From: "Jimmy Wales" <jwales(a)joey.bomis.com> Does it really matter? Will anyone be using these posts for anything other than fair use citations (which are no doubt fairly broad). Releasing under the GFDL does not make sense, already Google has usenet lists archived and I have seen various mailing lists available through various What is the possible use of making it GFDL? Is someone going to publish a book of our various email discussions about various problem users, etc.? I would use the same argument regarding page histories, they are probably not under the GFDL as these are retired files, why would one want someone to cite an out of date version of an article when a new one might be available? It does not say they are released under the GFDL on the page, so they may be covered by regular copyright law. Alex756

From: "Fred Bauder" <fredbaud(a)ctelco.net> And what about copyright infringements, privacy right violations and defamation that his hidden in the page history. If this is all released under the GFDL and Wikipedia has no warranty disclaimers (which are allowed under the GFDL) then doesn't Wikipedia have liability for allowing such wrongful texts to be distributed further? Alex756

From: "Brion Vibber" <brion(a)pobox.com> Who decides if they were fair use? Do we have a US Federal District Court judge who can render binding fair use opinions? Do we have someone who can even say what is a copyright violation? It is all opinion. It is all contribution. If someone starts mucking with the archives and with page histories how can that be good for the project? The violation, the infringement, the tortious conduct such as defamation or invasion of privacy are all the work of volunteer contributors. It is their wrong, it is their copyright infringement, it is their action, it is not the action of "us" or "we". There is no "us" or "we" in this regard. Wiki software also this, each individual has an individual voice that is properly recorded in the page history files. Each voice belongs to each individual, it is only "we" by virtue of it all being stored in one domain and through its collaborative evolution from "I" to "we" that transcends these petty offenses. All the pages that were deletion candidates at some time in the history of Wikipedia that were blanked as copyright infringements and replaced with stubs and not deleted. That is an accurate description of the complete list of pages that you can find in every copy of the Wikipedia databases relative to copyright infringements. Regarding any other type of mischief, well that will require much research into the history of the database as most likely those pages were blanked and not deleted so somewhere within a page history there may be a page that has some "illegal" content (that is if someone can authoritatively state what that illegal content was otherwise there will be decisions made that were wrong and that may harm the collective history of Wikipedia). I imagine that if five articles get listed every day as copyright violations and they are replaced by stubs over a year that means there are probably thousands of such pages out there in the Wikipedia databases. After these are all identified it would be interesting to know exactly how many of these hidden so called "violations" were found. They could be considered prior drafts. If people collaoborate don't they have an expectation that their contribution will be made part of the collaboration? So if I collaborate in good faith and add something to an article my contribution can be completely ignored because someone wants to link to an older version because _they_ think it is better? They should rewrite it and let me look at it. If I accept it then they can use it, if not I can edit it and make it even better. They should not be allowed to just do reverts because they feel like it. That seems to me to be very similar to a vandal blanking a page. It is not true collaborative spirit, it is the tyranny of individual choice; collaborative creativity is an explicit part of wiki software and Wikipedia's raison d'etre as well. It seems to me that even the FDL implies that only the latest version of a Wikipedia article may be considered released under it's terms. If you are working on a FDL text and something is added to it, you become a joint copyright owners with all prior copyright owners. Can the public cut you out of the copyright because they happen not to like your contribution? Does that seem fair? What if my contribution is the most major contribution to the article and I have completely rewritten it. The FDL says that you have to cite at least the five principal contributors, if you can just pick any version of the article then you can decide who the five principal contributors are, rewrite any contribution made and cut a principal contributor's name out of it? We do not grant copyright, we only grant Wikipedia a non-exclusive license under the FDL. I would argue that implied in that license is the good faith expectation that a useful contribution will not be ignored by someone who thinks a prior version is better without them trying to work the two of them together otherwise they are misusing the license in bad faith. There is an implied term of good faith in every contract and use of Wikipedia is a contract, the FDL is only one part of that contract, therefore if they use an old page version when they could use a newer page version they are violating their contract with Wikipedia and the contract of association that they have entered into with all other Wikipedia contributors who have contributed to said article. Also the FDL has a term that states that history must be preserved when the FDL document is modified (and it says modified, not deleted). Thus if someone looks at a page history they must cite that whole page history, not merely some part of the page history. If they copy the document they should copy the page history, not part of it. Therefore it is implied in this term that one has an obligation to use the current version of a wiki page released under the FDL section 4(i). Wikipedia is not a book, nor is it software. The fact is that if someone links to a particular Wikilink they always get the current page, they don't get the version they saw when they logged on previously. The get the current version which is being released. I think there is an argument that when someone contributes to an article they expect the public will be looking at that article including their contribution. If you are saying that people can just use old versions of an article when newer versions are available, then what kind of value is there to wiki contribution? I do not see how the software analogy works here. There are not copies of it sitting on a shelf somewhere and it is not a question of utility as in software. It is the question of an ongoing collaborative knowledge project and it is the wiki software that makes it different, not the FDL. At the very least there is an inherent contradiction between a licensing scheme that was written for documents that had stable versions and a wiki developed collaborative project that is always evolving. The evolution is a central part of what Wikipedia is; it is also part of the process of the development of knowledge. Wikipedia is not static, it is dynamic, as is the sum of human knowledge. As well the FDL states that the network location of the document has to be linked to in FDL sect. 4(j) and as Wikipedia is being continually edited it is never four years old so this condition can never be waived, the network version of any document is not its place in the page history, but its live wikilink version, once the current version gets retired into the page history it cannot be linked to in the same manner, one has to change the link and it is this stable link feature of Wikipedia that insures access to the most current version by all who link there. The FDL talks of front cover and back cover texts. There are no such texts on Wikipedia because Wikipedia is not a book or manual, so even the terms of the FDL are being adapted to an online encyclopedia. Therefore there are a lot of things implied in the FDL that are not necessarily written in it and there are things written in it that may not be applicable because I do not think that the authors of it foresaw it being used in a wiki context. They saw it being use in the context of a document. Is a wikipage a document? No every pageis an integrated collection of documents that are brought together over time. Time as an element cannot be ignored or stopped. A wikipage is a living document, not a static thing to be frozen. I would even make an argument that Wikipedia has an obligation to prevent page histories from being used as current versions when at all possible, otherwise the value of collaboration is very minimal indeed. We are co-creators of every page we work on and we have an expectation that the contribution will be part of Wikipedia until the copyright expires, or added to with something better and more complete. Not that someone can just wipe out our contribution because they prefer an earlier version. Isn't this the basis of the NPOV approach that Wikipedia is inclusive and not exclusive and the idea that one should add to an article and not subtract from it? How is it collaborative, open or free content to allow others to ignore the contributions of our co-contributors? If one accepts the argument that page histories can be used, then in my view one accepts the argument that someone can just delete all the contributors of a co-author. This is in tune with an extremely economic view of copyright that does not respect the moral rights of authors not to have their contributions disregarded or mutilated. Sure you can buy old books, or used software, or even copy stuff in the public domain, but one of the reasons copyright (or really droit d'auteur) was created was to protect the rights of creators who were oppressed and ignored. Using old versions of Wikipedia when the newer versions are available and not to include the contributions of a greater number of collaborators does not seem to me to be in the spirit of what Wikipedia is all about, it is not in the spirit of joint ownership, once someone makes a valid contribution we have a duty to try and make everyone aware of that contribution. If they want to take it out, they can edit the copy they receive, not just go digging into the internal Wikipedia archives and 'decide' that they know best. If that is the case then Wikipedia is no more that some kind of service provider, not a real collaborative project. Then truely there is no "we" or "us" only a lot of discordant "I"s. All those violations can be left there because as Wikipedia evolves the "I" is gradually being made into the "we." Alex756

How is it collaborative, open or free content to allow others to ignore the contributions of our co-contributors? Part of collaboration in an open content context is the opportunity to discard material that is wrong or not useful. Fred http://www.internet-encyclopedia.org

Who decides if they were fair use? Do we have a US Federal District Court judge who can render binding fair use opinions? Do we have someone who can even say what is a copyright violation? It is all opinion. Well, observance of law is a duty of citizens, most of whom have limited access to legal expertise. However being regularly engaged in a regulated activity as our editors are, results in gradual development of expertise which is "good enough" for our purposes. Even if one of regular contributors was a US Federal District Court judge and they chose to share their expertise with us it would not serve as that would be the opinion of only one judge in one jurisdiction in a complicated field with diverse authority. What we have to do is in good faith do our best. These and discussions on talk pages are a vital part of our self-education and our program for compliance. It is of course, opinion, but we need to form opinions which are sufficient for our purposes, which are to appropriatly apply fair use and avoid infringement and possible litigation. Fred

----- Original Message ----- From: "Fred Bauder" <fredbaud(a)ctelco.net> To: "Alex T." <alex756(a)nyc.rr.com>om>; "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l(a)Wikipedia.org> Sent: Tuesday, September 30, 2003 8:40 AM Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikilists and GDFL or is legally. I disagree with this completely. Jimbo has started a non-profit corporation to aid in the financial stability of Wikipedia so it survives. We are not that corporation and we will probably only participate in that corporation by donating to it. The corporation is in no way responsible for the contributions of members. This is outragously wrong to think that someone is absolved of personal responsiblity by posting something to an OSP as user: JamesDay points out that Wikipedia is. It is the poster who always has and always will be responsible no matter how much the volunteers try to protect the good name of Wikipedia, fundamentally it is the duty of contributors to make sure that their work is not in violation of any laws. They are doing the contributing. How can we be responsible for the defamation done by some third person, we may not even know that it has gone on until long after it happened? Alex756

I think it's a bad idea to set up a Chinese wall between the mailing list and the rest of Wikipedia, including the Talk pages and Meta. I strongly suggest that the mailing lists be officially covered by the GFDL and that an effort be made to have all the participants of the past officially accept the GFDL for all past posts.

Cunc- Sounds reasonable. I for one agree to put all my past, present and future posts in the public domain. Regards, Erik

I don't think (from what I've seen) that anyone is proposing making this retroactive. (If they were, they should know it can't be done.) As for making them GFDL from now on... I strongly vote against. A) Sometimes people will discuss things we don't have the rights to print in an article. This isn't unusl when making a point. B) GFDL is a bad fit for Wikipedia, much less mailing lists. We'd be utterly noncompliant in so many ways, it's not even funny. And once you attach a license, it's insanely difficult to get rid of it. Now, I personally wouldn't have issue with releasing all my postings as PD, but point A would cause some trouble with that being general policy. I think a notice on the signup mail or page or something saying "You allow your statements made on this list to be used in Wikipedia." might be workable. -- Jake