[Foundation-l] Offering Wikibooks content for sale

Tue Jul 4 13:36:48 UTC 2006

To be perfectly clear, I am *not* opposed to seeing material produced by  
Wikipedia, Wikibooks, Wikisource, or any other project published per se. Nor do  
I believe that the person who did this acted in bad faith. I do not.

What I find problematic is as follows:
1. The material is presented as being copyrighted by the Wikimedia  
Foundation. It is not.
2. Being copyrighted by the WMF would mean legal liability for the content.  
We are not in a position to accept such liability. 
3. A third party, Lulu Press, is using the trademarked name of the  
Foundation to sell a book. While I believe that they are doing this unwittingly,  it 
nonetheless infringes on our trademark.
4. All of this is taking place in the midst of negotiations to obtain a  
grant to secure more money for the development of the Wikijunior books. One of  
the issues being discussed is print. When they come to us and say "But you  are 
already printing the books," we will look pretty stupid answering "Actually,  
we didn't know that." 

Of course, I defer to Brad and the other lawyers on the WMF to tell me I am  
wrong about this. 

Danny