New Profile Option: Wiki Copyright Release

[DavidV]

In June 2004, I created a wiki for the purpose of creating a “hierarchical, user-contributed reference on the philosophy of Objectivism.” While many users have contributed to the wiki, it has not organized the information found on this forum in the scale I had originally hoped for.

This may be because most forum users do not contribute to the wiki, so their posts must be individually imported by the wiki by a few volunteers. The problem with that is that authors formerly had to do this themselves or consent for individual posts to the posted on the wiki because they retain copyright over their posts.

To resolve this issue and dramatically increase the source material available for the wiki, I added an option to your user profile. The option is “Copyright” and it can be one of three values: “Copyrighted”, “Public Domain”, and “Must Attribute.”

“Copyrighted” applies by default unless the other two are selected and represents the status quo. You retain copyright to all your posts, and your posts can be used only by permission or under fair use standards.

“Public Domain” releases your posts to the public domain, which allows them to be used on the wiki or any other website. This means that anyone can publish your posts without any consent or payment to or from you.

“Must Attribute” is a limited permission to use your posts on the wiki. This allows your posts to be used on the wiki under two conditions: (1) attribution is given to you and (2) your contribution must be distinctly identified and presented in original form.

I encourage everyone who wants to contribute to the value of this website to edit your profile and select the “public domain” or "must attribute" options.

Notes:

-You may still copyright individual content by prefacing it with something like “This content is copyrighted:”

-After choosing “public domain,” you can revert to “copyrighted” status at any time, but any content written prior to the reversal remains public.

Edited June 21, 2006 by GreedyCapitalist