Thanks. So, basically, the content provider only have to provide the URL of the source. Ok, I'll tell them then. -- Ivan Lanin On 7/2/07, C F <shmaltz(a)gmail.com> wrote:

effe iets anders wrote: It's not just a question of law; it's a question of risk management. Remember that legally interpreting GFDL or other free licences, does not have the backing of a lot of court precedents. A lawyer's guess about what will happen is as good as yours. Presuming that the penalties for being wrong are the same with or without legal advice and that no lawyer will agree to pay the penalty if he's wrong, the question to ask becomes whether the cost of the legal advice is worth the decreased risk. Any legal advice beyond using one hour of his time to discuss general principles can get very pricey. Evaluating the implications of a single GFDL clause in an international context could take many hours of legal research at whatever the IP specialist's rates, and there is still no guarantee that he will be right. On the other hand one would still avoid blatant illegality, but the problem is that most such acts are not blatant. If there is a reasonable possiblity that your action may be legal the illegality is not blatant, and that consideration alone will keep the potential penalty to a minimum. Having established that you have reasonable grounds for proceding you then need to look at the risk factors. 1. Is there anybody there to complain? If the copyright is an orphan no-one has the standing to object. 2. Will the infraction be noticed? The safe assumption here is that it will be, but there's an awful lot of "inherited" material material where no-one in the family even knows that Grandpa wrote anything while he was still in school. 3. Is there anything in it for the copyright owner? Is it worth pursuing? What is the biggest net win that the person could likely secure? That will weed them out. Many will be happy to just receive credit, because that alone is already more than they have ever gotten from grandpa's estate. When we put the material up originally we probably have no idea who or where these people are. Once they let themselves be known it may be very easy to negotiate the licence; in other words, material which we might have been rejected as unfree will have been made free. 4. Will the owner settle for a simple takedown once the infringement has been discovered. Here we would at least review the circumstances, and be prepared to give the owner the benefit of the doubt with whatever apologies may be appropriate. Up to this point the costs to both parties will be minimal. 5. Who has the stomach for a court fight? If or when things ever get this far we will already have an arguable case, and here we are also talking about a very tiny part of the cases that were on the table for point one. AFAIK things have never gotten anywhere near to this in the entire 6 1/2 years of Wikipedia's existence on any kind of copyright matter. Remember too that the person complaining has costs too; in addition to that he also has the burden of proof. Judges can also be convinced that a person is being frivolous if the complainant has consistently failed to respond to reasonable settlement offers. A $1.00 fine may be a reasonable cost of establishing a precedent. We must never act recklessly. However, where the law is subject to interpretation, there is never any obligation to assume the most disadvantageous interpretation of the law, and that practice is only too frequent here. Ec