Erik Moeller wrote: But that's not permitted. The history must be *part* of the document, not a link to a history available elsewhere. So if you're distributing a paper encyclopedia, you must distribute a paper history as well. -Mark

On Thursday 12 February 2004 01:57 am, Alex R. wrote: If someone were to visit http://www.slashdotsucks.com:8080/wik/Philosophy they would not see any GFDL notice, and would therefore assume that the text was copyrighted by the owner of the site, and not available under any "free" license such as the GFDL. In this sense it is a violation of the spirit of the GFDL by making it as hard as possible for uninformed visitors to know the copyright and license status of the texts. This is exactly the kind of trolling anthony engages in all over wikipedia. Best, Sascha Noyes -- Please encrypt all email. Public key available from www.pantropy.net/snoyes.asc

Erg, looks like it didn't go to the list last time I sent this, let's try that again... My thought is to set up a page, say on meta, where people can list themselves if they wish to object to his use of articles to which they've contributed. With just a few major contributors, that'll encompass a large portion of the article space. Coordinated action can be quite effective. -- Jake

On Feb 12, 2004, at 3:22 AM, Alex R. wrote: (Okay, I understand you're being Devil's Advocate here... I just want to refute the argument as I see it.) However, this argument assumes that a Web page can be treated in the same way as a paper Encyclopedia. I think it's been very clearly established that this is not the case. A book is clearly a single work -- you don't tear pages out of it to share around at all. And if, for example, a professor shares an article from the encyclopedia, every professor I've ever had has always included a photocopy of the title page along with it, so that the attributions and copyright are included. However, that is clearly not likely to happen in the case of the World Wide Web. Every individual page is treated as a work in its own right. A collection of pages like Wikipedia, creating a distinct "site", is certainly analogous to a book in a way. But if you print out a single Web page, the browser (should) always include the date/time/URL of that page along with the information. Each Web page, though part of a greater whole, is also a unique entity in its own right in a way that a single page out of a book really cannot. Therefore, it's essential to provide attributions and copyright information on every page. (Is this logical enough? I'm not a legal expert, of course, but I'd like to think that my philosophy/logic classes are up to the task. ;-)) Dan Carlson, Administrator Memory Alpha: A Star Trek WikiWiki http://memoryalpha.st-minutiae.com/

Alex- When I view a Wikipedia article, I can view the article directly -- I do not have to pass through a title page, as I would when viewing an FDL- licensed book. I could search for "Donald Rumsfeld" on Google and immediately end up on the Wikipedia article about him. Or on the McFly article, in which case I would be told nothing about the fact that the article is licensed under the GNU FDL, or about its history, its authors etc. This is clearly in violation of both the letter and the spirit of our license. Warranty disclaimer? He effectively says that only what he writes is under the FDL. That means that he does not fulfill the requirement of the FDL that derivative works must be put under the same license. This shows clearly that he doesn't follow the FDL. Each page has an individual history section. The data on the page above comes from his ass (Marxists.org? WTF?). I fail to see the relationship here. Anthony fails to follow the requirements of the FDL. The above text is a licensing agreement for putting the text under the FDL in the first place. Seems reasonable. I don't make any copyright claims to Wikipedia's sports- related articles, for example. We can ask our contributors to transfer authority to the Wikimedia Foundation, of course, and that's exactly what we should do. The FDL sucks, everyone knows it. Morally there's no question for me that Anthony is doing this for one single purpose: to create trouble, to poison the community well. I can easily imagine him spending hours scouring the FDL for loopholes which he could use to piss people off. For this reason alone I believe that Anthony should be immediately and indefinitely banned from all Wikimedia venues. Some will argue that he should be given a chance to make things right first. Maybe he should, but I doubt that it will make any difference. In this case it would be more efficient to just group some major Wikipedia contributors as complainants and file suit, perhaps even class action. Regards, Erik

Op do 12-02-2004, om 08:41 schreef Alexandre Dulaunoy: But the FDL allows you to remove authors as long as you keep five principal authors listed. So this would always violate the other author's rights? Wouter Vanden Hove

From: "Erik Moeller" <erik_moeller(a)gmx.de> To: <wikipedia-l(a)Wikimedia.org> Sent: Thursday, February 12, 2004 3:22 AM Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] An FDL test case: McFly publication And then if you wanted to find out about Wikipedia you would click around the site to find out what the GFDL is, what Wikipedia is about. You would not, if you knew nothing about Wikipedia and wanted to know more, not click on any of the links on the page. That is what links are for. I do not think anyone whould disagree with it being a violation of the spirit of Wikipedia, but my problem is that he is trying to argue, by his actions, that what "we" feel is a reasonable interpretation of the GFDL is not the only interpretation of the GFDL. I agree with you Eric, it is not nice, but I really am having trouble with figuring out what we can really do to stop him short of adapting a new Terms of Use that is linked to every page that essentially requires some of the things that Wikipedians want to be included in the GFDL to be included in the terms of use, and even then this might be considered an attempt to modify the GFDL and held to be void by the FSF. follows.] which license This is a disclaimer. He is not stating that the rest is NOT released according to the FDL but only that he can only copyright his particular contributions, the rest of the site is covered by the stated that everything is "considered released under the GFDL". Wikipedia He is suggesting that the page histories are not equivalent to the FDL idea of history. He is taking the tack that the whole of Wikipedia is released as a "documentation manual" and all he has to do is link back somewhere to a transparent copy of the whole Wikipedia, which he has done. I agree with your interpretation too, but there is nothing requiring McFly to interpret the GFDL the way you want to have it interpreted is there? Since the summer I have been trying to get a Submission Standards/Terms of Use adopted and at every step of the way people are complaining that I am being too legalistic, well this is what happens when you don't listen to someone who has some concept of what copyright law and contract law is all about. All I can say is "I told you so". Sorry. by released from a Is it? I have had discussions with Wikipedians who say that there is no "agreement" between Wikipedians and Wikipedia. It is saying that "all contribution are released under the GNU FDL? How is that not a copyright notice? argue licensing interpretation of I think he would argue that he is just following his interpretation of the letter of the law. Even if you do ban him from using Wikipedia how can you ban him from downloading it? Wouldn't someone argue that that is against the letter and spirit of the GFDL? If he can download the database he can release it under his interpretation of the GFDL. How banning will stop him from doing that I do not understand? article Under this scenario every single Wikipedian now has to apply to the US Copyright office to register his/her rights so that they have standing to apply to the courts. If it is done as a class action the argument will be that each case should be a separate case. This would require that resources be put together to pay for contacting each contributor and getting them to file the notices. Typically in ClassActions the defendants (who normally have deep pockets) pay for this noticing, or the class action lead plaintiffs have law firms who invest in the costs (even with the web this would cost tens of thousands in filing fees alone). The law firms invest because they eventually get compensated by the deep pocket defendants. Here you are suing an individual who is probably just a pseudonym, who may be hard to obtain jurisdiction over and who may not have any assets. I know of no law firm that would be able to do this and I don't think that Wikimedia would decide to invest, lets say $100,000 in getting this process going just because someone is not compliant with the interpretation of the GFDL that Wikipedians say, morally, should be interpreted the way they say it should be interpreted. The reality is that the GFDL as applied to Wikipedia is very close to a grant into the public domain. A federal judge (or even an appeal panel) is likely to suggest that by releasing your work under the GFDL that you are waiving a lot of rights, allowing your work to enter into a joint ownership scheme that may only require someone to give you attribution rights if you are one of the five major contributors to an article. Even then the case law states that the only right that joint copyright holders have against each other is sharing of royalties, there is nothing in the GFDL that gives the co-authors any right to the royalties of a license so there is no grounds that one can sue a co-owner or license under the GFDL and under the contract license theory the damages are at best only nominal. It is, after all, a free license so that the guys who use it to make money are allowed to do so and the other coauthors cannot take them to court. It begs the question, how enforceable is the GFDL? Even if Wikipedia was now to require copyright assignment that would not be retroactive, and even if it could be retroactive what about all the people who have left the project their agreements with Wikipedia cannot be changed no without their consent, can it? I would argue that it could because Wikipedia was always a voluntary association, but it is going to take people taking some drastic steps that a lot of users are going to complain about as being against "consensus" and "community standards". They might even start to side with ADP because he is recognizing a broad (albeit Marxist) interpretation of the FDL and copyleft whereas we are suggesting a contractual and more limited interpretation of Wikipedia as a collaborative venture that is only using the FDL as a way to insure that downstream users recognize moral rights. Interesting that creating a mirror in more moral rights oriented jurisdiction and filing suit there may be a way to get McFly Network into more trouble because with the stringent rules of attribution over text works in those jurisdiction your arguments Eric have much more weight. US law is really too weak in this area, but that was done to protect publishers, not authors, who have most of the lobbyists in the US (unlike EU states that have a more cultural interpretation of copyright rather than the US commercial interpretation). Alex756