

HN Request: Creative Commons for comment text - modeless

Currently HN comments have no license, which means they can't be included in http://hackermonthly.com/ unless explicit permission is sought for every comment.<p>If HN applied the Creative Commons Attribution license to comment text (by adding a notice to the comment submission form) then comments could be republished in Hacker Monthly, and in general it just seems like the Right Thing.  Any concerns or reasons why this isn't a good idea?
======
cscotta
It's an interesting idea, but honestly, I find any boilerplate claim to
ownership of content posted on a site or imposition of a license, well,
frustrating.

The magazine is fantastic and I completely support it, but I do think this
should be an opt-in. Perhaps it would be easier for commenters who wouldn't
mind their work being published elsewhere to just drop a note like "All
comments licensed CC/NC/SA" in their profile?

(I've dropped this in mine).

~~~
modeless
IANAL, but by posting here you necessarily give HN an implicit license to
distribute your comment, roughly equivalent to the legal boilerplate you'd
find on YouTube or similar ("worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to
redistribute, perform," etc). I don't think making it explicit with Creative
Commons would be an "imposition". Creative Commons wouldn't give HN or anyone
else ownership of your comment.

Opt-in wouldn't solve the problem for Hacker Monthly, as few people would
bother. Opt-out would be fine. BTW, CC/NC precludes inclusion in Hacker
Monthly as it is sold and contains advertisements.

~~~
csmeder
I agree an opt out option would be best. Basically under each comment box a
text that says:

>>

By posting here you are making your text available under the Creative Commons
Attribution license. If you wish to not provide your text under the
Attribution license please check here. To not see this message again check
here. (you can change these settings in your profile at any time).

>>

------
DanielStraight
I am not a lawyer.

HN cannot apply the Creative Commons Attribution license to our comments. HN
does not own our comments. We do. We are implicitly granting a license to HN
to store and display our comments, but we are not implicitly granting HN a
right to re-license our comments. HN needs to specifically ask for our
permission in order to license our comments under a CC license, just like
Wikipedia does with its content. It's not enough to just say that the comments
are licensed under CC. This is what StackOverflow does, and it's ridiculous.
Let's not have the same thing here. I would be more than happy to license my
comments under a CC license, but I would not be happy at all if someone else
thought they had the right to do it for me.

Conclusion: Be like Wikipedia, not StackOverflow.

~~~
modeless
Of course HN can't retroactively relicense existing comments, and that's not
what I'm suggesting.

~~~
DanielStraight
What I said was not restricted to retroactively applying a license. HN cannot
automatically apply a license to new content either. It was at first unclear
to me how you meant for HN to apply the license. It seems clear now that the
intention is that users would have to explicitly grant HN permission. This is
good, and I'm all for it. It does need to be clear though that users are
explicitly granting permission. And I agree with others that an opt-out is
definitely a good idea.

