I wondered whether there would be some advantage to compiling copies of all public domain Go content into a single big folder, which could then be hosted on OGS, or xmp.net, or the Internet Archive. Then there’d be no danger of any of the media contained being lost as long as the collection folder is safe.
Some public domain content for inclusion:
the whole of Sensei’s Library (no images are hosted on SL, btw, and it supports a safe and complete mirror download)
the Go pages and images on Wikipedia
the better threads from here and Life in 19x19
a big professional game database
any tsumego we can get, starting with the ones on Tasuki. All tsumego without attached solutions are public domain.
some of the more notable OGS games, from the later rounds of the bigger tournaments
What isn’t public domain:
youtube videos
blogs
the British Go Journal
the articles on GoBase (?)
On that front, let’s just say I wouldn’t find a second folder that might circulate below board, in the interest of preservation ^w^
It is important to distinguish between things that are fully in the public domain (like much older books) versus content that is still under copyright protection, but released under a permissive licenses (like Creative Commons). In the latter case, some proper attribution is still required. Actually releasing new content fully under the public domain is a bit tricky. In some jurisdictions (like the EU), it seems that it is impossible to fully renounce certain “moral rights”, which remain legally protected regardless (i.e., people are inherently protected against misattribution, etc.).
Is the “whole of SL” really be under public domain? Or even a permissive license for that matter? For that to legally qualify, all of the contributors will have needed to agree to that. Maybe that is the case, due to the terms and conditions specifying so, but without that disclaimer, SL might have an ambiguous copyright and licensing status.
Wikipedia already provides a fairly durable archive of its content. I think some sort of mirror on OGS would be much less reliable. Note that Wikipedia content is not entirely under the public domain either, but most of it (except copyright material included under fair use) is under a Creative Commons license.
In most jurisdictions, I think forums posts would have automatic copyright protection by the original authors. Maybe the terms and services of forums (if they are legally careful) would include some language stating that you implicitly grant a license for redistribution (to the forums operators, but not general public) by posting, but that certainly does not automatically put things under the public domain or even a permissive license.
Is the “whole of SL” really be under public domain? Or even a permissive license for that matter? For that to legally qualify, all of the contributors will have needed to agree to that. Maybe that is the case, due to the terms and conditions specifying so, but without that disclaimer, SL might have an ambiguous copyright and licensing status.
I just stumbled on the following comment, on this page about Alex Weldon’s book Breaking Bad Habits (that appears to have never been published).
This page, and all other pages on SL, are published under the OCL [Open Content License], which entitles any party to create their own work based on this page, with this amended work being available under the OCL as well. (…) The OCL requires that any distribution of the modified work based on the orginal, be delivered free to third parties and marked as such. Where the dividing line between “modified work based on the original” and “new work” goes can of course be open to interpretation.
Either way, contributors to this page should already be aware that by contributing on SL, you have given up some authorship rights you may have had, as your contribution falls under the OCL. Again, in this respect, this page is no different from any other page.
According to this commentor, long-time SL contributor Morten Pahle, all Sensei’s Library content can be distributed freely. Or, at least, that is my interpretation of his statement.
Of course, Morten doesn’t own Sensei’s Library, so this isn’t an official propagation.