Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-655-20130922200053/@comment-4811793-20130923224727

Acer4666 wrote: Is this not just codifying a previously unwritten agreement that MA had with Wikia - that they're allowed to put adverts on the content when hosting it themselves, but that's the only commercial use allowable for it?

This is essentially correct, and this best represents the reason for the change in wording.

We wanted the licensing page to accurately represent the state of play. Without commenting on whether or not past statements regarding the distinction between “using” and “hosting” were correct, we felt it was more accurate to say that as far as Wikia is concerned, the users of the small handful of wikis that maintain an NC license have accepted some commercial activity, at least as far as the placement of advertisements. By continuing to contribute with the certain knowledge that Wikia is performing some commercial activity with the content (ads), there was already an implicit waiver of the noncommercial aspect of the license for Wikia.

What the waiver boils down to is that you allow Wikia to use the content for commercial purposes, most notably placing ads on the wiki. You waive the commercial restriction for us, which makes hosting the community possible. The waiver does not allow us to relicense the content.

Let me be clear: we have no intention to relicense any content you and the other users of communities like Memory Alpha have created under any other terms. Relicensing is not on the agenda.

That said, we do place ads on the material.

We updated the language on the licensing page to reflect this reality, not impose a new one. We absolutely respect the NC part of the license. Look no further than the recent Rotten Tomatoes partnership for proof of this. If our intention was to try to bend the license beyond it’s intentions, we would have included Memory Alpha content in that promotion. But we didn’t because we know the license doesn’t allow it, and we respect that. We have even taken steps to keep API access to these communities restricted, so that they can’t be indiscriminately reused and the license terms are respected.

This licensing page is designed to summarize and explain the licensing schemes on Wikia, and as such we wanted to make it as accurate as possible in it’s description of the different licenses and how they function for our communities. It is meant to be more descriptive than prescriptive and the change we are discussing was made a year ago, with no sinister intent and no sinister follow-up action.

As the changes to the policy page were made to reflect the situation as it stands, we didn't affirmatively inform the relevant communities. If we did make a radical alteration to our Terms of Use or tried to change the license itself, we absolutely would have made sure that everyone who contributed to these communities knew about it.