--- "Alex R." alex756@nyc.rr.com wrote:
I agree with all of Jimbo's point. The dichotomy commercial v. non-commercial is not really applicable because of the GFDL.
Ok.
As well, even if one were to use the fair use defense under US law, this fair use may not be fair use for downstream licensees. The problem is that fair use does not primarily depend on the third sector (what some people call non-profits as being the "third Force in democractic societies); fair use is a specific use defense. Thus it might be allowed in Wikipedia, copying a whole text might not be considered a copyright infringement, but someone downstream that does not have notice of that fact is going to infringe and may not have the same fair use defense as Wikipedia will be found an infringer.
You say "will be found" as if this were a "legal certainty." Is there such a thing where hyper-transmission of materials is concerned? Please dont point to the current RIAA case-- its likely to recieve a severe case of public-advocacy backlash.
While anyone who releases a text has the burden to prove that they did not engage in an infrnging act (thus the burden IMHO should be on the editor contributor and the downstream licensee)
This is pretty straightforward. It comes down to a contract between contributor and Wikipedia. A deliberate and repeated violation of this contract is the real issue. Understood.
Wikiepedia may not have any direct absolute liability because "Wikipedia" as such, did not contribute the text
This is exactly what I said.
(a reason that the editors should retain
authorship attribution and copyright IMO)
Is this going to happen? How does this jive with the open-wiki model? Again, the democratizing, open-source model was never really inline with the privatized proprietary model in any case-- it's just a matter of time for these things to come to a head -- I see no point in changing horses in mid-stream now.
the goal is to create a base of knowledge that can be used, not sidelined because the due dillegence could not be done to show who actually owns the co-author copyright on any Wikipedia article
And I take it that "due diligence" does not mean "an excess of zeal" either right? We all are *not in disagreement. Should we (for clarity's sake) now better define the term "due diligence" -- or must it remain as subjective as the law is itself? :-)
effectively making the GFDL license scheme useless except to non-income producing downstream licensees
I see, so the whole notion of open-encyclopedia, generated by free editor labor, is somehow predicated on the possibilty that it will someday must be used by someone "for-profit" -- and not merely maintained as a perennial world resource ? Is'nt this--philosophically in contradiction to your first paragraph--more subject to laws dealing with non-profit, for-profit distinctions?
not-for-profit publishers will probably be
considered
no different than commercial publishers, the only difference is that the money in a not-for-profit
does not go to the shareholders (there are none) it goes to'
salaries and the assets of the corporation, there is still plenty of income from the exploited
intellectual >property.
Thus, copyright violation vigilance will do at least two things, first make it easier for third parties to do their due dillegence, second make it harder for Wikipedia (be that the volunteers or the not-for-profit structure in Wikimedia) to be held liable for failure to take reasonable steps to prevent any infringement (or defamation/personality rights issues from cropping up).
This is quite clear. What at issue now are specific technicalities --1. Copyviolations in the article history only--not in the current version. -- is it necessary to delete an article --or can it simply be refactored? 2. The creation of stubs from copyvio sources. 3. Proper attribution to article source as a mitigating factor in a hypothetical claim of violation. 4. The inefficiency of deferential preference to the VFD process over refactoring.
This is important when dealing with non-US nationals that browse Wikipedia, Wikipedia's problem will not be copyright so much as it will be the problems that might arise with defamation and privacy/publicity rights; in those cases the person that posts the tortious material is
not
shielded by US law. the law in the place of the defamation applies (and that can be any country in the world).
As long as people are made better aware of this fact--essentially, that they are personally responsible for the material they submit specifically in a civil defamation context. The issue then is, since WP itself is shielded, how much can or will or should WP shield its contributors?
We should also remember that copyright law itself provides the best "out" for this kind of problem. sec. 102(b) of Title 17
USC
states:
"(b) In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work."
Thus any material that is rewritten to the point where the only resemblance with the original material are ideas, concepts, facts, that will never be a copyright infringement.
Tadaa. ( Meaning: Similar to Violá ). Never say never though?
As far as history pages are concerned my current thinking on copyright infringements appearing on these pages is to invoke sec. 108 of the Copyright Act. Thus while a current page version is released under the GFDL, prior versions of an article should have the famous 108 notice so that if some one has downloaded copyright infringing material at least Wikimedia will not be responsible as it is acting as a non-commercial archive (this cannot apply to the current version of any page as it would be in violation of the GFDL).
Alex756
Thank goodness! But this new notice will take maybe an hour for one of the developers to implement. I hope the Firmament does'nt get sued before then.
Thank you Alex. I think that all of this actually cleared something up. My spidey-sense is getting back to normal.
Ah the sweet swell of indication, ~S~ "I don't believe in nothin nomore--I'm going to law school." -The dark-cap wearing teenage bully from 'The Simpsons'
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