Thanks for the post and insights. I should point out that we are not assuming that the format will be adopted by microformats.org. That will be Tantek’s and the rest of the community’s call. Not being within physical proximity of the people working on microformats in the Valley is challenging. So , we thought we would narrowly focus our collaboration and exploration on content reuse on a site a bit less intimidating to the average content creator. Hence, playtheweb.org. However, we are hopeful that the results will be useful to and possibly integrated into the microformats initiative.

Rob Linton is proposing adopting your stacking solution, but always maintaining the original node (source?) attribution.

Thoughts?

Au contraire, it is far better.

Only Creative Commons introduces the notion that copyright is a means of empowering the author to require attribution, govern commercial use, and dictate whether derivatives are permissible. All that is an illusion. Copyright licenses grant the author no greater power than copyright, and that is no power at all. Copyright is only a grant of power to wealthy publishing corporations, and licenses are at best, a restoration of the liberties to the public that copyright has suspended.

The simplest way of promoting the distribution and use of ones work is to culturally liberate the public to do so, to liberate them completely, i.e. via a copyleft license that ensures that one’s work and its derivatives are free of all constraint.

The GPL is a copyleft license. CC-SA is the closest CC has come up with, but it still falls short in terms of requiring attribution. It is also a tad lax when it comes to combined works.

Attribution should never be a legal obligation, only that any attribution is truthful (including attribution implicit from context, if no explicit attribution is given). One should never be tempted to wield the unethical power provided by copyright to compel respect. The power should be neutralised and any respect earned.

In other words, you should not expect attribution or your work used if you threaten to prosecute your audience and potential users with copyright infringement if they fail to give you credit.

Naturally, those who fail to give credit where credit is due will lose respect from their own audiences. Moreover, those who go so far as to commit misattribution, aka plagiarism, will suffer considerable opprobrium, which should suffice as a disincentive until such time as any legislation may be required to deal with the most nefarious cases.