It seems to me that the most plausible place in which someone could
use the GFDL in suing is if you re-used improperly re-used material.
For example: Company X downloads GFDL material from Wikipedia but does
not correctly comply with the terms of the GFDL. Company Y knows
Company X's material is GFDL and re-uses it themselves. Company X sues
Company Y; Company Y pulls out the GFDL, proves the material was
originally licensed under it, counter-sues Company X for having
claimed they had copyright control over something they they did not.
Of course, Wikipedia/media gets nothing out of this.
Other than that, though, unless we are talking about a class-action
suit (all Wikipedians who had worked on a given article), I don't know
how you'd ever coordinate something like this...
FF
On 5/15/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal(a)inbox.org> wrote:
On 5/15/06, geni <geniice(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 5/15/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email)
<alphasigmax(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Rob Church wrote:
On 12/05/06, Anthony DiPierro
<wikilegal(a)inbox.org> wrote:
>> And if that's the case, can we sue? Please?
>>
> Good luck with that.
The Foundation can't, because it doesn't own the copyright to the
material. It's up to the copyright holder to enforce their licencing.
Could The Foundation sue /on behalf of/ those authors whose copyright
has been violated?
INAL but my understanding is.
Under US law they could if given permission to do so by the copyright
holders (the situtation is compicated in the case of minors. The
foundation would probably need their parents/gardians permissions).
At the very least it would certainly be possible for anyone who can
enter into a contract to assign their copyright to the foundation.
How many people you need permission from depends if you consider
Wikipedia to be a work of joint ownership or not (the other
alternative is that each work is independently created as a derivative
of the previous). I tend to believe it would be considered a joint
work, as it makes the application of the GFDL a lot cleaner.
Actually, I think the cleanest interpretation would be that Wikipedia
is a collection of joint works, where in some cases those works
consist of single articles and in other cases they stretch out more
widely (due to copy/paste/etc). But I don't really buy into the
interpretation that each version of each article is independently
created under permission of the GFDL, in part because the GFDL simply
isn't being followed.
Anyway, with a joint work all joint copyright owners (anyone who has
contributed copyrighted material) has "an equal right to register and
enforce the copyright".
[
http://www.techtransfer.fsu.edu/jointownership.html]
I don't know how chinese copyright law works
and international
copyright law tends to get very complex very fast.
Especially when the company in question is working directly with the
government in question. Hence, "good luck with that".
Anthony
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