[WikiEN-l] Copyrighted material on Wikipedia

Sun Oct 5 04:46:42 UTC 2003

From: "user_Jamesday" <user_Jamesday at myrealbox.com>
...
>  The history is not a great concern. It's not intended to be part
>  of the publication. Only the current Wikipedia page has that
>  intent and that will remain true so long as search engines don't
>  index the history pages. Something which isn't intended for
>  publication and is documenting compliance with a legal notice
>  is unlikely to be copyright infringement.

Have you read the lively debate between Brian Vibber and myself regarding
the above? I was arguing devil's advocate the above position (it came out of
a discussion about the GFDL status of Wikilists, I think it was on the
general Wikipedia-L discussion list) and I think Brian put up a very good
fight for the position that all history pages are released under the GFDL
and thus anyone has the right to use them even after they become "outdated"
like legacy software releases. The mantra around here is once GFDL always
GFDL. Perhaps that is true. If it is, probably better to delete, but even
deletion does not matter because some downstream licensee/licensor has
probably already adapted it. . Since we can't know for sure that rationale
is:" probably" better to delete "potential" copyright infringements.

I say "probably" and "potential"  because there is also the argument that
could be used that the edit history pages are an archive that allows for
infringement of sorts as fair use in an archive is usually honoured to a
high degree and Title 17 USC sec. 108 allows archives to maintain copies of
otherwise copyrighted material, and sec. 107 would also operate in such a
situation.  Is such material available under GFDL? Probably not, but once it
gets into the archive (i.e. it is a page history URL not a live Wikipedia
page url) then there are probably no damages or no infringement or both,
page histories are rarely viewed and if they are relicensed under the GFDL
it is such licensor/licensee who must deal with the problem, not Wikpedia,
there is no Wikipedia warranty included with the license (in fact Wikipedia
is not the author of any article on Wikipedia, it is a coauthorship
copyright owned by all contributors to that page).  I feel that these later
statements are the best arguments to look at regarding history pages, not
the GFDL or the copyright infringement out of publication  arguments.  So
following this lastline of  argumentation to its natural conclusion nothing
needs to be done until someone comes to a different conclusion that is
consensus.

Alex756