[Foundation-l] Offering Wikibooks content for sale

Tue Jul 4 14:16:43 UTC 2006

On 7/4/06, daniwo59 at aol.com <daniwo59 at aol.com> wrote:
> 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.

I'd like to see it stated officially somewhere that Wikimedia
disclaims all copyright interest in Wikijunior Big Cats (and whatever
other content it wishes to disclaim copyright on).  It's unclear that
you are speaking on behalf of the foundation with this statement you
just made, and it's also unclear that you are authorized to make such
a statement.

I also should point out that the copyright statement you're talking
about has been in the PDF distributed by Wikimedia since at least
December 2005.  It nothing new, and it's still there, Go to
[[Wikijunior Big Cats]] and click on "Print Version (PDF) (as of
December 11th, 2005. pp. 65)" -
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikibooks/en/c/cc/Big_Cats.pdf

If Wikimedia wants a different copyright statement in any print
version, a PDF with such a copyright statement on it should be
available.

> 2. Being copyrighted by the WMF would mean legal liability for the content.
> We are not in a position to accept such liability.

So in your opinion everyone who contributes to Wikipedia is liable for
the entire content?  This seems like an odd legal position.

> 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.

How are they using the trademarked name of the Foundation to sell a
book (or, how were they, as they pulled it)?  How can a verbatim copy
(under the GFDL) be produced which doesn't do this?

This relies in part on whether or not you think the PDF at
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikibooks/en/c/cc/Big_Cats.pdf is a
trademark infringement.

> 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."
>
Well, now you know.

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

Anthony