[Licom-l] Deleted Content

Mon Apr 20 16:30:16 UTC 2009

On Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 9:07 AM, Mike Godwin <mgodwin at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
> I'm sorry for being unclear.  My answer in this hypothetical would be this:
>
> Whether the article is "live" or not is, in my view, orthogonal to the
> question of whether it is part of the MMC that is being relicensed.  A
> "dead" article, or an article that was scarcely viewed before it was hidden,
> is part of the MMC by virtue of the fact that it can be restored at some
> later date.
>
> The confusion lies in the conflation of the notions of (1) publication and
> (2) made publicly available.  Although in common language, the two notions
> are identical or close ot it, in legal terms they are analytically distinct.
> Hiding an article for lack of notability (for example) doesn't make it
> nonpublished. It has still been published, and you can't unring that bell by
> hiding it. (Also, making the article available at all and having it exist in
> the MMC database, though hidden, is still publication for legal purposes, in
> my view.)

I realize and accept that there is a distinction between being
"published" (which may be a historical fact) and being "publicly
available".

However, my concern turns on the fact that GFDL 1.3 refers to a right
for content to be "republished" under CC-BY-SA.  Perhaps the legal
understanding is different from my understanding, but in order for
content to be "republished" it seems like there needs to be a new (or
at least ongoing) act of publication.

The framers of the GFDL could have created a right to "relicense"
content under CC-BY-SA, in which case I would agree that where that
content currently resides doesn't matter.  But since they explicitly
framed it in terms of being "republished" I am wondering whether or
not it the license migration can be said to apply to content that is
at no point live during the window of time for republishing under
CC-BY-SA.

-Robert