Arvind Narayanan wrote:
The site http://www.chessandbeyond.com has copied several articles from Wikipedia. There's nothing about wikipedia on those pages, and at the bottom there is the statement
Copyright © 2003 Chess And Beyond ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
This really pisses me off and is a very clear violation of the GNU FDL. They not only failed to credit the Wikipedia article as the source but then they try to pretend that they own the copyright! This is legally and morally wrong.
Since you are actually one of the authors you are on very good footing to complain.
First, list the website at: http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sites_that_use_Wikipedia_for_content...
Then write them a letter: http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Standard_GFDL_violation_letter
If they stonewall you after a letter and a follow-up letter, then come back to the list and we will discuss what to do next.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
"Daniel Mayer" maveric149@yahoo.com said: Arvind Narayanan wrote:
The site http://www.chessandbeyond.com has copied several articles from Wikipedia. There's nothing about wikipedia on those pages, and at the bottom there is the statement
Copyright © 2003 Chess And Beyond ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
This really pisses me off and is a very clear violation of the GNU FDL. They not only failed to credit the Wikipedia article as the source but then they try to pretend that they own the copyright! This is legally and morally wrong.
Since you are actually one of the authors you are on very good footing to complain.
First, list the website at: http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sites_that_use_Wikipedia_for_content...
Then write them a letter: http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Standard_GFDL_violation_letter
If they stonewall you after a letter and a follow-up letter, then come back to the list and we will discuss what to do next.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
Good plan to start but wouldn't it be appropriate to send their ISP a DCMA art 512 takedown request in a few days?
Alex756
At 08:47 AM 11/15/03 -0500, Alex756 wrote:
"Daniel Mayer" maveric149@yahoo.com said: Arvind Narayanan wrote:
The site http://www.chessandbeyond.com has copied several articles from Wikipedia. There's nothing about wikipedia on those pages, and at the bottom there is the statement
Copyright © 2003 Chess And Beyond ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
This really pisses me off and is a very clear violation of the GNU FDL. They not only failed to credit the Wikipedia article as the source but then they try to pretend that they own the copyright! This is legally and morally wrong.
Since you are actually one of the authors you are on very good footing to complain.
First, list the website at: http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sites_that_use_Wikipedia_for_content...
Then write them a letter: http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Standard_GFDL_violation_letter
If they stonewall you after a letter and a follow-up letter, then come back to the list and we will discuss what to do next.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
Good plan to start but wouldn't it be appropriate to send their ISP a DCMA art 512 takedown request in a few days?
NO.
Two reasons. First, we should give them a reasonable time to answer us, rather than assuming the worst. Two, the DCMA is designed to prevent the spread and sharing of material, and is antithetical to what we're doing. We should use it only as a last resort, not by reflex.
From: "Vicki Rosenzweig" vr@redbird.org
At 08:47 AM 11/15/03 -0500, Alex756 wrote:
"Daniel Mayer" maveric149@yahoo.com said: Arvind Narayanan wrote:
The site http://www.chessandbeyond.com has copied several articles from Wikipedia. There's nothing about wikipedia on those pages, and at the bottom there is the statement
Copyright © 2003 Chess And Beyond ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
This really pisses me off and is a very clear violation of the GNU FDL.
They
not only failed to credit the Wikipedia article as the source but then they try to pretend that they own the copyright! This is legally and morally wrong.
Since you are actually one of the authors you are on very good footing to complain.
First, list the website at: http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sites_that_use_Wikipedia_for_conten
t#Articles_with_issues
Then write them a letter: http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Standard_GFDL_violation_letter
If they stonewall you after a letter and a follow-up letter, then come back to the list and we will discuss what to do next.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
Good plan to start but wouldn't it be appropriate to send their ISP a DCMA art 512 takedown request in a few days?
NO.
Two reasons. First, we should give them a reasonable time to answer us, rather than assuming the worst. Two, the DCMA is designed to prevent the spread and sharing of material, and is antithetical to what we're doing. We should use it only as a last resort, not by reflex.
A reasonable time is being interpreted as 24 hours on the internet. If Wikipedia authors do not assert their rights they will lose them. I do not think it is antithetical to the purposes of Wikipedia because if Wikipedia wanted to give it away it would all be put into the public domain. It is not in the public domain, it is under a complex license that needs to be followed.
If it is not followed people should not be allowed to ignore the license. Then Wikipedia may be nothing more than a free for all, anyone can copy anything and use it anyway they want without any fear of the copyright laws that are their to protect the authors who are making their valuable contributions and have an expectation that those contributions will be linked back to Wikipedia. If the takedown notice is followed the copyright infringer still has the right to follow the GFDL policy and then they will obviously have the right to use the material. I do not see how using the OCILLA provisions are against Wikipedia. Actually they make the GFDL stronger in my "nonlegal" opinion.
Once again this discussion should be on the Wikilegal discussion list that is what it was created for.
Alex756
Alex R. wrote:
If Wikipedia authors do not assert their rights they will lose them.
That applies to trademarks, but not to copyrights. Whether you defend copyrights or not, you always keep them.
if Wikipedia wanted to give it away it would all be put into the public domain. It is not in the public domain, it is under a complex license that needs to be followed.
Ironically, the bulk of [[Chest strategy and tactics]] was written by me and is therefore in the public domain.
Axel
Axel Boldt wrote:
if Wikipedia wanted to give it away it would all be put into the public domain. It is not in the public domain, it is under a complex license that needs to be followed.
Ironically, the bulk of [[Chess strategy and tactics]] was written by me and is therefore in the public domain.
Who defends the public domain?
--On Saturday, November 15, 2003 2:46 PM -0800 Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Axel Boldt wrote:
if Wikipedia wanted to give it away it would all be put into the public domain. It is not in the public domain, it is under a complex license that needs to be followed.
Ironically, the bulk of [[Chess strategy and tactics]] was written by me and is therefore in the public domain.
Who defends the public domain?
Nobody - by definition, it can't be.
So what claim do we have?
Nathan
Ray Saintonge wrote:
Axel Boldt wrote:
Ironically, the bulk of [[Chess strategy and tactics]] was written by me and is therefore in the public domain.
Who defends the public domain?
Material that's in the public domain remains in the public domain forever. Nobody can attack it and nobody can defend it. You can slap a bogus copyright notice on a public domain work, but that does not change its public domain status.
Axel
Axel Boldt wrote:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
Axel Boldt wrote:
Ironically, the bulk of [[Chess strategy and tactics]] was written by me and is therefore in the public domain.
Who defends the public domain?
Material that's in the public domain remains in the public domain forever. Nobody can attack it and nobody can defend it. You can slap a bogus copyright notice on a public domain work, but that does not change its public domain status.
This is a problem! I see "public domain" as "belonging to the people". When I ask about who defends the public domain, I implicitly ask about who defends the collective rights of the people.
You're right to say public domain status continues despite bogus copright claims, but that claim is not without implications. The ones whose use of that material is chilled, are likely those without the resources to verify those claims. I have plenty of material in old obscure books that are well into the public domain, if I were so inclined, it would be easy to publish it under my own copyright, and take steps (falsely) to defend that copyright.
Ec
On Sat, Nov 15, 2003 at 09:21:44PM +0100, Axel Boldt wrote:
Alex R. wrote:
If Wikipedia authors do not assert their rights they will lose them.
That applies to trademarks, but not to copyrights. Whether you defend copyrights or not, you always keep them.
if Wikipedia wanted to give it away it would all be put into the public domain. It is not in the public domain, it is under a complex license that needs to be followed.
Ironically, the bulk of [[Chest strategy and tactics]] was written by me and is therefore in the public domain.
I don't understand. Could you please explain how your contributions are PD? The edit pages say: "Please note that all contributions to Wikipedia are considered to be released under the GNU Free Documentation License". Do you mean to say that you've also put it up at some other site as PD? Even in that case, chessandbeyond copied it from wikipedia, and so they're still bound by the terms of the GFDL.
Arvind
Arvind Narayanan wrote:
Ironically, the bulk of [[Chest strategy and tactics]] was written by me and is therefore in the public domain.
I don't understand. Could you please explain how your contributions are PD? The edit pages say: "Please note that all contributions to Wikipedia are considered to be released under the GNU Free Documentation License". Do you mean to say that you've also put it up at some other site as PD? Even in that case, chessandbeyond copied it from wikipedia, and so they're still bound by the terms of the GFDL.
They're only bound by the terms of the GFDL if the text was copyrighted in the first place. If the author released it into the public domain before putting it on Wikipedia, Wikipedia cannot add additional restrictions to it. He doesn't have to have published it somewhere else, just to make a statement, "I disclaim copyright interest in any of the works I have submitted to Wikipedia" or something similar. If it's edited, the derived work can then be copyrighted and therefore GFDL'd -- but the mere fact that they got it from Wikipedia doesn't mean it's GFDL'd if it's a verbatim text in the public domain. As a similar example, if someone came and copied some of our public domain poems (say, [[Invictus]]), the fact that they got them from Wikipedia would not oblige them to follow the GFDL, because we have no copyright on them.
-Mark
On Sat, Nov 15, 2003 at 10:03:38PM -0800, Delirium wrote:
Arvind Narayanan wrote:
Ironically, the bulk of [[Chest strategy and tactics]] was written by me and is therefore in the public domain.
I don't understand. Could you please explain how your contributions are PD? The edit pages say: "Please note that all contributions to Wikipedia are considered to be released under the GNU Free Documentation License". Do you mean to say that you've also put it up at some other site as PD? Even in that case, chessandbeyond copied it from wikipedia, and so they're still bound by the terms of the GFDL.
They're only bound by the terms of the GFDL if the text was copyrighted in the first place. If the author released it into the public domain before putting it on Wikipedia, Wikipedia cannot add additional restrictions to it. He doesn't have to have published it somewhere else, just to make a statement, "I disclaim copyright interest in any of the works I have submitted to Wikipedia" or something similar. If it's
OK.
edited, the derived work can then be copyrighted and therefore GFDL'd --
It certainly looks like a derived work; looking at the page history there are authors with significant contributions other than Prof. Boldt.
In any case, it does not affect the overall claim of copyright violation, since they have copied about a dozen articles.
Arvind
but the mere fact that they got it from Wikipedia doesn't mean it's GFDL'd if it's a verbatim text in the public domain. As a similar example, if someone came and copied some of our public domain poems (say, [[Invictus]]), the fact that they got them from Wikipedia would not oblige them to follow the GFDL, because we have no copyright on them.
-Mark
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Arvind Narayanan wrote:
On Sat, Nov 15, 2003 at 09:21:44PM +0100, Axel Boldt wrote:
Alex R. wrote:
If Wikipedia authors do not assert their rights they will lose them.
That applies to trademarks, but not to copyrights. Whether you defend copyrights or not, you always keep them.
if Wikipedia wanted to give it away it would all be put into the public domain. It is not in the public domain, it is under a complex license that needs to be followed.
Ironically, the bulk of [[Chest strategy and tactics]] was written by me and is therefore in the public domain.
I don't understand. Could you please explain how your contributions are PD? The edit pages say: "Please note that all contributions to Wikipedia are considered to be released under the GNU Free Documentation License". Do you mean to say that you've also put it up at some other site as PD? Even in that case, chessandbeyond copied it from wikipedia, and so they're still bound by the terms of the GFDL.
It does all get very tricky. Axel has a perfect right to put his writing into the public domailn. Nothing prevents us or chessandbeyond from using public domain material. What was added by others later is not necessarily also in the public domain.
Our big argument is with people plagiarize, and purport to claim copyright on their plagiarism.
Ec
It has been suggested that User:NightCrawler is the hard banned user DW. Could someone look at the logs to see what ISP he's posting from, and if the addressed match those of DW? He is more than a problem user, he has already driven a new user away, and is making threats to other users that are eerily familiar to those of DW.
RickK
--------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard
Rick wrote:
It has been suggested that User:NightCrawler is the hard banned user DW. Could someone look at the logs to see what ISP he's posting from, and if the addressed match those of DW? He is more than a problem user, he has already driven a new user away, and is making threats to other users that are eerily familiar to those of DW.
I looked up a single NightCrawler log entry. It came from the same small range DW was using. Brion tells me that entire range was blocked when DW was banned originally, so apparently it has been accidentally unblocked at some stage.
-- Tim Starling.
Alex R. wrote:
From: "Vicki Rosenzweig" vr@redbird.org
At 08:47 AM 11/15/03 -0500, Alex756 wrote:
"Daniel Mayer" maveric149@yahoo.com said: Arvind Narayanan wrote:
The site http://www.chessandbeyond.com has copied several articles from Wikipedia. There's nothing about wikipedia on those pages, and at the bottom there is the statement
Copyright © 2003 Chess And Beyond ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
They
not only failed to credit the Wikipedia article as the source but then they try to pretend that they own the copyright! This is legally and morally wrong.
Since you are actually one of the authors you are on very good footing to complain.
Good plan to start but wouldn't it be appropriate to send their ISP a DCMA art 512 takedown request in a few days?
NO.
Two reasons. First, we should give them a reasonable time to answer us, rather than assuming the worst. Two, the DCMA is designed to prevent the spread and sharing of material, and is antithetical to what we're doing. We should use it only as a last resort, not by reflex.
A reasonable time is being interpreted as 24 hours on the internet.
7 days seems more reasonable. If they are a business (and they do offer goods for sale) they might not even be there to receive the message on a weekend.
If Wikipedia authors do not assert their rights they will lose them. I do not think it is antithetical to the purposes of Wikipedia because if Wikipedia wanted to give it away it would all be put into the public domain. It is not in the public domain, it is under a complex license that needs to be followed.
If it is not followed people should not be allowed to ignore the license. Then Wikipedia may be nothing more than a free for all, anyone can copy anything and use it anyway they want without any fear of the copyright laws that are their to protect the authors who are making their valuable contributions and have an expectation that those contributions will be linked back to Wikipedia. If the takedown notice is followed the copyright infringer still has the right to follow the GFDL policy and then they will obviously have the right to use the material. I do not see how using the OCILLA provisions are against Wikipedia. Actually they make the GFDL stronger in my "nonlegal" opinion.
You're not going to get any argument from Wikipedians against the philosophical and theoretical basis of what you just said. It was at least a year ago that I commented that the violation of Wikipedia copyrights will be a much bigger problem than violations by Wikipedians. It is relatively easy to develop policies to deal with the latter circumstances, and I think that what we have done is fairly conservative, meaning that we could probably have given ourselves a much greater benefit of the doubt.
The present problem will become more difficult as the years go on. To start with the violations will become harder to find, and will likely only be discovered as a matter of sheer luck. When we do discover them we need a strategy that will work. There is more to that strategy than trying to decipher legal texts. Assuming naïveté on the part of the violator is a good first start. A friendly letter of explanation suggesting possible solutions is a good first start, providing we at least give them enough time to respond. The amount of time should vary. If the violator has a site with many of our pages, it may suffice to see a steady progress in making the needed change.
A legal take-down notice is a logical second step, and the timing here will often depend on time limits provided in the law.
Beyond that, if the violator refuses, what strategies are available? Beginning a legal action may not be the best next step. The choice of legal jurisdiction would only be a part of the problem. Legal actions can be costly, especially if we want them to be effective. Who would be responsible for those costs? If there were someone with deep enough pockets to foot that kind of bill, we could only drool at the kind of computer hardware that that could buy. It would be immoral to expect Jimbo alon to be responsible for the costs of an action that could have far reaching implications about attempted claims of copyright on material that is in one way or another already freely available to the general community for its re-use.
Protecting the public interest is a public sector function. To some extent that comes into conflict with sincerely held Libertarian ideals which depend very much on the freedom and sense of responsibility of the individual. Of course, there are too many big-buck vested interests involved with government for them to be a dependable ally. If push comes to shove, strategic alliances may be required.
Choosing the right opponent to go after will be important; a US based violator will at least avoid the problems that come with international law. Are there other strategies available before it gets to the courts?
Once again this discussion should be on the Wikilegal discussion list that is what it was created for.
Some of us would prefer not to subscribe to yet another list. :-) This is too important to be relegated to a low traffic list. Ec
From: "Ray Saintonge" saintonge@telus.net
Alex R. wrote:
From: "Vicki Rosenzweig" vr@redbird.org
At 08:47 AM 11/15/03 -0500, Alex756 wrote:
"Daniel Mayer" maveric149@yahoo.com said: Arvind Narayanan wrote:
<...snip...>
A legal take-down notice is a logical second step, and the timing here will often depend on time limits provided in the law.
There are no strict time limits, and one can always bring an infringement action for damages, but one wants to try and get an injunction. Since the DCMA OCILLA provisions are available, judges are going to ask, why didn't you invoke those provisions before coming to court? That is what they are there for.
Beyond that, if the violator refuses, what strategies are available?
It is not up to the violator, it is up to the ISP. If the violator is also an ISP, well then you must sue if they issue the required counter notice and restore the works. The limitations period is four years.
Beginning a legal action may not be the best next step. The choice of legal jurisdiction would only be a part of the problem. Legal actions can be costly, especially if we want them to be effective. Who would be responsible for those costs? If there were someone with deep enough pockets to foot that kind of bill, we could only drool at the kind of computer hardware that that could buy. It would be immoral to expect Jimbo alon to be responsible for the costs of an action that could have far reaching implications about attempted claims of copyright on material that is in one way or another already freely available to the general community for its re-use.
If Wikipedia is registered as a collective work with the US Copyright office, attorneys fees will be paid by the infringer. This is one reason that Wikipedia should be periodically registered as the copyright protection is only available after registration (though unpublished works are not required to be registered). Most copyright litigators will take on these cases on contingency if the proper registrations are done.
Protecting the public interest is a public sector function. To some extent that comes into conflict with sincerely held Libertarian ideals which depend very much on the freedom and sense of responsibility of the individual. Of course, there are too many big-buck vested interests involved with government for them to be a dependable ally. If push comes to shove, strategic alliances may be required.
Choosing the right opponent to go after will be important; a US based violator will at least avoid the problems that come with international law. Are there other strategies available before it gets to the courts?
It has nothing to do with international law, the work is protected by US law, if they infringe on the internet it is published in the US and US federal courts have jurisdiction over foreigners. So I don't know what issues you are trying to create here. If the infringer is overseas, get a US judgment and then take it to the foreign court to be recognized. The trend is for courts to recognize judgments, especially in areas of relatively uniform laws, i.e. copyright that is applied through the Berne Convention (or other conventions) on a fairly standard basis.
Once again this discussion should be on the Wikilegal discussion list
that
is what it was created for.
Some of us would prefer not to subscribe to yet another list. :-) This is too important to be relegated to a low traffic list. Ec
Well, the general ideas that are covered here apply to all Wikimedia projects and the issues are legal ones, that is what the legal list is for. Isn't a low traffic list better because it is limited to those who are interested in legal topics?
Alex756
Alex R. wrote:
From: "Ray Saintonge" saintonge@telus.net
Alex R. wrote:
From: "Vicki Rosenzweig" vr@redbird.org
At 08:47 AM 11/15/03 -0500, Alex756 wrote:
"Daniel Mayer" maveric149@yahoo.com said: Arvind Narayanan wrote:
<...snip...>
A legal take-down notice is a logical second step, and the timing here will often depend on time limits provided in the law.
There are no strict time limits, and one can always bring an infringement action for damages, but one wants to try and get an injunction.
Or a mandamus requiring that they give appropriate credits, maybe even achieving the effect that whatever original material they added themselves becomes subject to to FDL. That would be a more fitting result than just winning a lump of money.
Since the DCMA OCILLA provisions are available, judges are going to ask, why didn't you invoke those provisions before coming to court? That is what they are there for.
Of course, the easy options should normally be tried first.
Beginning a legal action may not be the best next step. The choice of legal jurisdiction would only be a part of the problem. Legal actions can be costly, especially if we want them to be effective. Who would be responsible for those costs? If there were someone with deep enough pockets to foot that kind of bill, we could only drool at the kind of computer hardware that that could buy. It would be immoral to expect Jimbo alon to be responsible for the costs of an action that could have far reaching implications about attempted claims of copyright on material that is in one way or another already freely available to the general community for its re-use.
If Wikipedia is registered as a collective work with the US Copyright office, attorneys fees will be paid by the infringer. This is one reason that Wikipedia should be periodically registered as the copyright protection is only available after registration (though unpublished works are not required to be registered). Most copyright litigators will take on these cases on contingency if the proper registrations are done.
This is a precautionary move. It should probably be done quarterly, given the frequency of change in the Wikipedia corpus.
Choosing the right opponent to go after will be important; a US based violator will at least avoid the problems that come with international law. Are there other strategies available before it gets to the courts?
It has nothing to do with international law, the work is protected by US law, if they infringe on the internet it is published in the US and US federal courts have jurisdiction over foreigners.
Most countries properly find the extraterritorial application of US law objectionable. If you start an action against a foreign defendant, he may not show up. There would be a default judgement, perhaps even fully enforceable in the defendant's home country. That really accomplishes nothing. The action was not primarily for the money. Only one violator is knocked off the net, and no precedents are set for the future. What are we trying to accomplish?
So I don't know what issues you are trying to create here.
The verb "create" makes this an offensive comment.
If the infringer is overseas, get a US judgment and then take it to the foreign court to be recognized. The trend is for courts to recognize judgments, especially in areas of relatively uniform laws, i.e. copyright that is applied through the Berne Convention (or other conventions) on a fairly standard basis.
I wouldn't count on that.
Once again this discussion should be on the Wikilegal discussion list that
is what it was created for.
Some of us would prefer not to subscribe to yet another list. :-) This is too important to be relegated to a low traffic list. Ec
Well, the general ideas that are covered here apply to all Wikimedia projects and the issues are legal ones, that is what the legal list is for. Isn't a low traffic list better because it is limited to those who are interested in legal topics?
This issue will affect more people than those who sit on the Wikilegal list.
Ec
From: "Ray Saintonge" saintonge@telus.net
Alex R. wrote:
From: "Ray Saintonge" saintonge@telus.net
Alex R. wrote:
From: "Vicki Rosenzweig" vr@redbird.org
At 08:47 AM 11/15/03 -0500, Alex756 wrote:
"Daniel Mayer" maveric149@yahoo.com said: Arvind Narayanan wrote:
<...snip...>
The verb "create" makes this an offensive comment.
It was a typo, there was no intention to be offensive, it is a discussion of legal strategy, you are reading too much into it. <..snip..>
Once again this discussion should be on the Wikilegal discussion list
that
<..snip...>
This issue will affect more people than those who sit on the Wikilegal
list.
If people are effected by some legal strategy then shouldn't they subscribe to the legal list to be informed? Otherwise doesnt' that place the horse before the cart. If an issue effects all of Wikipedia but more people are on the English list then it should be discussed on the English list rather than the general list! No wonder those people on French Wikipedia have their own ideas about Wikipedia because none of them are subscribed to the English list where the discussions occur because that is where the poster gets the most publicity.
Alex756
On Sat, Nov 15, 2003 at 02:42:05PM -0800, Ray Saintonge wrote:
You're not going to get any argument from Wikipedians against the philosophical and theoretical basis of what you just said. It was at least a year ago that I commented that the violation of Wikipedia copyrights will be a much bigger problem than violations by Wikipedians. It is relatively easy to develop policies to deal with the latter circumstances, and I think that what we have done is fairly conservative, meaning that we could probably have given ourselves a much greater benefit of the doubt.
The present problem will become more difficult as the years go on. To start with the violations will become harder to find, and will likely only be discovered as a matter of sheer luck. When we do discover them we need a strategy that will work. There is more to that strategy than trying to decipher legal texts. Assuming naïveté on the part of the violator is a good first start. A friendly letter of explanation suggesting possible solutions is a good first start, providing we at least give them enough time to respond. The amount of time should vary. If the violator has a site with many of our pages, it may suffice to see a steady progress in making the needed change.
A legal take-down notice is a logical second step, and the timing here will often depend on time limits provided in the law.
I agree with all this. I was looking at [[Wikipedia:Sites that use Wikipedia for content]] for the first time and I was surprised at the extent/number of sites that we *know* about and have issues. NationMaster (which has the entire wikipedia content) though listed as compliant violates the spirit of the license by putting the GFDL notice in an unreadably small font. 4reference, in spite of a letter and a warning, is not compliant (again entire wikipedia content). A lot of times I see 4reference copies of wikipedia articles ranked higher by google than the source article. I don't like this.
Another thing I noticed is that many (most?) of the sites violating GFDL don't know about it until we tell them about it. This is easily preventable and shouldn't be happening! I want to suggest a couple of things to ensure this:
* that we change the "From wikipedia, the free encyclopedia" line. As we know very well when people see "free" they think gratis, not libre. I suggest we make it "From wikipedia, the open-content encyclopedia" with the word open-content linking to the copyrights page.
* at the bottom of each article we should remind people about their _obligations_ in copying it. Something along the lines of "if you wish to redistribute this article you must link back to this page and release it under the GFDL. See <here> for details" or something like that.
IMHO we should also be more vigorous in pursuing violators. Why are people saying this is antithetical to sharing? We are preventing them from *putting restrictions* on our free articles. Writing a legal notice is costly, that's a valid point. But we'll have to do it sometime, haven't we? Otherwise we lose credibility. And since we (presumably) have to write a template letter only once, the cost is amortized. I hope we never actually need to go to court. IANAL, of course.
Arvind
From: "Arvind Narayanan" arvindn@meenakshi.cs.iitm.ernet.in
<..snip..>
Another thing I noticed is that many (most?) of the sites violating GFDL don't know about it until we tell them about it. This is easily preventable and shouldn't be happening! I want to suggest a couple of things to ensure this:
- that we change the "From wikipedia, the free encyclopedia" line. As we
know very well when people see "free" they think gratis, not libre. I suggest we make it "From wikipedia, the open-content encyclopedia" with the word open-content linking to the copyrights page.
- at the bottom of each article we should remind people about their
_obligations_ in copying it. Something along the lines of "if you wish to redistribute this article you must link back to this page and release it under the GFDL. See <here> for details" or something like that.
These are both good suggestions, it is more accurate to say "open content" than free (implying PD) and the link back is giving someone an easy way to comply with the GFDL, and very specific directions on how to do it.
IMHO we should also be more vigorous in pursuing violators. Why are people saying this is antithetical to sharing? We are preventing them from *putting restrictions* on our free articles. Writing a legal notice is costly, that's a valid point. But we'll have to do it sometime, haven't we? Otherwise we lose credibility. And since we (presumably) have to write a template letter only once, the cost is amortized. I hope we never actually need to go to court. IANAL, of course.
Actually the notice does not have be drafted by a lawyer and it can be sent by email. It just has to be done by someone who can certify that the content is protected by copyright. You basically just have to follow the requirements of the law. It is not that complicated, most corporations do it through lawyers but individuals can do it too without legal help.
Here is a database of these C&D takedown notices: http://www.chillingeffects.org/notice.cgi
Of course the question of sending out these notices needs to be vetted by Wikimedia as it would involve some "corporate" action as it would be invoking the name of Wikimedia.
Alex756
--On Sunday, November 16, 2003 11:27 AM -0500 "Alex R." alex756@nyc.rr.com wrote:
Actually the notice does not have be drafted by a lawyer and it can be sent by email. It just has to be done by someone who can certify that the content is protected by copyright. You basically just have to follow the requirements of the law. It is not that complicated, most corporations do it through lawyers but individuals can do it too without legal help.
Corporations do it through lawyers because it's worth it to them to make sure the case isn't thrown out due to failure to dot all the i's.
I agree that Wikipedia should be registered as copyright - that basically requires sending a form to the government and paying a fee that was (when last I checked) in the range of 20-30 USD.
Nathan
Alex R. wrote:
These are both good suggestions, it is more accurate to say "open content" than free (implying PD) and the link back is giving someone an easy way to comply with the GFDL, and very specific directions on how to do it.
Perhaps it shows my GNUish bias, but I much prefer the term "Free encyclopedia" to the term "open-content encyclopedia". If the use of the term "free" is ambiguous, perhaps it should be capitalized, to indicate it's being used in a particular sense.
-Mark
Arvind Narayanan wrote:
I want to suggest a couple of things to ensure this:
- that we change the "From wikipedia, the free encyclopedia" line. As we
know very well when people see "free" they think gratis, not libre. I suggest we make it "From wikipedia, the open-content encyclopedia" with the word open-content linking to the copyrights page.
- at the bottom of each article we should remind people about their
_obligations_ in copying it. Something along the lines of "if you wish to redistribute this article you must link back to this page and release it under the GFDL. See <here> for details" or something like that.
Well, "the free encyclopedia" has sort of become our "tagline". Plus, it's been translated into most languages (Wikipédia, l'encyclopédie libre, etc) so I think interlanguage co-ordination would be required to move on that.
I agree with your second point -- we could do to make the licence text at the foot of the page a bit clearer.
Tarquin wrote in part:
Arvind Narayanan wrote:
- at the bottom of each article we should remind people about their
_obligations_ in copying it. Something along the lines of "if you wish to redistribute this article you must link back to this page and release it under the GFDL. See <here> for details" or something like that.
I agree with your second point -- we could do to make the licence text at the foot of the page a bit clearer.
Like here:
http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk%3ASites_that_use_Wikipedia_for_...
(aka [[Wikipedia_talk:Sites_that_use_Wikipedia_for_content#Suggested_notice]]).
This has been around for a while, but people didn't have much interest when it came to the mailing list (I forget which) in the past.
(Ultimately, we need to get a developer interested, since that footer text is not wiki-editable.)
[Posting to <wikiEN-L> since we could change the text only on [[en:]] -- and we may need to only on [[en:]] if that's all that's being violated. [[fr:]] et al can then copy us if they find it necessary, or desirable; or even do their own thing, within reason.]
-- Toby
I have sent the standard GFDL letter to them as Mav said.
Arvind