[Foundation-l] re GFDL publisher credit

Fri Jul 14 14:14:00 UTC 2006

Ray Saintonge wrote:

>Robert Scott Horning wrote:
>
>>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.
>>
>>    
>>
>The problem with actual damages is that they are measured in monetary 
>terms and need to be proven.  Since we all give our services for free 
>there is no damage to be proven.  Only statutory damages make sense.  Of 
>course anyone with a copyright interest in a work should be legally 
>entitled to file a registration.  Those with more radical views about 
>the nature of free content should have no business preventing others 
>from protecting their own rights.  If they want to remain anonymous that 
>would still be their choice.  The material that should be registered 
>could be in the form of a data dump onto CD(s) that are sent monthly or 
>on some other regular basis.
>
>Ec
>  
>
One of the requirements for formal registration of copyright require 
that you document the nationality and residence (the name of the country 
you live in is sufficient) of all copyright claimants.  The purpose of 
this is to know what laws actually protect the content, as international 
copyright conventions do apply and nationality does have some impact on 
copyright protection.  

I made a request almost a year ago that Wikimedia projects allow 
voluntary declaration of this information (I don't think it should ever 
be compelled), together with your real legal name for this purpose.  The 
proposal was mainly that such information could be put into the user 
preferences section where you also put your sig and some other personal 
details like e-mail address.  Even asking for voluntary declarations of 
information like this was met with incredible hostility and accusations 
that I didn't understand the WMF privacy policy.  The purpose of 
collecting this information was specifically so I could file formal 
copyright registration on behalf of Wikibooks users including myself.

BTW, the Library of Congress does not have a maximum limit of only 5 
copyright claimants, but since the GFDL suggests the number of 5 people 
listed, most people assume that is the most that you are permitted to 
list as authors.  It is not, and I don't see a problem with listing 20 
or more people, as can happen with some Wikimedia projects.  For 
Wikibooks, that can be 20 different people with significant 
contributions.  My reading of the GFDL is that it suggests that you 
should list at least five different people if there were that many 
contributors, and that meets the minimum terms of the GFDL, and not 
necessarily even the minimum requirements for copyright law.

For the Wikijunior books and for some of the other Wikibooks, this 
information is being collected more informally in "author" pages where 
this information is being listed.  It is also assumed that when a 
Wikibook is published, that this information will also be used (at least 
the author's names) as credit for who helped put together the content. 
 Again, this is all voluntary and some people have removed their names 
from these author pages as well for various reasons.  Even these pages 
have been controvercial, with some cries to have them all deleted and 
banned by policy.  This is why I say that the WMF is encouraging 
deliberate obfusaction of user information preventing copyright 
registration.

At the moment, however, I don't know of any specific content for any 
Wikimedia project that has had formal copyright registration occur.  And 
you are correct that trying to prove damages that a free project like 
this would be difficult at best for any monitary amount, although I 
think a judge could still come up with at least some modest amount just 
to prove a point that copyright violations are wrong to do, even for 
free content.

-- 
Robert Scott Horning