[Wikipedia-l] Collection copyrights

Wed May 1 14:16:54 UTC 2002

This raises an important question in my mind.  The Wikipedia FAQ says that
"the articles" are licensed under the FDL, but says nothing about the
collection.  Is it, like all of the articles, licensed under the FDL? 

It has been my understanding that Bomis has released the collection under
the terms of the Free Document License, but, as I did  a quick search of the
list archive and on the wikipedia I find that it shows no specific text
stating that this is the case.   

I did find an e-mail from Larry Sanger saying that he thought everybody
assigned copyright to Bomis, and then Bomis which licensed everything thing
under the GNU/FDL.  I think the part about copyright assignment has been
hashed out sufficiently on this list, but I would like clarification on the
issue of the license status of the collection. 

My best guess is that it is. I'm fairly certain that Jimbo and Larry
intended for the entirety of the "free encyclopedia" to be licensed under
the FDL.  If I am correct in assuming that the FDL also applies to the
collection copyright, then I'd amend Lee's analysis to mention that: though
copyright law gives Bomins the right to control the use of the wikipedia
collection, the FDL explicitly allows republication and modification.
Therefore anyone who downloads and republishes the wikipedia would not be in
violation of copyright unless they violate the terms of the FDL.  Moreover,
since it is only the FDL that grants anybody the right to reproduce
Wikipedia articles at all, it is not particularly burdensome to be required
to abide by the FDL if somebody publishes enough of it to violate Bomis's
collection copyright. 

-----Original Message-----
From: lcrocker at nupedia.com [mailto:lcrocker at nupedia.com]
Sent: Monday, April 29, 2002 2:23 PM
To: wikipedia-l at nupedia.com
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Collection copyrights

>This means that Bomis' collection copyright would be violated if
>somebody were to copy the website wholesale. If on the other hand the
>wiki sources of the articles are downloaded one by one, and a new web
>site created out of those, then Bomis' collection copyright won't be
>violated. If this new web site doesn't offer the articles under GFDL,
>then the individual article authors could sue of course.

There's a little more to it than that: copyrights apply to "creative
expression", and "selection" of what to present is a creative act
specifically recognized (see Feist v. Rural).  So it doesn't matter
how they acquire the whole collection, whether they copy the website
whole or download the articles one by one; if they present the same
collection of articles that we do, they have violated our copyright
on that creative choice of which articles to present.

> This is similar to a Linux distribution. If you create a
> distribution, you can claim collection copyright, and somebody
> who copies the CDROM image without permission is in violation.

...that's true...

> Everybody can however create their own distribution out of the
> exact same free software components that you used, without
> violating your collection copyright.

...but that's not true.  You /can/ be sued for violating a
collection copyright for publishing the same collection of free
components as someone else, regardless of how you acquired them,
and even if you package them differently.  Choice of what to 
present is a creative act, and is protected.
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