[WikiEN-l] Legal advice

Sun Jan 11 00:32:14 UTC 2004

> User:Anthony DiPierro claims on Wikipedia:Possible copyright infringements 
> that Wikipedia is violating his copyright by not releasing the entirety of 
> an article he modified under GFDL (Al Gore) including images, some of which 
> may have been used under fair use. The images were included after his 
> modifications. He claims the entire article, including images, must be 
> released under GFDL to avoid breaking the license. I'm not a lawyer, I'm 
> just confused (heh) and worried that this may become a problem.. probably 
> just me being weird.

> - Evil saltine

Firstly, legal questions should be posted to wikilegal-l (or resolved on wikipedia, of 
course). I'm cross-posting this one.

Some claim that we only release Wikipedia text under the GFDL, (see 
[[meta:permission grant extent]]). As far as I know, Jimbo has not explicitly clarified 
this. However, this claim is not sustainable when the images are embedded within 
the article using "inline links". In this case, the image and the text form a single 
document.

My reasoning is based on the various cases where people created HTML pages that 
embedded content from another server - there are a bunch of examples at 
http://www.linksandlaw.com/linkingcases-framing.htm. In these cases, it was argued 
that inline linking creates a derivative work. Note that the GFDL only gives 
permission to create a derivative work if the resulting work is also released under the 
GFDL.

If the fair use image (or, indeed, quote) would probably also be fair use for all 
(reasonable) downstream users, and its copyright status is explicitly marked, then 
we're probably ok, but we do typically ask the image uploader to add as much detail 
as they can on the image description page, so sub-licensees can decide whether to 
take the risk. However, if the fair use claim relies heavily, on, for example, 
Wikipedia's non-profit status, then we should remove it, and may be in danger of 
infringing our contributors copyright.

If an image is vital, note that normal linking (not "inline linking") does NOT create a 
derivative work.

-- Martin "IANAL" Harper