[Foundation-l] Commons Usurp issue

Wed Jun 4 02:41:35 UTC 2008

On Tue, Jun 3, 2008 at 7:31 PM, Andrew Whitworth <wknight8111 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> On Tue, Jun 3, 2008 at 10:24 PM, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Nope. When someone requests a rename they are effectively re-releasing
> > all their edits under a second name. They are free to do this (they
> > just can't stop people crediting those edits under the old name).
>
> You cannot hold copyright anonymously, the copyright is held by the
> author directly, not through their nickname as a proxy. The nickname
> is not a separate legal entity, and you cannot release any
> contributions "under" it. The nickname is not you, it is not your
> identity, and it has no legal standing whatsoever. A nickname is
> simply a technological measure that the software makes available for
> us to use the website anonymously. This has nothing to do with the
> author's ownership of his contributions.
>

The nickname is the author identity with respect to the GFDL.  You are right
that the copyright belongs to a physical person (whose true identity is
often inadequately known for our purposes), but the natural reading in my
opinion of the GFDL is to report authorship in the manner specified by the
author.  In that sense the nickname is, in my opinion, an authorship
identity that needs to be preserved unless you have the author's permission
to change it.

-Robert Rohde