Jeffrey V. Merkey wrote:
I have reviewed this website and it appears to violate
the Wikimedia
Foundation's trademark rights. I don't think the content is an issue,
but the use of the Wikimedia Foundations trademarks and trading on the
goodwill of the Foundation seems to impinge on its rights. We are also
publishing College Level textbooks in Cherokee from Wikipedia content,
however, we are not selling the textbooks, we are paying for the
printings ourselves and donating the books to the Cherokee Nation
language immersion programs and donating them to our schools of
information technology.
Jeff
I am asking for some reasonable guidelines to be offered to Wikimedia
users who do things like this so compliance with trademark issues can
made in terms that can also protect the WMF. If you are suggesting that
each Wikimedia user must have a lawyer before they do something bold
like this, it defeats the whole purpose of putting the content available
as free (GFDL) content. Clearly this user and any similar kinds of
publishers of content like this would like to acknowledge the WMF as the
source of the information, or at least the people that helped get the
group together that wrote this content.
I'll say this again, the GFDL does not prohibit making a profit off of
content like this, and saying that the content is free as in beer is not
the point of the GFDL. I'm sorry that this one book is pushing the
issue, but there seems to be a serious misunderstanding of what the GFDL
is really all about here. If you can give away book because you have
found some sort of philonthropic donor to help out in paying for the
physical paper, fine. That is a very noble thing. But don't muddle up
the waters here and confuse the issue. I can also make money off of
content like this, as can you, Jeff, and everybody else. The GFDL
mainly says that nobody has exclusive publication rights, and why it is
called copyleft.
--
Robert Scott Horning