Anthony wrote:
I have always maintained that Wikipedia editors should be implicitly appointing WMF as their non-exclusive agent whenever they edit.
On 8/20/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
That's as may be, but the fact of the matter is that the WMF is *not* a non-exclusive agent. In fact, the WMF didn't even exist when many of the edits were made. It is far too late to change the way copyright of Wikipedia content works. It is released under the GDFL and only the GDFL and will only ever be released under the GDFL. Accept it.
This was brought up a few years ago and I was in the group who opposed giving the WMF enforcement power over violations of our copyright(s). While I may technically release my writing under the GFDL I am actually *much* more lenient on what rights I care to enforce.
Even if it weren't too late, it'd still be a bad idea.
Why do you think it's such a bad idea? I don't expect that the WMF would go mad starting lawsuits all over the place. Most likely it could happen when there has been a serious corruption of the underlying copyleft principles by some person in the distant future. It's a matter of looking ahead. Individuals just do not have the clout to deal with serious breaches of copyright, and when their efforts are masked by a long series of subsequent edits the abusers can get around that by challenging the individual's right to litigate. An infringement suit still needs to be preceded by a registration of one's claims. How do you propose that such a registration be formulated? Can one individual act on behalf of all the other individuals in making such a registration. I think the WMF would do better periodically sending in a data dump of the entire site for copyright registration.
Ec