There is another solution to this problem in discussion at Japanese Wikipedia and Wiktionary. It is a bit easier than the migration to GNU Free Content License, though I would love to see it happen soon.
We may introduce another license - so-called "intra-site public domain license" or "intra-wikimedia public domain license." What the license says is something like this:
"by contributing to Wikipedia, you allow others to use your contributions within Wikipedia's projects as if they are in public domain."
Copying and pasting of GFDL texts are against GFDL in a small way. And it happens in many contexts. (Moving Village Pump discussions to appropriate talk pages, dividing an article into two pieces, using a boilerplate texts, using {{subst:}}, etc.)
It is a bigger concern in Japanese Wikipedia, partly because fair use usually have to include attribution according to the Japanese copyright law, and because we do not yet have solid evidence to think that substantial compliance in spirit is safe enough. In other words, if a troll says, "hey, you violated my copyright, because you copied and pasted my contribution into another page without following GFDL, and I am going to sue you," that's not something we can laugh at.
The introduction of the PD license is also a way to reduce interlingual troubles - the required level of compliance at Japanese Wikipedia is a bit more strict/ literal than that suggested at en:Wikipedia:Copyright. But some English Wikipedians may not know about it, and bring an image or translate an article to English Wikipedia from ja. without fulfilling the requirement. That, again, is a violation of GFDL, and therefore likely a copyright violation.
If we introduce the "intra-wikimedia public domain license," we don't have to worry about it.
If English Wikipedia can also introduce similar license, that would make things more convenient.
Also, just in case it matters, we would still promote the GFDL-compliant preservation of attribution, the purpose is just to reduce the risks from legal technicalities, not to trivialize the attribution altogether.
Regards,
Tomos
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--- Tomos at Wikipedia wiki_tomos@hotmail.com wrote:
There is another solution to this problem in discussion at Japanese Wikipedia and Wiktionary. It is a bit easier than the migration to GNU Free Content License, though I would love to see it happen soon.
We may introduce another license - so-called "intra-site public domain license" or "intra-wikimedia public domain license." What the license says is something like this:
"by contributing to Wikipedia, you allow others to use your contributions within Wikipedia's projects as if they are in public domain."
While I think this does reflect actual practice, I'm not sure if it is at all legal or practical (esp since IANAL). For example, I would assume that any current GFDL-only article could not be edited under such a dual license until the authors of the GFDL-only article agree to dual license their work.
Why? Because the edited article is a derivative work of the original and since the original was only under the GFDL, the derivative work can only be under the GFDL. The only way to really change that is to get permission from all the article's authors to add another license.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
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Daniel Mayer wrote:
--- Tomos at Wikipedia wiki_tomos@hotmail.com wrote:
There is another solution to this problem in discussion at Japanese Wikipedia and Wiktionary. It is a bit easier than the migration to GNU Free Content License, though I would love to see it happen soon.
We may introduce another license - so-called "intra-site public domain license" or "intra-wikimedia public domain license." What the license says is something like this:
"by contributing to Wikipedia, you allow others to use your contributions within Wikipedia's projects as if they are in public domain."
While I think this does reflect actual practice, I'm not sure if it is at all legal or practical (esp since IANAL). For example, I would assume that any current GFDL-only article could not be edited under such a dual license until the authors of the GFDL-only article agree to dual license their work.
Why? Because the edited article is a derivative work of the original and since the original was only under the GFDL, the derivative work can only be under the GFDL. The only way to really change that is to get permission from all the article's authors to add another license.
If, as many feel, the issue is one of finding an appropriate, but different, copyright regimen it would be more constructive to look for ways to make it work rather than to find excuses for it not working.
If "new" licence is chosen, then it could be noted that all contributions after a decided year would come under the new licence. If a contributor was also active before that date any contribution that he makes after that date will carry a retroactive application of the licence to his previous edits. We can deal with the others later.
The problems with this issue are only insurmountable because we have declared them insurmountable. Does anyone know of a situation where the courts have tried to deal with this kind of issue? When dealing with laws there is a need to give them the most favorable interpretation, and to be prepared to mount a reasonable defence. Those who stand to profit are usually ready to do that.
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