I think the official WMF stance that it is functionally powerless is the wrong one to take. WMF should be much more aggressive, even if Google is a major donor to WMF.

Hello,

When someone or an organization reuse the Wikipedia content without out attributions, they are breaching the license which literally ask: "You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author". Legally speaking I don't think the foundation can sue since it hasn't any claim on the content, the author has to do it. But it doesn't mean the foundation is powerless, it can provides legal assistance to author and it has a strong enough voice to relay a message from one of the contributions. That is what I call "having a high karma".

Whenever I need assistance from a third party, I would open my request with a line such as:

"Hello, I am working for Wikimedia, the foundation behind Wikipedia.  May you <insert request>".

Every single time I had a positive response and people were going above and beyond to assist, not me, but the projects. It is extremely powerful.

If we became aggressive and helped sue every single misuse of the licensed contents, the perceived message would certainly be that Wikis content is unsafe to use since it exposes one to legal retaliations. I am pretty sure the receivers would immediately remove all contents and never look back.

I don't think being aggressive would achieve our goals, but we definitely have all the powers to educate people and organizations on the license and how to reuse the content.

Antoine "hashar" Musso