[Wikipedia-l] Preserving GFDL requirements when splitting articles

Sun Nov 20 16:33:47 UTC 2005

On 11/19/05, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 11/19/05, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
> > 2005/11/19, Michael Crouch <creidieki at gmail.com>:
> > >
> > > I'm trying to improve the English Wikipedia's documentation on article
> > > moves, and I had a GFDL question. I hope this is the right place;
> > > feel free to point me elsewhere.
> > >
> > > Articles on En are often split in a cut-and-paste way, with material
> > > from one article removed and put into another article. None of the
> > > documentation (that I can find) mentions anything about maintaining
> > > the necessary authorship information.
> > >
> > > I've been told several times (on [[Wikipedia:Help desk]] and
> > > [[Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)]]) to simply mention in the edit
> > > summary "This material moved from [[Foo]]". Is this adequate for the
> > > GFDL requirements? I know we might not have a perfect solution to
> > > this, but I didn't want to add anything to the documentation without
> > > making sure it was correct.
> >
> >
> > Simply speaking: No, it is not enough according to the GNU/FDL, but
> > Wikipedia is interpreting the GNU/FDL so freely anyway that adding this to
> > it does not differ much either.
>
> Wikipedia has no legal right to "interpet the GFDL", when people save
> text they give permission to use the text under a certain license, and
> if you don't follow that license you're guilty of copyright
> infringement.

I think you'd have a tough time convincing a judge to rule that an ISP
is "guilty of copyright infringment" for simply hosting the content
which you provide for it to host.  Wikipedia isn't following the GFDL,
and it should be, but to say it's committing copyright infringment is
a different story entirely.

There is a difference here between simply hosting your content,
hosting it with modifications, copying it to a different part of
Wikipedia, and copying it to an entirely different project.  The first
is pretty obviously legal.  The second is more questionable, and you
could argue that you have a right to revoke the permission (certainly
upon any violation of the GFDL which is ongoing).  The last two are
even more legally shaky, but there are plenty of arguments that it is
legal even outside the GFDL.

Anthony