On 4/14/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)telus.net> wrote:
Anthony wrote:
On 4/14/07, Steve Summit <scs(a)eskimo.com>
wrote:
It's unclear whether or not it's true that you can't retract the GFDL.
I've read before that if the GFDL is considered a waiver then it can
be retracted at any time.
Also note that the rights under the GFDL are automatically terminated
whenever you "copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Document
except as expressly provided for under this License". And considering
the fact that pretty much no one uses GFDL-contributed texts "as
expressly provided for under" the GFDL, that means pretty much
everyone has already had their rights under the GFDL terminated. This
part will probably be fixed in the next version of the GFDL.
Finally, it seems to me it'd be near impossible for anyone but the WMF
to show in court that the copyright holder ever licensed the work
under the GFDL in the first place.
So if a copyright holder ever really wanted to take back the
GFDL-licensed text, it seems it'd be incredibly easy for them to do
so.
Unless the license is withdrawn almost immediately, it would likely be
impossible to enforce the withdrawal. When the mirror sites pick it up
their actions are based on the licence status when they take the
material. If this happens in the time between the granting and the
withdrawal they have a legal copy.
I'm not sure what it means to "have a legal copy", but unless that
mirror site has a license to copy and distribute the work it doesn't
matter when they downloaded that copy.
Does the mirror site have a license, because someone checked a box on
a completely different site saying that they release the work under
the GFDL? Maybe, but it seems this would be something difficult to
convince a judge happened in the first place. Once the copyright
holder has convinced the judge that she has a valid copyright on the
work it's up to the mirror site to show they have a license.
The contributor wanting to withdraw
would likely need to notify each of these sites individually.
In most cases if they want any significant damages they'd have to
notify the site, and the site would have to ignore their request,
yeah.
Anthony