[WikiEN-l] Alphascript Publishing: 1900+ copy&pasted books fromWikipedia

[wjhonson at aol.com]

Of course anyone is free to raise this legal theory in a suit.  However 
exactly what requirements the license has and exactly how you have to 
comply with them, is a source of contentious debate even among those 
who believe it's enforceable at all.

Personally what I would like to see is something like "this article 
copied from the version at Wikipedia URL blah blah blah/versionstamp" 
and that's it.  If a person can even navigate that far, or cares, it's 
completely trivial to look at the version history to see "who" wrote 
it.  And I enquote who, because this is the most silly argument I've 
yet seen at blocking mirrors.  Some of our articles have dozens if not 
hundreds of writers and it's near impossible for any non-geek to 
determine who are the top five or whatever.  The license doesn't mean 
"five" or any number.

So the URL is sufficient in my mind.  And I really expect that in 
citation practice in print material we're much more likely to see 
something like that trite "Cleopatra, WP".

When the entire license was created without giving clear and specific 
and exact examples, the writers should have been taken out and shot :)  
That's not a call to action, just my opinion.  The way it stands it's a 
lawyer's feast or a dog's breakfast, or both.

So in conclusion, any editor who wants to sue that publication, should 
probably do so, within the next seven years, or lose all chance at 
making a later claim ;)

Will Johnson



-----Original Message-----
From: FT2 <ft2.wiki at gmail.com>
To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
Sent: Tue, Aug 18, 2009 3:23 pm
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Alphascript Publishing: 1900+ copy&pasted books 
fromWikipedia

Although correct me if I'm wrong, but part of GFDL is a kind of
inheritability. In other words if an editor (copyright holder) finds 
their
text being used in these books, they can require the publisher comply 
with
all the attribution requirements within GFDL, even if Wikimedia's
communities do not insist on it all.

FT2


On Tue, Aug 18, 2009 at 6:57 PM, <WJhonson at aol.com> wrote:

> You do not need to mention "all" contributors.
> A satisfactory attribution is merely a URL pointing to the Wikipedia
> article and possibly one pointing at the history page.
> By our inaction we've made it clear you do not need to directly 
mention any
>  contributors.
>
> Will Johnson
>
>
>
> In a message dated 8/18/2009 9:29:21 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time,
> brewhaha at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca writes:
>
> To my  knowledge, all that is
> required to meet a -BY- requirement is one mention  of all 
contributors.
>
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