For example see here _http://www.answers.com/Johnson_ (http://www.answers.com/Johnson)
Answer.com has copied verbatim OUR work on President Andrew Johnson and collated it all with various other biographical articles on him.
In the section for our article which is quite near the bottom of this page, not only do they *not* attribute it to any particular authors, they also do *not* even cite the GFDL.
So if the Foundation isn't interested in suing them to enforce it, then we're not left with anything that can be sued against. The *community* is hardly likely to instigate a lawsuit against Answers.com for what... breach of contract maybe?
Will Johnson
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2008/5/4 WJhonson@aol.com:
So if the Foundation isn't interested in suing them to enforce it, then we're not left with anything that can be sued against. The *community* is hardly likely to instigate a lawsuit against Answers.com for what... breach of contract maybe?
Will Johnson
Nyet straightforward copyright violation. If you don't follow the terms of the GFDL you are in violation of copyright.
That said the GFDL is such mess that it is near impossible to do so.
So if the Foundation isn't interested in suing them to enforce it, then we're not left with anything that can be sued against. The *community* is hardly likely to instigate a lawsuit against Answers.com for what... breach of contract maybe?
What would the Foundation sue for? The foundation doesn't own the copyright. Only the authors can sue, and I expect they could in this case: Answers.com doesn't seem to be following the license.
In practice, however, I expect the only times anyone would sue for not following the GFDL is either if they really didn't like the person doing it (or what they were doing with it) and it was just a way to stop them, or if they had modified the content and not released their modifications under a free license and someone had a problem with that on ideological grounds (or, they simply liked the modifications and wanted to use them). No one is likely to sue for simple copying, but that doesn't make it any more legal.