Fair Credit

The concept of fair credit assignment is about giving credit for each contribution, no matter how small. It is the essence of CopyRight, but that issue has gotten variously obfuscated by the many cases in the Law that have attempted to "settle the issue", but failed.

On traditional (printed) publications, the best that a contributor can hope for is her or his name on the paper. But with FairCreditAssignment, each contribution gets recorded as a collaborative, generative work. WikiPedia showed the success of this model by recording every edit along with the user's name, if given, and making the full history available. It is especially important when the only method of compensation is by giving credit; like is common on the web.

Like CopyRight, "fair credit assignment" is about giving personal, named representation where another has originated something. So, in other words, you also can't publish someone else's work under your name. But it goes beyond copyright by recording contributions, no matter how small, along the way.

The spirit of FairUse is about creating and honoring a community of sharing. It should be noted that every creative work, to some degree, has relied on the prior work of others. The academic establishment is successful because it creates such a community, in fact it developed these concepts. Our current market system can't accommodate this idea of a collaboration economy very well, but the PangaiaProject is designed to do just that through a UnifiedDataModel, building a complete "EpistemicsOfQuantity" or Ontology.

With regard to the Law, one must bear in mind that the arena has been seriously confused after Big Corporations started demanding settlements from the US Justice system before it was wise enough to be making such rulings.