Feminist SF Wiki talk:Ownership of articles

• ooh ... I chose CC by default when I started the wiki, but actually we should probably go with GFDL or some non-attribution license. --LQ 10:38, 19 February 2007 (PST)

Reification storm warning in effect!

Wow. I mean, wow. "Editors and contributors to the FSFwiki do not own their contributions. They "donate" them to a community editing collective, without restriction." A disembodied collective! "All material added to the FSFwiki belongs to this project, without restriction." A thing that has ownership rights! Yes, I'm sure this is a perfectly sound, legal wording, somewhere, but it's also complete reification of A) the people who put this Wiki together and B) the work we put into the project in question. And that's bloody frightening. Really bloody frightening. Does anyone else see this? Yikes. --Ide Cyan 13:18, 19 February 2007 (PST)

It's not a disembodied collective; we are all members of it, and I say that somewhere in the stuff I wrote today. We should certainly talk about the politics of it, but there are very real information politics behind it, as well as practical legal issues. --LQ 14:47, 19 February 2007 (PST)

You say it's not a disembodied collective here, but when you write in your legal disclaimer that editors and contributors do not own their contributions, you do reify the collective as something different from the people who constitute it. It's textbook reification, for crying out loud, and it's scary as fuck. Recognise!! --Ide Cyan 14:58, 19 February 2007 (PST)

I do hear what you're saying -- you're focused on the individual / collectivity aspect, and to me, those definitions right now are subordinate to the problems of ownership. They're critically subordinate to it, in that they define what constitutes ownership, but I'm all about the ownership problem. More on that below; basically, the "ownership" problem is a serious one, and we have to define the collective/individual aspects with respect to ownership. We can define them with respect to other priorities and needs too, but ownership has to be there. --LQ 15:55, 19 February 2007 (PST)

"Ownership" is, first and foremost, a legal status. To suggest that people do something or belong to something or contribute to something, is not the same thing as suggesting that they own something. Maybe it's worth making this distinction in the ownership documents? A discussion about ownership, versus accountability, versus doing. As a political matter, the legal concepts of "property" and "ownership" are heavily freighted and, I might add, have significant implications for any analysis of power relations, including feminist analysis.

• "Ownership" also has a secondary, more colloquial, meaning, of "responsible for", taking pride in, etc., as in "who will own up to doing X" or "I own my culpability in the matter" or "Who is going to take ownership of this project and make sure it happens." In a purely casual setting it's okay to toss it around, but in a setting aimed at producing documents, with a default legal status involving significant legal property-like rights, then we should discourage the use of the term "ownership". I don't know how to discourage the kinds of behaviors that lead into the problematic legal status, without discouraging the attitudes which in part define the status. Accountability and responsibility and clarity of source are all important values, too, which I respect and demand in their places. But a wiki is, by the nature of the software, some level of collaborative enterprise. And the intellectual property system in virtually all the nations of the world is structured in such a way as to make collaborative enterprises difficult and odd. So because the creation of information operates in a legal / political setting that is imposed without choice, increasingly onerous, harmful to collective enterprises, a reification of a particular model of creativity, and disproportionately beneficial to those already in power -- for all those reasons, we have to operate in an information-conscious manner.

Ann Bartow wrote a fine paper synthesizing the feminist issues in copyright law. (Fair Use and the Fairer Sex: Gender, Feminism and Copyright Law.) It's specific to copyright law, but it gives a sense of the broader issues at stake in information law and policy more generally; it's specific to US law, but unfortunately, in the relevant analyses, Canada and most other nations are not that different; and finally, it's specific to feminism and gender, but is clearly applicable in many ways to other disenfranchised or discriminated-against populations. Susan Scafidi has written a recent book that also looks at when and how "property" regimes are applied to information; she's more pro-property regime than Bartow, but the underlying feminist analysis is similar. --LQ 15:44, 19 February 2007 (PST)

You say: "Ownership" is, first and foremost, a legal status. That's a statement of legal ideology, and the degree of political alienation it allows is truly staggering. How is it that the specialised, legal term overrides the "secondary", colloquial use? That's ideological cooptation! What the hell kind of politics is that?! *headdesk*, *headdesk*, *headdesk*....

You say: "in a setting aimed at producing documents, with a default legal status involving significant legal property-like rights" etc. etc.

You can use legalese to ratify documents that will help protect this Wiki, sure. But you need to get your head out of that ideology to make this work as a feminist project!!! You cannot conduct a feminist project from within the confines of patriarchal legal ideology! Seriously!!! What the hell is this worth if it's only a subset of an oppressive ideology?! Aaaargh! --Ide Cyan 16:01, 19 February 2007 (PST)

(shortening indentation; we can just go back & forth & I think it will be clear enough). Ide Cyan, you are completely wrong in your assessment of where I am coming from. I am not subordinating a popular concept to a legal one; I am critiquing the legal concept. "Property is theft", and that's an anarchist analysis, not a Marxist one. I want to resist using the language of "property" and "ownership" because they have significant legal meanings, and because that legal meaning has come to dominate popular discourse. There are many ways to organize access to and control over resources in this world, and "property" is just one of them. The "property" model, however, has become the dominant discourse in the last century, for a variety of reasons; one of them is the institutionalization of legal frameworks that, yes, reify the property/ownership model. I would also point out that the property model is an imperialist model, in that it is eliminating other models of access to / control of / credit for / recognition for reources. It is imperialist in two senses: First, in the same way that prions might be imperialist: by their nature, they change the conformation of other proteins they come into contact with. Second, the property model is imperialist in the sense that it is part and parcel of a deliberate attempt by powerful interests to maximize and maintain their power. So please understand: When I speak of what we need to do within legal contexts, I am not speaking uncritically and accepting those legal frameworks. I am speaking pragmatically and politically: Laying out what we need to do in order to make sure a political vision can be realized. If we disagree on the underlying political vision, then we do; we should probably work on the FSFwiki:Mission and figure out the various points of disagreement.

I should also just add that a lot of this stuff can happen slowly or over long periods of time, and need not be "resolved" until there's lots of input from more contributors than you and I. But (pragmatically) as a legal matter we need to make sure the question of "ownership" is settled right away. I attempted to do it when I started with the CC license; and all material put in here has been licensed on http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/ . Unfortunately while this license is fine for the licensed-out uses of the content (if someone wants to quote or reuse material from the FSFwiki, this license works fine), for the in-licensing, the "attribution" aspect is problematic. As a legal matter it is probably adequately addressed by the edit history, but I don't personally find that satisfactory, and want something clearer. --LQ 16:20, 19 February 2007 (PST)

The Ownership Problem

(Starting a new section -- we can indent back and forth here, but there was too much up above to untangle with new indentations already. And it's easier to discuss things in new sections, because editing one huge section all the time means we'll end up blocking each other's revisions -- it happened to me earlier, since you made changes while I was trying to add a comment.)

I don't know where to begin untangling the comment you left at 16h20, but here's a reply to the comment you left at 15h55 today:

"I do hear what you're saying -- you're focused on the individual / collectivity aspect, and to me, those definitions right now are subordinate to the problems of ownership. They're critically subordinate to it, in that they define what constitutes ownership, but I'm all about the ownership problem."

This is illogical. The critical hierarchy you've created is all upside-down here. Definitions of ownership cannot be subordinate to the problem of ownership, because you need to define the term before situating it as a problem, or at least recognise that you need to define the issue before trying to resolve it as a problem. Otherwise you'll never know what you're arguing about. --Ide Cyan 16:56, 19 February 2007 (PST)

I think that one can subordinate different aspects of a problem. You're looking at types of owners (individual, collective), and wanting to define that a priori. I'm looking at the problem of ownership, seeking a particular outcome (nobody gets to contribute and then later on change their minds and destroy work that others have built on), and picking and choosing definitions and associations that, when interpreted as "owners", give the right result.

Regardless, I doubt we're that far apart on substantive goals (although if you sense that we are, I trust you'll raise it below). And I know that I have been getting a bit persnickety, as usual, and as I suspect you are too. We can argue till the cows come home, I'm sure, but I'm going to back off a bit now (and maybe do some actual work-work). You should tinker with policies to improve as you desire; or propose variant language if you think your differences are substantive changes. Even though I am drafting policies and thus operating as a dictator, they are all still "draft" policies, subject to revision, commentary, deletion, etc. by FSFwikians. And they are largely a distraction from the real work of developing the FSFwiki. So long as policies do the work they're supposed to do (establish a rough common framework for operating, and protect us legally), we can tinker with them at our leisure to get them utterly absolutely politically correct to the nth degree.

Cheers,

LQ 18:09, 19 February 2007 (PST)

"nobody gets to contribute and then later on change their minds and destroy work that others have built on"

See, that is something much clearer and much easier to agree on than what this Wiki is or isn't from a copyright/ownership/etc. perspective in which the subject is things without agency of their own. And oh my frelling hezmana, how much simpler it would have been to arrive at the heart of that issue using active voice, defining what people can or can't do, instead of impersonal phrases like "material is contributed".

Gah.

--Ide Cyan 20:15, 19 February 2007 (PST)

Other suggestions

• ... one thing we could do to be more tangible is to not talk in the collective voice in, for instance, the policies where we talk about deleting racist material etc. As a matter of good writing, I'm in favor of active voice generally, but there is a role for the passive voice. Here are the approaches and my thoughts about what they might mean, how they would be read, the politics behind the approach:
  • "Racist material will be deleted" - A disembodied voice is speaking with authority, but disclaiming individual authority; almost totalitarian in town. But perhaps the invisible deleter is useful --
  • "We will delete racist material" - More active, but is the royal we really more personal? Who is the we? This appears to be more specific but is it really?
  • "Editors will delete racist material" or "Editors will take it upon themselves to delete racist material in accord with community policy" - Maybe something like this is the right approach; active (for good writing and a sense of the agent); specific (for a sense of the agent) ...

--LQ 15:49, 19 February 2007 (PST)

I'll say the same thing I said on the FSFwiki_Talk:FSFwiki community of editors‎ page. I'd pick the tyranny of the majority, or of the website administrator, over the mystification of passive voice. At least then you can make people accountable for their actions.

Passive voice might have a role in describing impersonal actions, but running a feminist project is hardly impersonal. Or in putting the emphasis on the subject, when the subject is objectified. But that has to be clear, whether it's in the grammatical or the polital sense.

And I will reiterate that I find the elaboration of policies far, far inferior to the application of politics in a political endeavour. --Ide Cyan 17:13, 19 February 2007 (PST)

Oh, my god. Why is this even an issue? Can't we just slap some kind of open license like CC or GDL on the wiki? Who is really worried about this, and why and about what? It's not like anyone is going to make some kind of profit, or steal each other's work for some nefarious purpose. Can someone explain to me in totally plain language what is going on with this? And what is the point of nit picking our feminist process? Is this resolved now? IMHO it is fine to draft policies and things and then to change them. And we should not microanalyze everyone's deep motivations about it. --Liz Henry 11:08, 20 February 2007 (PST)