[Foundation-l] Baidupedia copyvio collections

Fri Jun 13 20:39:37 UTC 2008

If they  (the contributor) were, or should have been on notice that  
the material came from Wikipedia or was under a free license, there  
may not be an offer/acceptance issue (Baidupedia knows or reasonably  
should know that they are violating the license, and if the  
contributor knows or should know it too, then the contract is not void  
for lack of acceptance, though it may be void for other reasons).

Another concern is then if the new derivative is not under the GFDL,  
does that give rise to copyright infringement? Or does the old content  
divorce itself from the new content?

We've always thought in terms of "What if a static source uses our  
content without attribution" but how do things change when it is a  
collaborative or dynamic site that uses our content without attribution?

-Dan
On Jun 13, 2008, at 4:25 PM, George Herbert wrote:

> On Fri, Jun 13, 2008 at 1:05 PM, Dan Rosenthal  
> <swatjester at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I'd certainly ask for advice from counsel on this, but I would want  
>> to
>> know: "given that Baidupedia is starting with GFDL content, does the
>> fact that they obscure that their content is licensed under the GFDL
>> prevent all subsequent derivative edits from also being unknowingly
>> licensed under the GFDL?"
>>
>> Essentially, if you are making a derivative work of a viral/share-
>> alike/GFDL style content, but you do not know what the status of the
>> original was (and did not agree to license your content under the
>> GFDL), what is the copyright status of the newly created derivative
>> work?
>>
>> We'd need to know the answer to that question before doing a "reverse
>> Baidupedia". If the answer is "It's under the GFDL" then we're ok to
>> proceed (ignoring for a second the moral issues). If the answer is
>> something other than that, we may not be able to do it.
>
> In contract terms, this seems like a classic failure of meeting of the
> minds - if the secondary contributor is unaware of the original
> license on the material, then they cannot have agreed to the license,
> and likely cannot be held to it.
>
>
> -- 
> -george william herbert
> george.herbert at gmail.com
>
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