Heh. Go figure - somebody else just asked basically the same thing; see the replies to http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/mediawiki-l/2005-March/003884.html

I'm going to include a longer response below, because (a) unless someone tells me I'm wrong, it will be useful to refer back to if anyone else asks; and (b) because I get more verbose when I'm tired ;)

On Thu, 10 Mar 2005 14:02:02 -0800, Drummonds, Scott B wrote:

Does anyone have any knowledge of laws (in the US) that govern the ownership of Wiki content? I noticed that the default disclaimer in the MediaWiki edit page claims that all content is public under the GNU Free Documentation License. Is just changing this disclaimer a sufficient means of making the content protected by an individual or corporation's ability to copyright?

I know basically nothing about copyright laws, but I do know that that the licensing statements are freely edittable (look in [[Special:Allmessages]]) and (as Paul Johnson pointed out) should start off matching what you selected when you installed the wiki.

As for whether editting them is "sufficient", I'm pretty sure Wikipedia's very existence depends on it. The key point is that the user has to have entered into an agreement surrendering some or all of their copyright claim. In the case of Wikipedia, for instance, they are held to have licensed their efforts under the GFDL, because the "disclaimer" makes clear that by clicking "save", that is what they are doing. In your case, it sounds like you want them to have transferred the copyright to you[/somebody else] by the same action; or maybe you mean the opposite - they just grant the right for it to be used and editted on that wiki and nowhere else [the bare minimum for the wiki to actually exist].

My intuition tells me that a content creator owns his content unless an explicit agreement exists that changes this policy.

My understanding is that you are absolutely correct. The author/s of a creative work is/are held to own the copyright to that work unless they specifically state otherwise. That is, unless they've entered into a contract which says that their work in a certain situation is licensed to someone else, or that the copyright is outright owned by someone else. That could be a contract with an employer that work is copyright the company, not the individual; or it could be the user agreement made when using a piece of software, or submitting information to a website.

Quite how the law systems of the world view this latter kind of "contract", I'm not sure, but an awful lot of people rely on it - I have a feeling it rather depends on the details because people have suggested that the "EULAs" you "agree to" when installing software might not always be enforceable. But it hinges on the fact that nobody has the *right* to contribute to your wiki; they do so on your terms, or they don't do so at all.

Or, since the tool lies in the public domain is it more complex to use the tool to generate private or confidential data?

No.

Firstly, on a slightly pedantic note, "distributed under the GPL" is not the same as "lies in the public domain" (the people who worked on the software still own the copyright, they've just granted you an unrevokable right to use it). Secondly, the GPL has no effect on what you can use the software *for*, only what you can do *to* it; it would be perfectly possible to create a licence that did (like when people make things "free for educational use", for instance) but to do so would be directly contrary to the Free Software Foundation's principles. [If, of course, it really was "public domain", there would be no license to breach by using the tool in the wrong way, and you could do what you wanted.]

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The key points among this ramble are: (1) that the GPL, under which the MediaWiki software is distributed, has no bearing on the licensing of works created using that software; and (2) that if you have a message telling people that by submitting to your wiki, they're accepting your terms, that's as good a proof that they've accepted your terms you're ever going to get.