Copyright concerns on from RSS 2.0 Specification page

[AJ-Ianozi]

Bringing this to W3C's attention, though I'm not the copyright holder. It concerns this page:
https://validator.w3.org/feed/docs/rss2.html

This was initially brought up by Dave Winer, original author of the spec:

The W3C has a copy of my RSS 2.0 spec on their website. #
At the bottom of the original document it says: "The author of this document is Dave Winer, founder of UserLand software, and fellow at Berkman Center." Below that is a Creative Commons license which says: "The content found on this site is made available under the terms of an Attribution/Share Alike Creative Commons license."#
All of that is missing from the W3C's copy of my spec. #
It's pretty obvious that it's my writing. #
My name has been removed, as has the original license. #
That's wrong. They must fix that. My recommendation, just point the original document and forget about hosting a copy. The Harvard website is not going anywhere. #

The discussion made it to Hacker News where more context was provided by user "skilled":

It did have a mention of "© Copyright 1997-2002 UserLand Software. All Rights Reserved." up until late 2021,
https://web.archive.org/web/20211130062529/https://validator.w3.org/feed/docs/rss2.html
and then shortly after (Feb 2022, the new page) doesn't have any of that at all,
https://web.archive.org/web/20220130145338/http://validator.w3.org/feed/docs/rss2.html
But it never had the phrase "Dave Winer" anywhere, not in the old version of the page or the new one.

It appears that the wording of the copyright page removing UserLand Software was changed in early 2022 via PR #68.

[rcaden]

I am the chairman of the RSS Advisory Board, the organization credited in the final line of the RSS 2.0 specification that the W3C is republishing:

"This document is authored by the RSS Advisory Board and is offered under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike license, based on an original document published by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society."

We have published the specification for 20 years, making 10 revisions over that span. We've always offered it under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike license, so any other entity is free to redistribute the document under the terms of the license.

The W3C is following the license correctly and using our preferred attribution.

The current version of the specification is available here:

https://www.rssboard.org/rss-specification

We also publish an RSS Best Practices Profile under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike license, a guide for software developers and web publishers implementing RSS:

https://www.rssboard.org/rss-profile

[scripting]

I explained the problem, with links and screen shots in this blog post.

Net-net: You're hosting a document I wrote, with the credit and copyright removed.

BTW, I am a former member of the W3C and worked on the SOAP protocol in a group you hosted and am proud of the credit I got for that work. Screen shot. It's a parallel situation. It's as if someone removed my name from that spec, and the copyright notice below it.

I think you'll agree that RSS 2.0 was a significant contribution to the world wide web and I'm continuing to build on this work every day. And I'm just as proud of that work as I am with my contribution to SOAP and other W3C projects.

[scripting]

BTW, here are the details of the publication of the spec on the Harvard website on July 18, 2003.

http://scripting.com/2003/07/18.html#rss20News

[AJ-Ianozi]

So I think the real question is whether or not rssboard is attributing David's work properly?

From what I can tell, the last version of the spec released by rssboard to attribute Dave was RSS 2.0 (version 2.0.1-rv-6):

This document is authored by the RSS Advisory Board and is offered under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike license, based on an original document published by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School authored by Dave Winer.

Version 2.0.8 and onward changed the attribution to:

This document is authored by the RSS Advisory Board and is offered under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike license, based on an original document published by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society.

I did a copyscape compare comparing Dave's original page to the latest specification and the spec is still a ~90% match: Compare Two Web Pages or Articles - Copyscape.pdf

According to the CC license linked on both pages:

If supplied, you must provide the name
of the creator and attribution parties, a
copyright notice, a license notice, a
disclaimer notice, and a link to the
material. CC licenses prior to Version
4.0 also require you to provide the title
of the material if supplied, and may
have other slight differences.

Dave's page explicitly lists the author, which to me would be who to attribute as the author as defined by the CC license:

The author of this document is Dave Winer, founder of UserLand software, and fellow at Berkman Center.

Shouldn't the attribution provide that information rather than just saying "based on an original document published by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society"? It should probably also include a link to the original source.

[rcaden]

The Berkman Center for Internet & Society owns the copyright of the RSS 2.0 specification and released the document under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike license in 2003.

The credit line of our version of the document changed in 2006 because Dave Winer did not want to be associated with the RSS Advisory Board or its publication of the specification. He had resigned from the board two years earlier and did not agree with the board's decision to continue operation.

In the last 17 years no one has asked us to change the credit line, including Winer or UserLand Software (which gave the copyright to Berkman).

[AramZS]

The Berkman Center for Internet & Society owns the copyright of the RSS 2.0 specification and released the document under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike license in 2003.

The credit line of our version of the document changed in 2006 because Dave Winer did not want to be associated with the RSS Advisory Board or its publication of the specification. He had resigned from the board two years earlier and did not agree with the board's decision to continue operation.

In the last 17 years no one has asked us to change the credit line, including Winer...

I'm not really clear about the broader situation, but if an author is asking for attribution to be re-added to a work considered to be under a CC attribution license--which is what appears to be happening here--even if they had been considered to have wanted it removed in the past, I think it's good form to re-add them? I'm sure there's an argument to be made over what is or is not required, but that's different from good practice.

[rcaden]

I have submitted a pull request to address Dave Winer's request to be attributed in the spec.

[scripting]

W3C please reject this request.

Here are your choices:

1. Remove the document from your site and point to the original.
2. Make a copy of the original to host on your site.

Anything else is just prolonging the perhaps understandable mistake you made.

I would much prefer the first, to get the W3C out of this mess, and let us return to working to make the web work better.

[rcaden]

I'm not really clear about the broader situation, but if an author is asking for attribution to be re-added to a work considered to be under a CC attribution license--which is what appears to be happening here--even if they had been considered to have wanted it removed in the past, I think it's good form to re-add them? I'm sure there's an argument to be made over what is or is not required, but that's different from good practice.

I think it is good practice to honor a request to modify the attribution of a Creative Commons-licensed work in the credit line when the author wants it to be changed. One thing I also did in the pull request was to revise "Berkman Center for Internet & Society" to "Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society" because the organization changed its name in 2016.

[rcaden]

The RSS Advisory Board copy of the specification also reflects the attribution change:

https://www.rssboard.org/rss-specification

[dontcallmedom]

I don't think there is anything wrong with the current document, but since I don't think there is anything that makes it critical for it to be hosted on the W3C feedvalidator service either, and to reduce the maintenance burden, I've submitted #109 that replace the content of the document with a link to https://www.rssboard.org/rss-specification

[scripting]

@dontcallmedom -- why not just point to the original?

https://cyber.harvard.edu/rss/rss.html

it really sucks to have something you worked so hard at for so long be defaced in this way.