Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium to launch this week Larry Sanger: "The conclusion you are trying to establish is that we cannot relicense our versions of Wikipedia articles with GFDL and CC. Why not? Does the GFDL explicitly forbid licensing works under another license in addition?"
Is he seriously suggesting that they can basically just license our works under whatever license they please as long as they also license it under the GFDL?
I can't believe they've gone 'live' without even sorting out basic copyright issues... CZ is a joke.
IANAL... IANAIPL.. but I read Slashdot a lot (isn't that just as good?) and I don't remember any headlines saying "Supreme court decides in favor of GPL!" Even the GPL is a bit up in the air.
Now, the GFDL... I don't think there's any really big, important project _except_ Wikipedia, and I don't think Wikipedia has ever engaged in any lawsuits in which the GFDL played any kind of role whatsoever. The GFDL is so legally puzzling that Wikipedia itself can't give nice, simple, crystal-clear rules on how to re-use Wikipedia content. Nobody understand what the attribution and history rules really mean and what does or does not satisfy them in practice. And none of what anyone thinks they might understand has ever been tested in court.
Suppose Citizendium does go ahead and reuse big chunks of Wikipedia under some complicated legal mishmash of a license, and let's suppose the essence of the situation is that a) in a broad sort of way, Citizendium allows free-as-in-freedom re-use; b) Wikipedia, the Free Software Foundation, and the EFF all agree that whatever Citizendium is doing can be characterized as a "free license."
Who the heck is going to sue Citizendium? Nobody has a big stake in their Wikipedia contributions. There's no money involved. And so many of the issues involve other licenses being _less_ free than GFDL.
Who is going to pay the big lawyers' fees? And pay for a photographer to take the twenty-five eight-by-ten color photographs with arrows and a paragraph on the back to bring to court, showing which paragraphs were in which versions of what when under which license?
And there probably isn't even anything resembling a case _until a third party re-uses Citizendium content_.
"Your honor, this print publisher will testify that they WOULD have published a print book based on Citizendium content, and it WOULD have included MY paragraphs, if Citizendium hadn't used a noncommercial license. And if they had, they would have paid me exactly nothing at all. And I've been terribly hurt by the fact that they don't have the _potential_ to reuse my work without paying me. Or maybe they do, but they aren't sure they do, because the Citizendium license is so tangled and murky and self-contradictory. So I've been deprived of the precious opportunity to see my name in print and to get paid nothing for it. Unless they use the Wikipedia version, of course, which they don't want to do because, they just don't."
And the other side says "Your honor, please ask the plaintiff, Horace Wadsworth Pennypacker II, SSN 078-05-1120, to _prove_ that he is indeed user 'Pfiffltriggi.'"
The only way this can ever be a problem is if Jimbo decides to have Wikipedia sue Citizendium based on ego and personal spite, and I don't think he's that spiteful, and I'm not sure he could convince the Wikimedia Foundation to do it.
And by golly if I ever see a banner saying "Wikimedia needs your contribution to fund its continuing legal struggle against Citizendium" you can't expect much in the way of contributions from _me._
On 26/03/07, Daniel P. B. Smith wikipedia2006@dpbsmith.com wrote:
IANAL... IANAIPL.. but I read Slashdot a lot (isn't that just as good?) and I don't remember any headlines saying "Supreme court decides in favor of GPL!" Even the GPL is a bit up in the air.
Er, not really. The FSF say they regularly sort out GPL problems quietly by starting with the original premise of the license - that the *default* is all rights reserved, and that you don't have to accept the license terms, but they're the only thing making it not all rights reserved. That the GPL hasn't been through court is because only a bloody idiot would try. (The last bloody idiot to try was Daniel Wallace, and IBM is now using his tattered legal corpse to beat SCO, the second-last bloody idiot to try, over the head with.)
The GFDL works the same way. The only thing that gives you the right to reuse my contributions to Wikipedia is that I've released them under the GFDL. (I've also dual-licensed my own under any CC-by-sa licence.) No-one has to accept the licence terms for my work - but if they reuse it other than under one of the licenses, they are violating my copyright. Note - not Wikipedia's or Wikimedia's, but *mine*.
Now multiply that by a thousand.
Now, the GFDL... I don't think there's any really big, important project _except_ Wikipedia, and I don't think Wikipedia has ever engaged in any lawsuits in which the GFDL played any kind of role whatsoever. The GFDL is so legally puzzling that Wikipedia itself can't give nice, simple, crystal-clear rules on how to re-use Wikipedia content. Nobody understand what the attribution and history rules really mean and what does or does not satisfy them in practice. And none of what anyone thinks they might understand has ever been tested in court.
I think the cut'n'paste planned is pretty bloody blatant.
Who the heck is going to sue Citizendium? Nobody has a big stake in their Wikipedia contributions. There's no money involved. And so many of the issues involve other licenses being _less_ free than GFDL.
Someone pissed off enough. For one, there's the DMCA to apply.
If you strike the hornet's nest, you get to negotiate with each hornet individually.
The only way this can ever be a problem is if Jimbo decides to have Wikipedia sue Citizendium based on ego and personal spite, and I don't think he's that spiteful, and I'm not sure he could convince the Wikimedia Foundation to do it. And by golly if I ever see a banner saying "Wikimedia needs your contribution to fund its continuing legal struggle against Citizendium" you can't expect much in the way of contributions from _me._
You appear to be under the impression the copyright in question is Wikipedia's or Wikimedia's. It's not - they own hardly any of the stuff on the sites.
- d.
The only way this can ever be a problem is if Jimbo decides to have Wikipedia sue Citizendium based on ego and personal spite, and I don't think he's that spiteful, and I'm not sure he could convince the Wikimedia Foundation to do it. And by golly if I ever see a banner saying "Wikimedia needs your contribution to fund its continuing legal struggle against Citizendium" you can't expect much in the way of contributions from _me._
You appear to be under the impression the copyright in question is Wikipedia's or Wikimedia's. It's not - they own hardly any of the stuff on the sites.
Indeed. If Citizendium are to be sued over this, it would be a class action suit brought by a large number of Wikipedians. The fact that Citizendium are specifically talking about trying to make sure we can't use their work but they can use ours goes against the spirit of the GDFL and Wikipedia (which is all about collaboration), and that may well piss of enough Wikipedians to make a class action suit viable (it doesn't really take many, as long as one of them can afford a good lawyer).
According to Wikipedia, the minimum statutory damages are $200 per work (and that's assuming Citzendium can claim good faith, which would seem unlikely, in which case it's $750). What counts as a work? Each edit counting as a separate work would seem unlikely. Each article counting as a separate work would seem more likely, but how does the money get divided up between contributors?
On 26/03/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
Indeed. If Citizendium are to be sued over this, it would be a class action suit brought by a large number of Wikipedians.
Ahahaha, no it wouldn't have to be. Any individual whose copyright in their written text was violated would have a cause for action. Imagine 1000 separate DMCA notices to a violator and their host.
The fact that Citizendium are specifically talking about trying to make sure we can't use their work but they can use ours goes against the spirit of the GDFL and Wikipedia (which is all about collaboration), and that may well piss of enough Wikipedians to make a class action suit viable (it doesn't really take many, as long as one of them can afford a good lawyer).
It's unlikely to happen that way, I would hope - CZ's intentions aren't to do evil. I have a CZ login and I last used it to fix an image attribution (sufficient for the terms of both GFDL and CC-by 1.0). It depends if those who appear primarily motivated by messing with Wikipedia can be held back from massive copyright violation to that end.
According to Wikipedia, the minimum statutory damages are $200 per work (and that's assuming Citzendium can claim good faith, which would seem unlikely, in which case it's $750). What counts as a work? Each edit counting as a separate work would seem unlikely. Each article counting as a separate work would seem more likely, but how does the money get divided up between contributors?
Statutory damages under US law require registering one's copyright. That can be done diff by diff, much as IBM registers each of its Linux kernel contributions. Note that people outside the US, like me, can still send valid DMCA notices to US hosting entities.
- d.
Indeed. If Citizendium are to be sued over this, it would be a class action suit brought by a large number of Wikipedians.
Ahahaha, no it wouldn't have to be. Any individual whose copyright in their written text was violated would have a cause for action. Imagine 1000 separate DMCA notices to a violator and their host.
It wouldn't *have* to be, no, but surely the most practical method is a class action suit?
It's unlikely to happen that way, I would hope - CZ's intentions aren't to do evil. I have a CZ login and I last used it to fix an image attribution (sufficient for the terms of both GFDL and CC-by 1.0). It depends if those who appear primarily motivated by messing with Wikipedia can be held back from massive copyright violation to that end.
However, it seems Larry Sanger falls in that category, and holding him back may be rather challenging.
Statutory damages under US law require registering one's copyright. That can be done diff by diff, much as IBM registers each of its Linux kernel contributions. Note that people outside the US, like me, can still send valid DMCA notices to US hosting entities.
Could you really claim that copying an article in which you made 2 back-to-back edits counts as violating the copyright on two works? That seems rather arbitrary.