David Newton wrote:
I tried to get a definitive statement, of the type that
you just made,
out of people on this very mailing list. I also posted things on the
Scriptorium at Wikisource to get input there. The result was more
confusion. I then got interested parties to chat in IRC (those
interested parties that were actually interested enough at the time to
respond) to see what should be done about this. The copyright page of
the main Wikisource domain was altered with a note making it clear
that this was a trial. Nothing was said about it for a month and so
the page that was referred to earlier in this thread was altered.
It wasn't exactly like this alteration was made in secret and it
wasn't exactly like this alteration was made without trying to get the
opinion of the Foundation on the matter. After all that's precisely
why I posted about it on this very mailing list!
One needs to understand the decision making dynamics around the wikis.
A lack of responses does not equate to disinterest or agreement. Most
people don't feel like carrying on discussions ad nauseam when it
doesn't affect what they are personally doing. Most policy discussions
are inconclusive and very, very tedious. When you change a "policy"
page, most people don't notice it.
I suggest that you be the one to make the policy clear
on Wikisource.
I also suggest that you be the one to tag the hundreds of UN
resolution copyvios on there for deletion. If this is to be the
confirmed policy I will remove work that I have done on starting to
put some British legislation online, which is under Crown copyright
and hence incompatible with the GFDL. Prepare for a storm of protest,
particularly about the UN resolutions (although I happen to agree that
they are copyvios in that case).
If Wikisource is not to be a repository of works that are freely
reproducable, but not compatible with the terms of the GFDL then I
think starting something on Wikicities would be in order. I originally
intended to use the Wiki format to create copies of the original
legislation online and then create amended copies of them as they
appeared at various points. Since the promised British Government
statute law database is currently mired in developmental purgatory
that seemed a very useful thing to do and perfect for Wikisource.
The copyright status of statutes is highly debatable. The US believes
that its own statutes should be freely reproducible, but this is not the
case in many other countries. I am not familiar enough with the case
law for this in those countries to make an informed comment on how such
arguments would turn out. Suffice it to say that there is an important
public policy issue involved that would not be relevant to most other
allegations of coyright infringement.
Good luck in implementing (properly this time) the
copyright policy of
the Foundation. You'll need it given the number of those willing to
wilfully violate copyright on Wikisource.
To say that these activities are wilfull violations is an improper
accusation. There can be no wilfull violation when there is significant
doubt that an action is a violation in the first place.
Ec