Re: [libreplanet-discuss] Fwd: The FSF Allows No Derivatives

[Aaron Wolf]

The point isn't that CC-BY or CC-BY-SA are impossible to misrepresent
nor that the "mark as modified" clause is a foolproof block of
misrepresentation. The point is that ND itself is not a foolproof block
of misrepresentation. And since there's little (no?) evidence of it
being helpful in reality…

There are other alternatives for authenticity. The ideal approach is to
have an official version, i.e. an *endorsed* version.

It's easy enough for an author to say "this is the official, endorsed
translation". And any other translation is obviously unendorsed and
should be viewed with some skepticism.



On 05/18/2015 08:16 AM, Joshua Gay wrote:
> On 05/16/2015 01:44 AM, Aaron Wolf wrote:
>> But this is all tangential. You and others have failed to provide any
>> reasonable justification for RMS' use of ND other than an ill-founded
>> claim that it actually helps avoid misrepresentation. I've pointed out
>> that misrepresentation is possible regardless and that CC has a clause
>> that requires modified versions to be marked as modified. Furthermore,
>> plagiarism and misrepresentation are fraudulent regardless of copyright law.
> 
> A statement in a licensing clause that states: "this work has been
> extremely accurately translated from the original French of the author
> into English", I believe, would suffice to comply with CC BY 4.0
> condition that you must "indicate if changes were made."
> 
> So imagine if someone used that sort of statement for a CC BY version of
> an RMS essay but in the work they created they translated the term "free
> software" in one language to the phrase "open source software" in
> another. I think it would be fair to say that this is a
> misrepresentation of RMS's original work  (not just the ideas) because
> it would not be accurate to call it an extremely accurate translation,
> even if in doing so one complies with the license.
> 
> Anyhow, that is just a hypothetical example in response to what you said
> to show that I think one can produce a misrepresention of an author's
> work and comply with the terms of a CC BY license.
> 
> Personally, I don't find the use of ND licenses to be an injustice when
> applied to non-software works. If I did find it an injustice, I would
> not work for the FSF. I do, however, prefer that my works carry to
> everyone the freedoms to modify and redistribute modifications. That is,
> I think the benefit of encouraging this sort of activity outweighs the
> risk of an author's work being misrepresented.
> 

-- 
Aaron Wolf
co-founder, Snowdrift.coop
music teacher, wolftune.com