[Foundation-l] Commons Usurp issue

Wed Jun 4 15:28:44 UTC 2008

On Tue, Jun 3, 2008 at 10:37 PM, Robert Rohde <rarohde at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 3, 2008 at 7:28 PM, Andrew Whitworth <wknight8111 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> On Tue, Jun 3, 2008 at 10:22 PM, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > 2008/6/4 George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com>:
>> >> If an usurped account owner complains, along these lines, our
>> >> counterargument is "We still list (your account / identity) in the
>> >> article history, though we've changed the displayed text string for
>> >> it.  That's all we do for anyone, ever."
>> >
>> > Nice try but the GFDL isn't interested in account / identities just
>> > the text string.
>>
>> The GFDL is concerned with authors, not their arbitrarily chosen
>> pseudonyms. So long as the invariant list of authors is properly
>> attributed, it does not matter what nickname they use to sign into the
>> website.
>>
> How can you possibly properly attribute the authors' without using their
> self-determined names?
>
> I agree with Geni that the natural interpretation of "List ... as authors,
> one or more persons or
> entities responsible for authorship..." is to report them in the form
> orginally declared by the author.  Renaming them without their permission
> strikes me as neither legal nor ethical.

Robert Rohde and Geni have my full agreement here.

I think an argument could be made if a person used multiple names on
the projects and we switched content around between the names without
consulting them.  Likewise, trivial changes arising from technical
necessity (say if SUL was implemented by sticking @home_project_name
behind all usernames) would be arguably okay.  i.e.  I would not argue
that the we couldn't reformat the displayed name,  but we can't just
name it.  (we could, OTOH, delete all his contribs on commons then
reuse the name)

But changing someones only attribution to something which is not their
name of choice and which might confound someone their effort to build
reputation under a chosen name?  No way!   Intentionally confusing the
authorship by giving someone else the account? But continuing leave
the old attribution as required? Ugh. No.

Of course, if the user agrees to being renamed then thats okay.

On Tue, Jun 3, 2008 at 10:31 PM, Andrew Whitworth <wknight8111 at gmail.com> wrote:
> You cannot hold copyright anonymously, the copyright is held by the

Anonymously authored, and pseudonomously authored works are most
certainly copyrightable.

> 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 content was released under a license. The terms of this
license are presumably the only things with make it legal for us to
redistribute the content at all.  The terms specify clear requirements
related to attribution, requiring it to be preserved.   The content
was clearly attributed to a particular identity.    You can't argue
that the pseudonym isn't the attribution, since it's the only
identifier we have for the user and it's overwhelmingly clear that the
established practice, belief, and intent of our users is that their
account names be used for attribution.

Or will you now argue that the copyrights are invalid on every book
published under a pen name?