Geoff Burling wrote:
On Sat, 28 Feb 2004, zero 0000 wrote:
I hope you are all very very VERY familiar with the disastrous experiences of Eric Weisstein when he gave a publisher permission to print a snapshot of his online mathematics encyclopedia.
My understanding of this case was that Weisstein thought he was selling the rights to only _ONE_ version of his online mathematics encyclopedia, when the lawyers at Chemical Rubber actually snuck language into his contract that enabled them to claim _ALL_ of his encyclopedia.
I only briefly reviewed Weisstein's "short" summary, but did note that much of what had been contributed to the MathWorld website was by volunteers. How could he possibly speak for them?
I assume that Jimbo, being a somewhat successful businessman, usually has any contract he considers signing reviewed first by a lawyer. In this case, I hope he picks a lawyer familiar with publishing law.
Jimbo does not own the copyrights so he does not have the authority to sign them away. I'm sure that any attempt by the publisher to usurp those rights would be met by new forks from several other members who already have downloaded the database into their own machines, some of them outside of the United States. Many Wikipedians already have concerns about copyright laws, so the publisher's lawyers could be kept very busy.
Twenty years ago, when I was considering a career in writing, I had the impression that publishers have an ethical standard higher than the music industry (where an artist can sell a million copies of an album, & still make less money than had she/he worked at McDonald's). I am no longer so sure of that impression.
Riiight! And many musicians still believe that the recording companies' campaigns against MP3's are to protect the rights of the artists. :-)
Ec