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)

"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)

• ... 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)