----- Original Message ----- From: "Daniel Mayer" <maveric149(a)yahoo.com> To: <wikien-l(a)Wikipedia.org> Sent: Sunday, September 07, 2003 7:47 PM Subject: [WikiEN-l] [Wikitech-l] Re: Update to gfdl copyright notice needed In some jurisdictions those contracts are voidable, but usually if a contract is completely or sufficiently performed it cannot be voided ex post facto; otherwise parents could have their kids buy things in stores and then use them and then just return them after significant periods of time. Yes, if a contract is signed it may need the guardian (or even a court's approval in some cases) before it is considered binding, but such contracts do not cover the kinds of transactions that minors routinely enter into. There are also estoppel, detrimental reliance and unjust enrichment arguments that will also give a remedy or imply a contract. BTW most contracts are not signed. When you go to a store and purchase groceries do you sign any kind of agreement (unless you pay by credit card or check) No, but the purchase of goods is covered in North America under UCC provisions and elsewhere by similar sales contracts jurisprudence, statute or codal provision (in civil law countries). know Children can testify in court, generally speaking the courts look to the minor's appreciation of right and wrong and truth and falsehood. Often the judge may ask the minor if she understands these things and then rule that the minor is competent. and to How many four year old kids are going to be editing aticles on Wikipedia? Maybe this is getting too academic. consent Is that really necessary? and Even if the license is later overturned (I don't think it would be, the minor has to figure out how to edit the page, type in the text, they can see that Wikis function on a collaborative basis) it is still a non-exclusive coauthorship license, one of the _weakest_ types of licenses to have under EVIL US copyright law. (try telling that to a federal court judge in NY or California that you believe copyright is evil, copyright law is what keeps some of those judges busy, so if you want to get into the spirit of the law, don't make it an evil spirit. The plaintiff would not only have to argue vigorously for damages, i.e. "my son could have had that article published in Encyclopedia Britanica and received $500 for it" (highly unlikely) or the court will order copyright royalties paid (no problem for Wikipedia,everything is free here, but yet another wrench for those potential downstream licensees who might be worried about getting into disputes with irate parents whose children built part of Wikipedia 1.0) Anyway that is not Wikipedia's problem, if someone wants to make money out of Wikipedia why shouldn't they have to pay the due dilligence costs to do so, they will potentially be making profits, no? Since the contributor can still release their contribution elsewhere under any kind of evil copyright law license, Wikimedia's lawyers could argue that contributing to Wikimedia did not result in any damages. "Hey lady, your son still could have sold his contribution to Britanica, problem is, he does not have an advanced degree and they look for contributors who are recognized experts in their areas before purchasing their work." There may also a deterimental reliance argument working. As we take steps to make sure that the user does understand the license and is bound by it, then we (as subsequent coauthors) must rely upon it. At worst some judges might order a compulsory licencing scheme/contstructive trust any profits made by third parties. That would not be Wikipedia's problem. That is one more reason to have a terms and conditions (but I am now thinking to change that term to "Submission Guildelines" and call it terms in the edit page notice, see: http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Alex756/Annotated_edit_page_announc… for some discussion about the draft submission text over the last few days. [[Wikipedia: Submission Guidelines]] could have a clause like this: "If you are underage, PLEASE inform your parents about your contribution to {wikimedia project} and get there permission and put a note about that on your user page. If they do not agree to allow you to participate by making submissions to this site, they may later be able to have them removed. Of course if you submit anonymously it may be very hard to prove who you are." (this is only a preliminary off the top of my head rough draft; it obviously needs more work). (Doesn't LittleDan state that his parents know about his work on Wikipedia?) an Yes, IAAL but NALO! (see my talk page) alex756

On Sun, 7 Sep 2003, Daniel Mayer wrote: Indeed, & that's not in any shape what I would want to see happen with Wikipedia. I hope it would be a satisfactory solution to this problem I have described were the Wikipedia Foundation to state at some point before Wikipedia 1.0 is published, "We will be publishing Wikipedia, & are providing everyone a fair chance to explain that they were unable to agree to the terms of submission because they were a minor, so we can remove their contribution. Otherwise, we will assume from their silence that they gave consent." But IANAL, & I don't know if this annoucnement woudl be considered satisfactory by the court system. Exactly my point, Mav. And I should have been more clear about that subtle point in my first email. This has been moot for Wikipedia & similar projects because no one is making money off of Wikipedia. At least using both the materials & the trademark. If & when Wikipedia 1.0 is available for sale, & money is made from this sale (& I hope it is a lot, & supports a quick progress to Wiki 2.0), I figure this will become an issue. As I said before, this is a lot like the situation with Linux: when it was more or less a hobbyist's project, & there wasn't much money involved, no one really worried about ownership of the code. And besides, the custom was that everyone could use the code, & no one could prevent anyone else from using it, so it was not an issue. Then IBM announced that they invested a billion dollars into Linux sales & development, & made all of that back, so Darl MacBride decided to try to sue his way to claim a piece of all of that money. Well, again IANAL, but as I see it the fact that a minor cannot sign away her/his rights to contributions to Wikipedia can come back to haunt us in one of three ways. (Note: I don't claim that any of these 3 cases would prevail against Wikipedia in court; yet I claim that they could lead Wikipedia to spend money on lawyers appearing in court.) 1. Parent or guardian discovers minor has contributed to Wikipedia material they do not want their child to know about, & demands that the contribution be removed. An example would be a Christian parent discovering that her/his child has made a major contribution to the article on Atheism or Evolution -- although the roles could easily be reversed (i.e., the child of Atheist parents writing a contribution on Jesus Christ or Creationism). By this act, they sought to halt the publication of Wikipedia. Here, I would assume we could resolve this problem by removing the material in question -- but this assumes that the parent wants to be reasonable. (Maybe they hate Ayn Rand & want to kill Wikipedia because of Jimbo's like for the authoress. ;-) 2. A more serious scenario would be where a parent or guardian discovers minor has contributed to Wikipedia material after Wikipedia 1.0 has started making money, & states that because the child could not permit reuse without royalties, some share of the income must be paid to the child. This is a stickier situation. ISTR that over the years schools have published anthologies of children's writings; perhaps there might be some guidance from how the rights for those books were acquired. 3. The worst -- & this is one I don't want to advertise to the world -- is that after Wikipedia 1.0 comes out, & makes a lot of money, some git appears out of the blue, claims that it made a lot of contributions as an anonymous contributor under the age of 18, & now that it is older than 18 has decided NOT to agree to the original terms & wants money. And won't tell anyone what the contributions were because "Wikipedia will wipe off the fingerprints." Because this scenario is borrowed from what Darl MacBride is doing as CEO of SCO, perhaps this possiblity will become less likely if the judge decides sanely in that case. But even removing that last sentence -- & assuming that the suit is over a considerable piece of work that can be traced to one or a group of related IP addresses -- this still remains an ugly situation that could easily end up in court & cost a lot of money. In short, what I worry about is someone like Michael or DW deciding to use the legal system to troll Wikipedia. It sucks, I don't like it any more than the rest of you, but we need to decide how to deal with it before Jimbo's dream of the Wikipedia 1.0 CD appears on the Best Seller list. Geoff