--- On Fri, 9/19/08, Amir E. Aharoni <amir.aharoni(a)gmail.com> wrote:
From: Amir E. Aharoni <amir.aharoni(a)gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] deviation from the GFDL in smaller projects
To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List"
<foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Date: Friday, September 19, 2008, 5:38 AM
On Fri, Sep 19, 2008 at 1:22 PM, Nikola Smolenski
<smolensk(a)eunet.yu> wrote:
Amir E. Aharoni wrote:
> One worrying thing that i noticed is that in some
of these projects
> there is no strict adherence to GFDL-only
text.
Since my first day in
> Wikipedia i understood how important the GFDL
is.
I understood that
> articles cannot be copied verbatim even from
sources whose copyright
> terms allow copying for non-commercial usage,
because the "free" in
> "The Free Encyclopedia" does not
refer
only to price.
Well, there is even more of that than you describe.
There are projects that are either unable or unvilling
to enforce proper
licencing of images. (Read: many/most images are
without any copyright
templates.)
I intentionally limited my description of the problem to
text. Image
fair use is a separate issue.
There are projects that, despite dedicating
significant attention to
copyright issues, have significant amount of
material
copied from print
sources, and thus practically undetectable.
Yes, this exists. I am referring to cases where the
projects (not just
single contributors) are aware that the license of the text
is not
GFDL.
This may come as a surprise to Westerners, but
most
people out there are
not really aware of copyright. Intelligent,
educated
adults may have no
knowledge or understanding of it, and rise a
protest
when you tell them
they can't copy text from somewhere.
True: I intentionally wrote "aware that the license of
the text is not
GFDL" above, because it is possible that they think
that "free as in
beer" is GFDL-compatible.
I would volunteer to approach such projects with an
explanation of the
importance of the GFDL, but i am not a lawyer and not an
official
representative of WMF. The WMF can tell me to "be
bold", but since i
am not talking about cases of singular articles, but whole
projects
which apparently have a policy of disregard to GFDL
compatibility, i
am quite unsure. The legitimacy of a project may be in
question, so i
am reluctant to handle it all by myself.
Depending on the language, you may the person best able to educate some of these wikis. Or
especially if you don't want publicize who they are ;) The legitimacy of the project
should not brought up until some education effrt has proven to fail. Do you know about
the WMF licensing resolution [1]? Is it translated into the languages in question? If
not, the first step would be working on such a translation and then bringing that to the
attention of the community that is deviating. Next figure out the likliest Wikipedia full
of knowledge people on copyright to be able to communicate with this smaller wiki (look at
the most common second languages on the small wiki). Then recruit some people from the
bigger wiki to help you answer questions and explain things.
Birgitte SB
[