Foundation publish under the most permissive license, then it doesn’t have to fight and defend. Is the Foundation going to be spending valuable member hackspace funds on lawyers?

[stanto]

while the clear intent is to use it for commercial purposes. This means UK Hackspace Foundation can can exploit the material for commercial purposes without regard to my intent.

Could you clarify where you’re seeing it stated that this is the case please?

[ribbotson]

It’s what you just said, given my intent was to allow free commercial use.

Having this protection in place should prevent companies, or magazine owners, or book writers, from re-purposing and printing the content with the intention of publicising and profiting from it without at least a discussion and accreditation. There are many people who would be duly agitated, angry and annoyed that work they had released to be open and free, was being charged for without at least, say, a donation to hackspace((s) +/- foundation)).

In fact it could be much much worse, because hackspaces are commercial entities, so you could withhold a commercial license from a hackspace too.

[stanto]

It’s what you just said, given my intent was to allow free commercial use.

Sorry, I’m having difficulty understanding what you mean.

For the purpose of clarity, here’s the definition of ‘commercial’ which I am following:

The Hackspace Foundation by this definition (and some Hackspaces are also) not for profit. The/this dictionary definition of Commercial is to be ‘for profit’. Hence my confusion. Being a not for profit is also a requirement for membership of the Hackspace foundation currently (https://www.hackspace.org.uk/foundation/define.md).

[idnorton]

Hi Richard,

You’ve raised some valid points, thanks for taking the time to write it up for discussion.

It is likely that hackspaces will use the content for commercial purposes, so would it not be better to drop the “Non Commercial” condition?

That’s a matter of interpretation. There’s no UK definition of non commercial so my interpretation differs to yours. It may be a case of the intent behind this being unclear.

The content should be freely available for all hackspaces to use regardless of locality. If our documentation of X is good enough then it should be useful globally not just in the UK. Obviously that’s limited when it comes to the UK specific stuff but you get the idea.

It’s worth just posting the UKHSF mission statement:

The Hackspace Foundation exists to support and further the goals of the Hackspace movement, mainly within the United Kingdom, Ireland and Crown Dependencies. We are a not-for-profit cooperative organisation that links the Hackspaces together, intending to allow geographically distributed Hackspace groups to share knowledge, resources, and collectively plan for the future.

We want to provide resources to support the community. What we were trying to avoid is someone taking part or all of our work and publishing it for financial gain. It would be nice to think that we could to that ourselves in the future, but it will always remain free to use for hackspaces.

Also, I think you are asking for us to assign to the foundation title to the rights for the content, not simply to give you license. I would not be willing to do that, and don’t think such an assignment clause would work in U.K. Law.

There’s some discussion regarding the merits this may have or the practicality of this happening so we’ve agreed to drop this. Thanks for questioning this, we do listen to what people say Alongside the NC aspects, we discussed having the option to commercially licence it should this ever come up. Assigning the copyright would make this much simpler however this would again in no way restrict use of the material for hackspaces.

Most of the content will already have been released under existing licenses anyway
I don’t understand why the foundation needs to own the content to protect it, or even why the content needs protection, surely our objective should be to share widely under the most permissive license possible.

Content is being written specifically for the Hackspace Owners Manual. Whilst not all of the available resources, it’s certainly hoped that this will be a hefty percentage.

As @stantos said, people have or will put a great deal of time and effort into generating content and don’t want a commercial organisation making money based on that effort.

We’re going to drop the requirement to transfer ownership of copyright and I’ll put that change out before the end of the day. One of the primary considerations here is that it’s being seen as a barrier to contribution and as such needs to go away.

It’s clear from this discussion that the licensing issue isn’t resolved so that conversation needs to happen again with a clear view of both sides of the discussion. I’ve tried to lay out the reasons behind the original choice of licence above, if you have specific reasons that you think the licence should be different and indeed what licence we should use then please add them here to the discussion.

My own views are that the intent behind the choice of NC is very much about ensuring the work isn’t used by someone else to make a few quid at the expense of the community. I’d love to say that in five years we’ll have enough content to have people asking about commercially licensing it for inclusion elsewhere as that would put money in the UKHSF coffers enabling us to do more to support UK spaces via grants, loans and a host of other things we’d like to be doing. How realistic is that? Who knows! But whatever we do it will be with the aim of assisting new and existing spaces the best we can.

As with all things, we’re doing the best that we can with our free time to provide this and other things. If that’s at odds with the communities needs and desires, then we should absolutely be having conversations on how and why we should change. It could be we’re all on the same page and that we’ve conveyed our intent badly.

It’s very easy to think we’ve built consensus when in fact we have not. Ensuring everybody is on board and informed is really hard - it took me nearly two months to get the meeting minutes from Oldham agreed to publish and that was a small number of people.

So. Licencing. What should we use and why? Should we be dropping the non-commercial? Do you see the non-commercial in the same way that the intent uses it or differently? How could we change it to try and achieve our intended outcome?

Answers on a postcard or in a long thread right here……

← insert epic thread of licencing discussion here→

[idnorton]

Quick update to say that the contribution doc has been updated to remove the assignment of copyright.

Ian.

[russ]

I think it’s important to note that there are two different categories of content here:

1. The documentation we’re writing primarily for our website, to inform spaces.
2. The resources we make available for spaces to copy and use (such as risk assessments, example policies, etc)

Our discussion at the last meeting was about the documentation but I think the resources are probably the most important thing we provide.

I have significant doubts about what the CC non-commercial clause could mean in practice, so I think the resources should be under a more open license (although one which still requires attribution - probably CC-BY). Ultimately these resources are all about safety and good governance, and it helps us all if those have as wide a distribution as possible.

The documentation, on the other hand, is something which I can’t really imagine being used elsewhere other than a “how to start a hackspace” book or something. This is something which is worth restricting a bit further, and I don’t mind keeping the CC-NC clause for it.

[ribbotson]

Thank you for changing the contribution page to remove the assignment part. I am very happy to contribute content under the new terms.

The question on whether a hackspace and the UK Hackspace foundation are commercial is now in a state of confusion for me. I understand the perspective and definition from Stanto, and prefer his interpretation to mine based on this from the license.

You may not exercise any of the rights granted to You in Section 3 above in any manner that is primarily intended for or directed toward commercial advantage or private monetary compensation. The exchange of the Work for other copyrighted works by means of digital file-sharing or otherwise shall not be considered to be intended for or directed toward commercial advantage or private monetary compensation, provided there is no payment of any monetary compensation in connection with the exchange of copyrighted works.

I considered that the content was part of the services provided in exchange for the membership fee made it commercial. They do seem to intentionally make the definition obscure. I think if we keep the content on open websites and don’t restrict access to members, we should be covered either way. While this definition is no longer an issue in this instance, I am not sure if is something that needs further attention for other licenses

I general I would like as much of the content as possible to be under a truly open license. I understand the annoyance if someone makes money out of the content, but I think that is still good for hackspaces.
Richard

[ms7821]

I’m less likely to contribute to something that looks like it’ll be used for commercial purposes. I’m pretty sure I’m not alone.