[Foundation-l] GFDL and relicensing

[Thomas Dalton]

> That's actually not the flaw in Pascal's Wager

Yes, it is. Pascal's wager is that you should believe it God because
it can't do any harm and could do a lot of good. I guess you could go
with some harm and infinite good, which is exactly equivalent.

> > Removal of content isn't impossible, it's just impossible without
> > causing a great deal of harm to Wikipedia.
>
> Effectively the same argument, in my view.  "It's possible, but the
> consequences would be infinitely terrible!"  Pascal's Wager again.

If it turns out we can't practically remove the infringing content,
the only alternative would be closing Wikipedia down. That's as
terrible as it gets from the POV of Wikipedia...

> > As for registering
> > copyright, isn't that US law? We're not talking about the US here. Do
> > France and Germany have similar requirements?
>
> Well, we'd have a very interesting case if the copyright holder
> proceeded in France or Germany to judgment and then tried to enforce
> the judgment in a U.S. court.  Multinational litigation is a great
> hobby for millionaires, I guess, but not for most people.

I think that was my point a few emails ago and you disagreed with me...

> > It costs the plaintiffs money. Something lots of people have and the
> > WMF doesn't.
>
> I'll be on the lookout for millionaire Wikipedians who'd rather
> destroy WMF than allow relicensing under a new version of GFDL. I'm
> sure that's a very large class of individuals.

You really don't get it, do you? IT ONLY TAKES ONE. Who cares how
large the class is? As long as it is non-empty, we have a problem.