The annotation metadata should reflect the CC license

[JakeHartnell]

It would be a good idea to include the license in each annotation object. In the future when there are other services with perhaps different Terms of Service (or when we give the option for people to opt into CC-0), it will prove useful in figuring out what can be done with certain annotations.

Acceptance criteria

• [ ] Add a header to annotation pages and API routes. (relevant article)

[tilgovi]

Proposal

Add a header to annotation pages and API routes: http://www.otsukare.info/2011/07/12/using-http-link-header-for-cc-licenses

This lets us leave the issue of storage and selecting or changing the license to another time while addressing the immediate problem of not having a license specified.

[gergely-ujvari]

That can work, however, as stated in the link, it'd good to show the used license for "common users" too.

[tilgovi]

Yeah. In the markup, too.

For the moment, I'd say not in the annotation object, though. Until we can think on the storage more.

[gergely-ujvari]

That's okay. (Showing in the markup too). Storage can come later.

[tilgovi]

@dwhly did we ever reach a conclusion on our default licensing? Can we get our terms of service posted sometime soon?

[dwhly]

@tilgovi I think we were heading towards CC-BY vs SA. The rationale being essentially that authors should get attribution, but if we force those citing or quoting annotations to also SA then we're prohibiting a bunch of use, especially along the lines of conventional, closed-access, commercial publishing, which there's probably no good reason to preclude. Lets make sure authors get credit, but that annotations can be remixed widely-- at least by default. Later we can make it configurable so people can select.

For the moment, I'd say not in the annotation object, though.

I was thinking that it would be good to start capturing the license in the annotation bodies, so that when we make it configurable later we can distinguish between annotations made when the license wasn't specified vs those made when it was.

We've flagged this for launch.

[BigBlueHat]

Umm.... Not sure about shipping with a default license chosen for the user.

Right now, everything we store is "All Rights Reserved" according to (at least) US copyright law (though IANAL).

We can't really bulk re-license works we're storing on someone else's behalf, and doing that going forward without making the user annotating aware of how we're (forcing?) them to license their stuff (either as part of the sign-up process or when posting) is tantamount to theft.

So. Let's be careful here. :grin:

Huge :+1: for making licensing information available via all points in the API (Link header makes sense to start--as we can do that everywhere regardless of media type). Huge :+1: for making license configurable per annotation with a default set (or a sticky system) by the user. Huge :-1: for (re)licensing work without the annotation author's consent.

[dwhly]

We can't really bulk re-license works we're storing on someone else's behalf, and doing that going forward without making the user annotating aware of how we're (forcing?) them to license their stuff (either as part of the sign-up process or when posting) is tantamount to theft.

We won't be. Annotations up to now won't be CC-BY, but unspecified-- which is the reason I think we should be explicitly storing the license now, so we know the difference for sure. "All rights reserved," as you observe.

The TOS we collaborated on: https://hypothes.is/terms-of-service/ Outlined CC-BY SA, I just changed it to CC-BY, to reflect this thread.

Huge :+1: for making licensing information available via all points in the API (Link header makes sense to start--as we can do that everywhere regardless of media type).

Great.

Huge :+1: for making license configurable per annotation with a default set (or a sticky system) by the user.

I think that's a later feature. Now, lets just show explicitly what it is and thus what we'll be storing?

Huge :-1: for (re)licensing work without the annotation author's consent.

Agree.

[tilgovi]

First, :+1: for @BigBlueHat for pointing out that we cannot relicense old content and so we won't. Existing annotations remain the copyright of their respective authors.

Strong :-1: for CC-BY as a default, though.

IIRC it was actually I that initially proposed using CC-BY because I'm strongly anti-intellectual property, but I don't want to force my views on our users. We got feedback from CC that pointed us at Wikipedia's use of SA. As soon as this was pointed out to me I changed my position and it remains that way.

I think the most important consideration is how users expect their content to be used if they don't pay much attention. On a commercial service, one expects the company to retain a license to use your content for promotional reasons, but it's not usually the case that commercial use by third parties is allowed. Similarly, commercial use by entities other than Hypothes.is would seem to go very much against the user's intuition. When users are contributing annotations to our repository we should not be giving away their rights. We definitely should not do so without an option to change it. Even with such an option, I would argue strongly for a share-alike default.

The primary motivation for CC-BY seems to be commercial use of our system. Our software is deliberately licensed using the copy free Free BSD License so that such uses of our software are explicitly allowed. Our software is not the same as our user content. If any entity wishes to run their own annotation server they can license their annotations however they want. If they wish for us to run that for them as a service, we can store and license those annotations separately, and make them available (or not) publicly as needed. These sorts of commercial concerns are unrelated to the needs of the public Hypothes.is project instance, a service I believe is better served by a CC-BY-SA default.

Please, let's change back to CC-BY-SA for now.

[dwhly]

Please, let's change back to CC-BY-SA for now.

I'm happy to do this. I get the argument. @punkish or @billymeinke do you have any further thoughts ?

[billymeinke]

Some thoughts:

IIRC it was actually I that initially proposed using CC-BY because I'm strongly anti-intellectual property, but I don't want to force my views on our users.

FWIW The CC BY license is the most "frictionless" of the licenses, except for the CC0 Public Domain Dedication, which isn't really a license. CC BY is recommended when the intent is to help the (in this case, user-contributed) copy of a work go the furthest, while still requiring attribution and while not giving up all user rights. The original copyright owner still retains original copyright, but has made a copy of the work very shareable.

We got feedback from CC that pointed us at Wikipedia's use of SA. As soon as this was pointed out to me I changed my position and it remains that way.

I feel the need to clarify that I directed @tilgovi to the Wikipedia TOU (and CC BY-SA license) when showing what other large-scale community-driven projects have done. This isn't to say that BY-SA is deal for Hypothesis. For some background on why the CC BY-SA license was chosen for Wikipedia, it's useful to look here:

https://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/15411

(hint: it was largely to maintain compatibility with other existing endeavors with similar goals, which I do not believe Hypothesis has.)

Annotations up to now won't be CC-BY, but unspecified-- which is the reason I think we should be explicitly storing the license now, so we know the difference for sure. "All rights reserved," as you observe.

A big +1 on making clear what license users are contributing annotations under, no matter what the license option(s)/choice ends up being. If no other license or terms are specified, ARR is the default.

These sorts of commercial concerns are unrelated to the needs of the public Hypothes.is project instance, a service I believe is better served by a CC-BY-SA default.

This makes me wonder if there is confusion between the SA condition and the NC condition of a license. NC essentially prohibits commercial reuse(s) of a derivative work, whereas SA specifies that derivative works work must be shared with the same license. Using a license with the SA condition would not necessarily prevent commercial reuse. NC most likely would.

So my question to @dwhly @tilgovi @BigBlueHat and whoever else is on this thread, is:

What will be accomplished by choosing a default license with the SA condition?

Finally...

I think the most important consideration is how users expect their content to be used if they don't pay much attention.

The truth is that most users don't pay attention to the TOU or TOS they "agree" to, anyway. (Hence, the tos;dr project: https://tosdr.org/). So, deciding for the user that they should be contributing annotations under CC BY-SA vs. CC BY doesn't make much sense to me. Both licenses meet the Open Definition (http://opendefinition.org/), and I can't see any actual arguments against it in this thread, other than personal preference.

Forgive me if I've missed something. There were quite a few moving pieces here before I jumped in. If there's a real compatibility issue created by setting the default to CC BY, then that's something to consider. I don't see any.

[tilgovi]

So then what are the practical differences between CC-BY vs CC-BY-SA?

Even if someone can use a thing commercially they still don't hold the copyright and thus can't relicense it. Seems to me that the differences hinge on the boundary between inclusion in a larger work and derivation (reminder: IANAL, and may be misapplying concepts here).

SA would mean that a derivative work would have to maintain the CC-BY-SA license. Non-SA it could have any license, but that doesn't change the license of the original work. Nor would I expect SA to place restrictions on how works which include these annotations are licensed. It would only impact reuse of modified forms of those annotations.

The truth is that most users don't pay attention to the TOU or TOS they "agree" to, anyway. (Hence, the tos;dr project: https://tosdr.org/). So, deciding for the user that they should be contributing annotations under CC BY-SA vs. CC BY doesn't make much sense to me.

To me, the first sentence argues directly against the second. If users are not paying attention, it's extra important we make choice that's likely to align with their interests.

[billymeinke]

To me, the first sentence argues directly against the second. If users are not paying attention, it's extra important we make choice that's likely to align with their interests.

How have their interests been surveyed? Agree that the decision be aligned with their interests, but I suppose I'm not seeing how CC BY works against their interests more than CC BY-SA, without seeing what those compromised interests actually are.

So then what are the practical differences between CC-BY vs CC-BY-SA?

I'm not sure what you're asking. The SA condition limits downstream reuse and compatibility that CC BY does not. I mentioned compatibility with other existing knowledge bases (ie other sites that complemented Wikipedia) as one potential reason why BY-SA might be preferred, but Hypothesis doesn't appear to have that same issue. Are there other open annotation knowledge bases that are licensed in a way that is not compatible with CC BY, and is there a plan to integrate with them?

For further clarification, see the chart at the bottom of this section:

https://wiki.creativecommons.org/Frequently_Asked_Questions#If_I_derive_or_adapt_material_offered_under_a_Creative_Commons_license.2C_which_CC_license.28s.29_can_I_use.3F

Work under a CC BY license can be combined or included in many more works that (they themselves) are licensed under other licenses, while the original work retains the CC BY license.

So, again, I ask what the purpose of choosing a more restrictive default license (CC BY-SA) is. I'm not pushing for any particular license, and would prefer a license be chosen that best aligns with the goals of the project and with the needs of the contributors and users. CC BY is less restrictive, plain and simple.

[mlinksva]

Hi. I recommend CC0 as default going forward if only to deflect licensing arguments going forward, saving all vast amounts of time and energy. That's not to say users shouldn't preserve provenance info -- they ought to as a service to their users, not because there are legalistic boxes to check.

It looks like on this issue there's just the standard permissive vs copyleft argument, but much beyond that should be avoided:

• What is the relationship between the annotaiton and the annotated document? Does license for latter impose any condition on former? Unconditional terms like CC0 are donor compatible with anything, avoiding this conundrum.
• What exactly are annotation markers/ranges/anchors (I don't recall what terminology hypothesis uses), what is their relationship to textual annotation, and what regime (copyright, sui generis database restrictions) do these fall under?
• If I'm making use of large number of annotations, perhaps in a reductive fashion, does my potentially small output come with gigabytes of annotation attributions if I want to minimize chance of being sued?
• If annotations are incorporated into a developing document, should legal checkboxes really interfere? Worse, are there compatibility problems between annotations and annotated document? If default were CC-BY-SA-4.0 do you want to create a clear barrier to annotations becoming part of CC-BY-4.0 document (eg a PLOS article), or even a CC-BY-SA-2.5 document?

[tilgovi]

Me:

So then what are the practical differences between CC-BY vs CC-BY-SA?

@billymeinke:

I'm not sure what you're asking.

@mlinksva

It looks like on this issue there's just the standard permissive vs copyleft argument

I think there's negligible, if any, philosophical distance between the people in this thread over what license we'd like to use. What's actually tripping me up is two things:

1. Determining what is least surprising for users. To a great extent this has to be our intuition for now, because there aren't many such users.
2. Every time I imagine annotation re-use my mind keeps going straight to wholesale inclusion or fair use of excerpts and things, not modification or adaptation. For those sorts of uses, the presence or absence of a share-alike clause wouldn't seem to me to restrict its use. Again, though, not a lawyer. Maybe SA would preclude making a non-CC book of annotations, even if they're just included in full, unmodified form.

In any case, as I stated at the beginning, I personally would prefer to license my annotations CC0 or CC-BY, but I'm trying not to let that bias my decision at all.

[tilgovi]

I think when @mlinksva talks about annotation content being incorporated into documents it definitely lights up the use cases I was somehow being blind to. Reducing friction for these sorts of uses is definitely a good idea.

[dwhly]

1. Determining what is least surprising for users. To a great extent this has to be our intuition for now, because there aren't many such users.

Here, for me, @billymeinke's earlier observation is the important one, namely:

The truth is that most users don't pay attention to the TOU or TOS they "agree" to, anyway. (Hence, the tos;dr project: https://tosdr.org/). So, deciding for the user that they should be contributing annotations under CC BY-SA vs. CC BY doesn't make much sense to me. Both licenses meet the Open Definition (http://opendefinition.org/), and I can't see any actual arguments against it in this thread, other than personal preference.

So, lets assume that 99% of users either won't care or won't even know which license we use, and will just assume whatever it is that we've made a reasonable choice on their behalf. This argues for a license which allows the most frictionless reuse and the widest possible use of annotation by the larger community. Because we also have a responsibility, perhaps a larger one, to pick a default license that empowers the shareability and re-usability of this class of content. Eventually, perhaps soon, we can add optional licenses for those who care to choose.

1. Every time I imagine annotation re-use my mind keeps going straight to wholesale inclusion or fair use of excerpts and things, not modification or adaptation. For those sorts of uses, the presence or absence of a share-alike clause wouldn't seem to me to restrict its use. Again, though, not a lawyer. Maybe SA would preclude making a non-CC book of annotations, even if they're just included in full, unmodified form.

Unless I'm mistaken, SA precludes any kind of inclusion in which the product is differently licensed. That's a lot. You could not include a CC-BY annotation in a Nature article (for instance an annotation made by a scientist on another Nature article)!

I think when @mlinksva talks about annotation content being incorporated into documents it definitely lights up the use cases I was somehow being blind to. Reducing friction for these sorts of uses is definitely a good idea.

Completely agree.

The chart @billymeinke cites is quite helpful.

https://wiki.creativecommons.org/Frequently_Asked_Questions#If_I_derive_or_adapt_material_offered_under_a_Creative_Commons_license.2C_which_CC_license.28s.29_can_I_use.3F

This provides a really nice comparison of CC0, BY, SA and others. It's clear if frictionless is our goal, then CC0 and BY are the two candidates by a wide margin, and mostly identical in terms of the range of material they are compatible with.

Between CC0 and BY the difference is whether we insist on attribution or not. But I would assume that it would be quite unusual for an annotation to be cited without attribution. In most professional situations, attribution is a professional necessity. Obviously plagiarism is an exception, but then those folks won't be checking licenses anyway.

The argument from @mlinksva for CC0 is:

If annotations are incorporated into a developing document, should legal checkboxes really interfere? Worse, are there compatibility problems between annotations and annotated document? If default were CC-BY-SA-4.0 do you want to create a clear barrier to annotations becoming part of CC-BY-4.0 document (eg a PLOS article), or even a CC-BY-SA-2.5 document?

In other words reduce legal complications of incompatible licenses moving forwards by removing licensing as an issue.

I propose we use CC0 as our default.

[tilgovi]

Changing my position to CC-BY.

[dwhly]

Changing my position to CC-BY.

Can you characterize your thinking re: the distinction between CC0 and BY?

[tilgovi]

BY doesn't practically restrict the ways anyone can use things, other than asking that they provide attribution. It feels like the less surprising default for a project that emphasizes reputation and attribution.

[tilgovi]

CC folks comment if you wish, please. I thought it was more difficult to port public domain style licenses across jurisdictions and that it's taken some effort to craft international CC0 licenses. That may be a historical issue at this point or I may have my facts wrong entirely. Regardless, retaining some rights is possibly a more familiar concept for people who grew up under liberal intellectual property regimes.

But if I hear a bunch of support for CC0 I'd be fine to try it.

[billymeinke]

Rounding out the licensing discussion now, with comments/feedback collected from others. I personally suggest setting the default to CC0 for annotations.

Regarding use of the CC BY 4.0 license:

though Attribution is the sole condition of BY, there are other requirements of the license. Perhaps most importantly, BY prohibits reusers from applying ETMs. Depending on the platforms where annotations are expected to be shared (some of which apply ETMs), that might be a good reason to recommend CC0 because there is no parallel restriction.

For clarity, ETMs are sometimes referred to as TPMs, or Technology Protection Measures. This points to CC0 clearly being a good option, if platforms that may reuse Hypothesis annotations may have ETMs/TPMs implemented. CC BY, in those situations, could be messy.

Regarding making reuse/attribution norms clear:

there is a field that can be leveraged by those applying CC0 to indicate that norms exist and ought be respected.

For those communities that have strong norms for citation -- and as much as they prefer to abandon copyright -- CC has posted draft public domain guidelines (https://wiki.creativecommons.org/Public_Domain_Guidelines) to assist those who wish to make clear those norms known to encourage good digital citizenship. CC0 doesn't require attribution (you're essentially giving away all rights to the work), but it is possible to include a field in a version of CC0 you link to from an annotation/work, which includes non-binding use guidelines, like Europeana did when they released a collection under CC0 (http://www.europeana.eu/portal/rights/pd-usage-guide.html). If this is something you'd like to pursue, a direct example can be provided. It would take a small amount of work on our end to create a custom field in the CC0 deed that the asserter would link to, but it is certainly an option.

In short, the message is that CC0 would likely be the best option for Hypothesis annotations if there was any reason to believe annotations might be used on platforms involving ETMs.

Happy to clarify any of the above.

[billymeinke]

Also, to @tilgovi's question above:

I thought it was more difficult to port public domain style licenses across jurisdictions and that it's taken some effort to craft international CC0 licenses. That may be a historical issue at this point or I may have my facts wrong entirely.

CC0 hasn't ever been ported. If the public domain dedication isn't effective, there is a license to do anything with the work under no conditions, and if that doesn't work for some reason, there is a promise not to assert copyright.

[dwhly]

@billymeinke Maybe you answered this, but are CC licenses generally, and CC0 specifically, applicable internationally?

[billymeinke]

@dwhly Yes, they are. Previous versions of the licenses were ported (translated and adapted to local laws), but version 4.0 of the license suite was developed to work internationally, so no porting has taken place. CC0 wasn't ever ported (see above), and it works globally.

[dwhly]

Thanks!

[dwhly]

I propose we use CC0 as our default.

Bump.

[tilgovi]

I propose we use CC0 as our default.

Bump.

:+1:

[dwhly]

:two_hearts:

[dwhly]

I've modified our draft Terms of Service here: https://hypothes.is/terms-of-service/

@billymeinke Note that I've referenced the public domain guidance here. At this point, I'd love to take you up on your offer to assist us in ensuring that we formulate our notice of license in a way that best serves our intentions and the needs of our contributors. If there are ways we can optimize this, or draft new language to better address things, I'd be most grateful. And of course, we'd love to take you up on your offer of a blog post if you think this is an interesting decision by a community in terms of reasoning or process.

[dwhly]

I should have said anyone on this thread, not just Billy of course. I spent about 3 minutes on this, and assume it will evolve quite a bit from here-- including potentially beyond the TOS if necessary.

[BigBlueHat]

@dwhly could we get the Terms of Service under version control somewhere? or even on this wiki or the vision one (for now)? It'd be good for publicly tracking changes to it.

Additionally, we should clarify the CC0 thing as only applying on a "going forward" basis to annotations marked "Public."

Right now it reads that anything I have marked as "Public" is now licensed in the "Public Domain." If that's not the case, it needs clarification. If it is the case (which I don't think is possible...technically...), we need to notify users. Well...we should notify them regardless as our terms have changed.

Also...remember that "publish" pattern and "separate storage locations for different visibilities"...here's another great application of it. If it's in that storage "bin," then it's CC0'd. If it's in a different storage "bin," then it'll be licensed accordingly (e.g. "only me" === "all rights reserved."). Licensing being a pre-request to publishing into the space--as it is on Wikipedia, archive.org, etc.

Thanks for making this happen regardless!

[dwhly]

@dwhly could we get the Terms of Service under version control somewhere? or even on this wiki or the vision one (for now)? It'd be good for publicly tracking changes to it.

Sure, suggest a strategy. It would be nice if whatever we choose didn't involve a manual cut and paste between gh and WP.

Additionally, we should clarify the CC0 thing as only applying on a "going forward" basis to annotations marked "Public."

Change made.

[billymeinke]

I've modified our draft Terms of Service here: https://hypothes.is/terms-of-service/

Well done, good start on polishing the TOU.

@billymeinke Note that I've referenced the public domain guidance here. At this point, I'd love to take you up on your offer to assist us in ensuring that we formulate our notice of license in a way that best serves our intentions and the needs of our contributors. If there are ways we can optimize this, or draft new language to better address things, I'd be most grateful.

This can be done. Ping me via email and I can connect you with the folks to make it happen.

And of course, we'd love to take you up on your offer of a blog post if you think this is an interesting decision by a community in terms of reasoning or process.

I think the process your team has used to discuss this topic, and come to a conclusion that meets the goals you've set out (respecting & making user rights clear/easy, making annotations easiest to share out and reuse, etc) has been excellent. I'd like to highlight your process, and show others who are considering "going full open" like this might do so themselves.

Also +1 on version control for the terms of use. This sentence should be changed:

You agree to freely license your public contributions under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain license

Should be reworded to say, "...Creative Commons CC0 Public Domain Dedication..."

There are a couple other small formatting/style suggestions I might make, but I'll save them for when version control is in place for the TOU.

[BigBlueHat]

@dwhly I'd like to make a repo for the main hypothes.is site for documents like this that need (or that we want) to have publicly visible version control. If you're cool with that, I'll tackle it soon and pull out past versions from WordPress (...assuming it'll let me...)

@billymeinke thanks for the kind words on process!! :smile: I'll ping you when we have the TOU into version control, so we can field the rest of your awesome suggestions. :smiley_cat:

Cheers!

[dwhly]

@dwhly I'd like to make a repo for the main hypothes.is site for documents like this that need (or that we want) to have publicly visible version control. If you're cool with that, I'll tackle it soon and pull out past versions from WordPress (...assuming it'll let me...)

Sounds great.

From my note above:

It would be nice if whatever we choose didn't involve a manual cut and paste between gh and WP.

WP is db driven, right? How would the versioning between it and gh work? Manual copy/paste? Are there plugins for that?

[BigBlueHat]

@dwhly yeah, manual copy/paste for as long as we're on WordPress. However, there's no reason this particular page (and some others) couldn't (at least) be served statically--with those documents having been generated out of a repo. @tilgovi has the magic. :wink:

Even if we stick with copy/paste, though, our changes to our terms will hopefully be rare and the action of copying and pasting should be the least amount of strain in the process. /me hopes! :smile:

It'd also be a pretty small price to pay for public accountability--not to mention inviting annotation all along the way! :bulb:

[dwhly]

I was half wondering if we couldn't wire the WP publish button to issue a call to https://web.archive.org/save/http://hypothes.is/terms-of-service/

And then the version history could be: https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://hypothes.is/terms-of-service/

[punkish]

On Thu, Oct 9, 2014 at 2:34 PM, Dan Whaley notifications@github.com wrote:

@dwhly https://github.com/dwhly I'd like to make a repo for the main hypothes.is site for documents like this that need (or that we want) to have publicly visible version control. If you're cool with that, I'll tackle it soon and pull out past versions from WordPress (...assuming it'll let me...)

Sounds great.

Seems like everything has been sorted out. For the future, keep the following in mind:

If you are creating a tool that allows others to create a tool for annotation, please build in the ability to choose a license and even customize the chooser in case they want to provide a default license or customize the set of licenses they want to offer to their users.

On the other hand, if you are creating a tool for end users directly, what license(s) you offer or what you set as default are indeed your prerogative. Of course, there may be external factors that may influence your decisions, for example, funding, philosophy, mandate, etc.

If you are creating something that is aligned with the goals of promoting, supporting and enriching the commons, be it cultural or scientific, we hope you will lean toward as open as possible, and you really can't get better than CC0. CC BY could work also but there will be negotiation required of who gets attributed if the annotations are reused wholesale.

Good luck. I am dropping out of this thread for now, but you know how to find us if you need to do so.

Puneet Kishor Manager, Science and Data Policy Creative Commons

[billymeinke]

Looping back in on this, @dwhly @tilgovi @BigBlueHat @RawKStar77

Below is what could be a more appropriate version of the TOU (though links are not included):

You agree to freely dedicate your public contributions to the public domain or, where that is not possible because of law, to freely license your publications, under the Creative Commons CC0 Public Domain Dedication (contributions prior to October 27, 2014 were made without reference to specific licensing terms). The CC0 Public Domain Dedication allows free copying, modification, distribution and performance of your contributions, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. When you reuse contributions made to this site, we ask that you adhere to [INSERT HYPOTHESIS' PD GUIDELINES LINK HERE]. We note that Creative Commons has provided additional public domain guidelines that we strongly support. Most importantly, that if you use contributed content that you give credit and attribution, provide a link to the original source, protect the reputation of authors, contribute discoveries back, and generally share knowledge in an open way.

To fit all of this together, it would be best to create a separate page (noted above) on the Hypothesis site, outlining the non-binding PD/CC0 norms you wish to promote. This could then be linked from the CC0 PDD page, which would require some special attention on our end.

If the above steps are something you guys would like to pursue, chime in and let's push forward.

(BTW I've heard very positive comments about how friendly your TOU page is worded. Props for keeping it simple.)

[dwhly]

@billymeinke We've published our terms for now here: https://hypothes.is/terms-of-service/ We've not created our own guidelines yet, so we've omitted that for now.

If the above steps are something you guys would like to pursue, chime in and let's push forward.

Chiming in! Is there a protocol for constructing these that you recommend?

[billymeinke]

@dwhly Well done, great to see CC0 set as the default.

Regarding shaping Hypothes.is' own PD Guidelines, it would be good to start by bringing over the parts of the draft guidelines on our wiki that fit within the vision of your project.

https://wiki.creativecommons.org/Public_Domain_Guidelines

Keep the components that makes sense to have (currently nine items are listed), adjust the language as you see fit, and host them on a webpage of your site. Once those are up, we can work out a hack to have a CC0 page include a link to your guidelines.

Sound good?

[BigBlueHat]

@dwhly what do you think about just running with the standard PD Guidelines linked to above by @billymeinke? Not sure what we'd want to change or add--i.e. that list looks good. :smile:

If we are going to build our own list, let's make an issue for that.

[BigBlueHat]

@tilgovi to avoid (more) lag on this getting added to the API while we sort out storage, what do you think about simply doing a date based thing (per our ToS). It'd probably be good to link to an "All Rights Reserved" page for the old ones--vs. just the string statement.

Thoughts? :thought_balloon:

[dwhly]

@dwhly what do you think about just running with the standard PD Guidelines linked to above by @billymeinke? Not sure what we'd want to change or add--i.e. that list looks good. :smile:

In fact, that's what we've already done-- for that same reason.

@tilgovi to avoid (more) lag on this getting added to the API while we sort out storage, what do you think about simply doing a date based thing (per our ToS). It'd probably be good to link to an "All Rights Reserved" page for the old ones--vs. just the string statement.

Can you explain this? Unless I'm mistaken, we don't actually link to the CC0 license now when we display the annotation (and only just now have added messaging when it's created). We probably should-- but lets design that?

[tilgovi]

@dwhly I think @BigBlueHat is talking about the API.

to avoid (more) lag on this getting added to the API while we sort out storage

@BigBlueHat this is one of those times where having separate h and noteD would be great. It feels very weird to be adding a date-based switch inside our API code on a date for a ToS document that isn't even in the repo. :-/

I'm not in a particular rush to add this to the API. Can we punt for the moment?

[BigBlueHat]

@tilgovi yeah...I suppose we have no choice. Thanks...

[nickstenning]

Hi there! I'm going to close this as part of a clean-up of all issues currently open on this repo that represent ideas or features rather than reports of bugs or technical chores.

I want to be clear that this isn't intended to say anything at all about the content of this issue—it certainly doesn't mean we're no longer planning to do the work discussed here—just that we don't want to use GitHub issues to track feature requests or ideas, because the threads can get long and somewhat unwieldy.

If you're interested in what we are working on at the moment, you can check out our Trello board and, for a longer-term view, our roadmap.

And, if you're interested in following up on this issue, please do continue the discussion on our developer community mailing list. You might also want to check out our contributing guide.