Knol worries

Last week Google announced an invite-only trial of a new tool called Knol (their name for a "unit of knowledge") to allow people to write an information page on a subject which can then be rated, reviewed or commented on by others. The central idea, as Google's VP of Engineering Udi Manber put it, is authorship:

"Books have authors' names right on the cover, news articles have bylines, scientific articles always have authors -- but somehow the web evolved without a strong standard to keep authors names highlighted. We believe that knowing who wrote what will significantly help users make better use of web content."

You can see a sample knol here (isn't everyone just itching to edit out that spelling mistake in the first sentence?).

Most of the press coverage of Knol is positing it as a competitor to Wikipedia, but is it really? We won't know what Knol will really be like until it is open to the public (presuming it makes it out of private beta), but from the looks of things it differs markedly from Wikipedia in all of the most important ways that Wikipedia is unique.

Firstly, knols won't be collaboratively written: Google says that the Knol platform will include "strong community tools", enabling the general unwashed to submit changes to knols (they use the name for individual articles too) as well as review, rate and comment on them, but ultimately the content of knols will be controlled by their original authors. Obviously, this is different from Wikipedia's collaborative wiki editing model under which no-one owns articles.

Secondly, there will likely be multiple knols on any given subject: as they say in the Knol announcement, it will be Google's job to appropriately rank knols in search results. Presumably they'll make use of the rating and reviewing tools in the platform as well as standard metrics like PageRank to try to work out which knol really is the most authoritative on a subject. Again, this is clearly different from Wikipedia, with its single-voice, neutral point of view system.

Thirdly, knols will not necessarily be free-content: while the sample knol mentioned above has a CC-BY 3.0 licence displayed on it, there are no indications that such licencing will be required, and Knol's "author control" vibe probably indicates that each author will get to choose the licence for their knols.

Kevin Newcomb at Search Engine Watch thinks a better comparison for Knol is Squidoo, and to an extent Mahalo, "since it allows users to build authority and sign their work [and aims] to build content pages that rank highly in search engines." Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land also draws the comparison between Knol and Squidoo, and suggests that Knol is more likely an attempt by Google to carve out a niche of its own in the 'knowledge aggregation' industry rather than an effort to compete directly with any of the projects in the field.

However, it's perhaps best to think of the Knol proposal less as a project and more as a platform: Rafe Needleman at Webware compares Knol with Google's existing text publishing platform, Blogger, though with "Digg-like elements". Knol authors will build reputation, like blog authors (though Knol will be more about discrete articles rather than a stream of them), and users will rate and review competing knols in much the way that Digg and similar link-sharing sites operate. I think this is the best comparison, and fits well with the strong focus on individuality and authorship, and on Google's planned hands-off approach, in the Knol announcement. There's certainly a niche available for this kind of publishing.

So, presuming Knol goes public one day, it may well garner a significant slice of search results and a place in the knowledge business, but with its author-driven multiple-voice model and basis as essentially a publishing platform, it is more likely to be a complement to Wikipedia than a competitor.

Mr Wales Goes to Washington

Jimmy Wales testified before the United States Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs on Tuesday (Washington time) on collaborative technologies generally and the Wikimedia projects specifically, and how that relates to e-Government initiatives in the United States.

Among other things, Jimmy discussed the use of both internal and public-facing wikis for governmental communication, explained semi-protection to Joe Lieberman, and outlined the benefits of systems that are designed to be open rather than closed. Also testifying were Karen Evans from the US government's Office of Management and Budget, John Needham from Google, and Ari Schwartz from the Center for Democracy and Technology.

You can view video of the hearing on Youtube or download it here in Real format (be aware that it's two hours long), see Jimmy's prepared testimony here (PDF) or see other statements here.

One year of Citizendium

Citizendium has turned one year old (at least, it's been one year since its initial pilot release) and the Citizendium community is looking back on what they have done so far, and looking forward to what they aim to achieve in the next year and beyond.

Citizendium founder Larry Sanger has posted a "one year on" status update on the project. In it he addresses some "myths" about the project, many of which relate to its expert-led content generation model, and many of which focus on the number of articles that the project has produced so far. Sanger is particularly strident about rejecting the suggestion that Citizendium is just another Nupedia, and that Citizendium is a poor competitor with Wikipedia.

While it's true that Citizendium's model does differ from that of Nupedia, one key similarity is that is the role of experts to have the final say in approving articles. Sanger is keen to point out that Citizendium has more than 3,200 "live" articles, but a "live" article can be started by anyone, and includes articles imported from Wikipedia to which at least three "significant" changes have been made.

Given the expert-led content generation process by which it seeks to differentiate itself, the real measure of Citizendium has to be its output of "approved" articles, the ones which have been approved and locked off by the experts. After a year Citizendium has only 39 approved articles, a little more than the 24 approved articles which Nupedia generated through its existence.

One of the key issues facing Citizendium has been its rate of contributor growth. Sanger predicts that eventually the project will reach that critical mass whereupon it begins to experience rapidly accelerating, even exponential growth in contributors as awareness of Citizendium spreads. But that's not looking likely at the moment: while user activity is up, overall user numbers have been fairly constant for some time now, suggesting that while the users who are there are getting more and more involved, the project is not attracting many new editors.

I think that if Citizendium is to succeed it needs to communicate a clearer identity to the public at large. I suspect that the common perception of Citizendium is that it is merely an expert-run competitor to Wikipedia, and the truth of this aside, the comparison between the two projects seems to be something of a chip on the shoulder of at least part of the community at Citizendium. Consider the recent call for essays on which licence Citizendium should be using for its content; this essay opposes using the GFDL "both for its own sake and because Wikipedia uses it", and Mike Johnson references the debate within the community as to whether or not Citizendium's content should be compatible with Wikipedia. Go see the "Citizendium and Wikipedia" board on their forums for an idea of what I'm talking about.

Maybe Citizendium should look to differentiate itself in more ways than simply having experts at the top of the editorial food chain. Topic selection and content style are obvious areas (see also this discussion), but there are many other aspects of content policy which on Wikipedia have been influenced strongly by the fact that the content generation model is open and not formally reviewed; analysis and synthesis, for example, which are not permitted on Wikipedia, are ideally suited to a collaborative model which also includes expert oversight.

There is promise in the idea of Citizendium, but after seeing the results of one year of existence, I am not convinced that the predicted "coming explosion of growth" is inevitable.

A test for copyleft?

Another free-content related lawsuit has been filed in the last few days; this time the first United States case based on infringement of the GNU General Public License, filed in a New York state court last week.

The plaintiffs are the developers of the BusyBox project, a collection of small versions of Linux utilities bundled into a single executable, designed for use as firmware or in embedded systems. They allege that the defendant, Monsoon Multimedia, included BusyBox, or a modified version of it, as part of the firmware on some of their hardware products, and did not offer the source code to the firmware as required by the copyleft provisions of the GPL. The plaintiffs, through their lawyers the Software Freedom Law Center, claim that Monsoon infringed their copyright as a result, and seek injunctions to prevent Monsoon from continuing to distribute the firmware, as well as damages.

The case will be significant (should it make it to trial) not only because it directly concerns the GPL, one of the more widely used free content licences, but also because it revolves around what is, in my opinion at least, the key part of any good free content licence: the requirement that derivatives be released under the same licence (the same essential concept is referred to as either "strong copyleft" or "share-alike"). The case may be the first test of whether such requirements are actually effective at compelling creators of derivative works to release those works under the same terms.

DLA Piper senior partner Mark Radcliffe also raises the very good point that the case will also revolve around exactly how the GPL is characterised - whether it is a copyright licence or a mere contract - which may have implications as to what remedies are open to people releasing their work under the GPL.

However, the case may not even make it to court, with Monsoon apparently looking to settle and make the source code for the firmware available, according to breaking reports.

You can see a copy of the BusyBox statement of claim here (PDF format).

Flickr user sues Virgin

I blogged a couple of months ago about the controversy surrounding an advertising campaign for Virgin Mobile Australia, which featured photographs taken from photo-sharing website Flickr. The photos were licensed under Creative Commons licences, but apparently the advertising company didn't ask permission from the photographers, and nor did they obtain model releases from the subjects of the photographs.

There's been plenty of speculation about what legal avenues might be open to both the Flickr photographers and their subjects, but it looks like we'll soon get some answers, as the family of one of the people pictured in the advertising campaign has sued both the Australian and United States arms of Virgin Mobile in a Texas court.

The suit was instigated by the family of Flickr user Alison Chang, who was photographed by fellow Flickr user and Chang's youth counsellor Justin Wong. That photograph was used in one of the Virgin advertisements, as can be seen in this photograph, accompanied by the caption "DUMP YOUR PEN FRIEND".

At this stage the suit seems to be based on actions in libel and invasion of privacy, based on news reports (I'm currently trying to find the actual court documents without much luck - does anyone know where Texas court documents are available online?). Virgin Mobile in the US has apparently sought to be removed as a party as it claims that it had nothing to do with the advertisements. Virgin Mobile Australia says that it fully complied with the Creative Commons licence (CC-BY-2.0) that the image was licenced under.

As another twist, the suit names a third defendant in Creative Commons; exactly what cause of action is claimed to lie against them at this stage is not clear.

This case is interesting because of the intersection of multiple types of intellectual property rights, along with other related rights. There are a whole range of rights which are potentially involved just in this fairly trivial case of one person taking a photo of another person, only one type of which - the economic rights of copyright - are dealt with by free content licences such as the Creative Commons licences. Should this case ultimately reach a decision (it may well face some jurisdictional problems) it is likely to have significant implications for the free content movement.

(Free) culture clash

I am not a lawyer. This is not legal advice.

There's a story doing the rounds in the blogosphere at the moment about the latest advertising campaign for Virgin Mobile Australia, put together by Virgin and a couple of advertising firms. The story is to do with the campaign's use of images, mostly Creative Commons licenced ones, sourced from the photo sharing website Flickr. The campaign started making waves when it appeared in June, catching the eye of Flickr users late in the month, and being carried by The Australian newspaper today in their IT section. It's all about a very hot topic in free culture circles at the moment: the interaction between different types of intellectual property rights in relation to free content.

The story began when Flickr user Brenton Cleeland posted a photo of a bus stop billboard showing one of the ads, featuring a picture of Flickr user Alison Chang with the caption "DUMP YOUR PEN FRIEND". This is the original image of Chang, uploaded by Justin Wong, and released under a CC-BY 2.0 licence. It's hard to see, but the fine print on the billboard gives the photo's URL on Flickr.

The campaign uses many more photos just like this one. The captions that are shown alongside the images are significant. Take this one for example, in which a photo of some people chatting in a lift is superimposed with the caption "PEOPLE WHO TALK IN LIFTS HAVE BAD BREATH". A Flickr user captured two of the billboards here, see what you make of those captions.

This is where it gets interesting. While this photo and the others appearing in the advertising campaign seem to have been used in accordance with the terms of the licence, it's an open question whether the use has infringed any other rights. According to The Australian, Virgin (and the advertising companies) didn't ask permission from the photographers or the subjects before using the photos. But does this mean anything?

The Creative Commons licences, like other free content licences, relate only to the economic rights that the creator of a work has (the rights that are generally referred to as "copyright"). But intellectual property law covers other rights too. Possibly relevant here are moral rights, a group of rights which, generally speaking, remain with the creator of a work (even if the economic rights are transferred to someone else). These are essentially the right to be attributed as the creator of the work, and the right to the integrity of the work.

Australia now has a pretty much Berne Convention type implementation of moral rights. At least in the Australian implementation, the moral right of attribution is satisfied if the creator is identified in the way that the creator has specified; given that the CC-BY licence sets out a method for attribution, which providing the URL to the photo may satisfy, the uses here may be ok in this respect. A different question is the moral right of integrity of the work; there hasn't really been any case law in Australia on what constitutes derogatory treatment of the work, so it would be interesting to see how a court might approach the use of these photos in this advertising campaign, particularly given the captions that have been put alongside the photos.

So there are questions with respect to the rights of the creators, but what about the rights of the subjects in the photos? This is probably the more pressing question, since it is the subjects who are really copping it in this ad campaign, what with those suggestive captions. Many jurisdictions recognise personality rights, which can protect subjects in this type of situation; in Australia, like in other common law countries, this is done in a particular type of way through passing off, traditionally a tort but which in Australia is fairly robustly protected in trade practices legislation, which allows both for civil suits and intervention by the ACCC.

Andrew Nemeth, a (no-longer practising) solicitor from New South Wales, gives a pretty good rundown of the legal issues around photography in Australia, and even touches on the Virgin issue. But, as he notes, while the trade practices legislation would certainly seem to apply in this type of situation, the kicker is jurisdiction:

"The story would typically end there, except for one thing — these particular images were not taken in Australia and neither photographers nor subjects were Australian citizens. Which unfortunately places them beyond the jurisdictional reach of the TPA or any other Australian law prohibiting unauthorised use of a person's image. If the photographs were taken here, then the subject would have a case. If they were taken overseas of an Australian citizen, again the subject would have a legitimate complaint. But foreign person + foreign photographer + foreign location?…

Nyet.

Clearly the Virgin Mobile people did their homework. You apparently can use unauthorised images of people to sell products, just make sure they're foreigners photographed overseas! Well done guys, very slick."

The wording of the latest version of the Creative Commons licences - which contain something of an acknowledgment that moral rights exist and users of freely licenced content should make sure that they respect them - has attracted plenty of discussion on the Wikimedia mailing lists of late. The interaction between freely licenced content (which deals exclusively with the economic rights of copyright), other areas of intellectual property law, and even other fields of law that relate to how intellectual property can be used (like personality rights) is bound to be the source of many interesting legal questions in the years ahead, as free licencing becomes more and more prominent. Not to forget the social implications; Creative Commons is copping flak from some quarters for not educating their users enough about just what the implications of licencing works under the CC licences are. There are some Flickr users who are now justifiably concerned about just what they've got themselves into by sharing their photos online under free licences.

It remains to be seen what legal responses there will be to Virgin's campaign, but there's no doubting that situations like this are just the tip of the iceberg for the proverbial free culture ship in the IP law sea.

On election timing

I blogged a few weeks ago about some issues I saw with the process for the Wikimedia Board election that was held recently. The results, as I am sure most people are aware by now, were released on 12 July, with Erik Möller, Kathleen Walsh and Frieda Brioschi being elected to serve two year terms.

One seemingly obvious observation that seems to have been lost so far amidst the larger controversies is that the new members of the Board were appointed some time after the date when their terms were supposed to commence, which was 1 July. Either the seats of the three outgoing members were left vacant for twelve days, or else they were occupied for twelve days beyond the time that they were supposed to be. Either alternative points to a serious failure with timing.

This is representative of almost all the problems with the election, which I attribute primarily to how little time there was for the Steering Committee to organise these elections; the Committee only being put in place at the beginning of the last week in May.

A number of problems with the election were caused or at least exacerbated by the haste with which the election had to be conducted. As an example, the amount of translation achieved in the 2007 election was less than that which has been achieved previously. For the 2004 election, the primary information page for the election on Meta was translated into 32 languages, and the 2005 election page was translated into 35 languages. In 2006 this dropped to 26, and in 2007 the main election page was translated into just 21 languages. I suspect that this was at least partly due to the fact that the master version of the election description page was only released a little over an hour and a half before candidate entry began. This is perhaps the most obvious problem with the election that could be lessened by allocating more time, though there are others.

Given that we know exactly when elections will be due (since we know when members' terms conclude) it should be entirely possible to plan when certain key events in the election process need to occur, and indeed to prepare for many parts of the election in advance.

I have put together some more thoughts in my userspace on Meta, along with a suggested timeline for when the election process should begin. Any suggestions as to improving this suggested timeline (particularly input on how long should be allocated to each phase of the election) are welcome.