[WikiEN-l] Vatican is asserting copyright

Wed Jan 25 17:10:04 UTC 2006

All,

CNN this morning was reporting that the Vatican has decided to assert
copyright on basically all papal communications (speeches, encyclicals,
etc.) made by every pope during the last 50 years, with the exception of
"the news media."  I don't know how much material we might have that could
fall afoul of this new declaration, or whether the Vatican would consider
Wikipedia and Wikisource under that umbrella, but someone more familiar with
Catholic information in Wikimedia areas should probably get involved.

I don't know if there's any reason to think the Vatican would be willing to
grant a PD or GFDL licensing exception for Wikipedia. The spokesman said
that "newspapers have the right to publish texts as news" (such as
encyclicals), presumably because there's no profit made specifically from
their use.  But I'm not sure how this would apply to WP or WS.

-k

http://www.forbes.com/technology/feeds/ap/2006/01/25/ap2475804.html