[Foundation-l] re GFDL publisher credit

Thu Jul 13 12:37:07 UTC 2006

Ray Saintonge wrote:

>>Robert Scott Horning
>>
>>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?
>  
>
Registration is certainly nice in GFDL and most copyleft enforcement 
because it sets up a minimum statutory penalty if you can prove 
copyright infringement.  Otherwise you can only seek actual damages. 
 Note that the registration must take place before the infringement 
occurs.  This is something I've discussed at length on this mailing list 
before, with many individuals on this list quite against formal 
registration, and deliberate obfuscation of user information that would 
make such registration difficult to impossible.

All I'm pointing out is that the situation right now is exactly up to 
individual contributors, and you are correct, it boggles the mind to 
think what is really necessary to do this enforcement.

>>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
>  
>
I'm not saying that a person who adds some minor edit to a Wikipedia 
article that is then brought up in a libel lawsuit is necessarily going 
to be completely held responsible for everything in that article, but 
liability is certainly there to an extent and it wouldn't surprise me if 
your name was brought up in a formal lawsuit that simply decided to go 
after every contributor in the history of the article, even if all you 
did was revert blatant vandalism at one point acting in good faith. 
 That would still take some time to explain even what reverting 
vandalism is to a judge, who has no clue about MediaWiki software and 
wouldn't even really understand the role of admins or vandalism patrols 
in Wikimedia projects.  I'm sure such a judge in a lawsuit like that 
would learn real fast, but you would have to get a lawyer and defend 
yourself first.  As the John Siegenthaler situation suggests, there may 
be some individuals who really get bent out of shape for what content is 
in Wikipedia and don't care to seek redress from within the Wikimedia 
community of users and editors.  And if you reverted one form of 
vandalism, the question would be raised as to why you let other 
blatantly wrong facts about a person or company go unchecked.

I hope that nobody really has to deal with these issues, and I'm also 
sure that if there was a problem that a "legal defense fund" could be 
set up very quickly to help out Wikimedia users who through no fault of 
their own got tied up with these issues.  

I was involved briefly with the DVD de-CSS software and "dodged the 
bullet" when my involvement was only peripheral to the lawsuits that 
were thrown around by the MPAA and the DVD Fourm for cracking the 
encryption used on DVD-Video discs.  And this was GPL'd software that 
the only justification for filing the lawsuit was a violation of a trade 
secret by somebody who did reverse engineering of software and didn't 
have any affiliation with any company producing DVD software.  I do know 
some of the people who were dragged into court over that issue, and it 
was a pain to try and deal with.  With the technical books that are on 
Wikibooks, I don't see a reason why that sort of situation might not 
repeat itself again but with written publications instead.... even if 
the situation turns out to be perfectly legal.  And the liability would 
indeed rest on the contributors in this situation.

-- 
Robert Scott Horning