[Foundation-l] re GFDL publisher credit

Thu Jul 13 08:26:21 UTC 2006

> Robert Scott Horning 
> <mailto:foundation-l%40wikimedia.org?Subject=%5BFoundation-l%5D%20GFDL%20publisher%20credit&In-Reply-To=> 
> wrote
>
>Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>>If Wikimedia wants to hold a copyright interest inthis material it needs 
>>to be ready to defend those copyrights in a serious way.  Having an 
>>employee make ad-hoc, arbitrary and speculative pronouncements on the 
>>law without a clear policy from the Board to back it up probably puts 
>>the entire project into greater peril than the obvious silliness of the 
>>more ignorant copyright violators.
>>
>>Ec
>>
>The precedence that I would like to use for why the WMF should hold 
>copyright on Wikimedia project content is the same reason why the Free 
>Software Foundation holds copyright for the GNU projects:  If there is a 
>copyright violation, they can be a legal party to enforcing the 
>copyright and defending the GPL.
>
My preference here would be to have each editor appoint WMF as a 
non-exclusive agent for the purpose of taking all steps to defend 
editors' copyrights.  This would prevent some distant future management 
from using its standing as a copyright owner to do things that can only 
be done by any copyright owner.  By disowning any copyrights it may have 
in the material it also helps to maintain its distance from the content 
if it is ever named to defend some suit based on the contents.

>The same thing (I would hope) could apply to the WMF if there is a GFDL 
>violation.  As it stands right now, by disclaiming copyright, all the 
>WMF can do to enforce a flagarant copyright violation of Wikipedia 
>content is sit on the sidelines and act as a cheerleader.  Brad would be 
>legally excluded from even being able to offer advise.  If you are an 
>individual contributor and want to defend the copyright of content that 
>you wrote, you would have to hire your own counsel, as would each 
>seperate contributor who would want to join in the legal defense.
>
Being agent should permit WMF to act.  The potential complications if 
the individuals had to do everything themselves boggle the mind.  There 
is also the question that registration of a copyright is a prerequisite 
for prosecuting any infringers.  Whose responsibility is it to ensure 
that all needed registrations happen?

>Frankly, I think this is an ugly situation, although it is "safe" for 
>the WMF and from a legal liability perspective, I do understand why the 
>decision to not claim copyright was done.  The liability instead rests 
>on the individual contributors.  Each time you add some content to 
>Wikimedia projects, particularly if you use the same account for each 
>contribution and are prominent in the "community", you put yourself into 
>harm's way legally speaking.  You can be held responsible for the 
>content that you added, or even failed to edit out when you made a minor 
>change to a page.  In other words, this approach to playing it safe 
>really is just transfering liability from the WMF to individual users.
>
>That really should be motivation to being a major contributor to 
>Wikimedia projects, isn't it?
>
I have no problem with the idea of WMF being "safe", and that uploaders 
should be legally responsible for the material they add.  I really don't 
agree that a person who has acted as a mere grammatical editor has 
published anything substantive.  Such an editor bases his entire effort 
on what is there in front of him; the research needed to establish the 
legality of the substance is beyond his frame of reference.

Ec