Anthere wrote:
Nicholas Moreau wrote:
Wikijunior, as many already know, is publishing a series of books, the first of which is funded by the mysterious Beck Foundation.
This message has worried many of us:
"According to the United States Code for registering a copyrighted work, you must include your nationality (what country you claim citizenship in) and the country you are currently residing in, if different.
??????
Can you cite this piece of law ? Is the law the same in all countries ? If not, why having to respect this one ? If this is correct, should we follow the law ? Or explore a new territory ?
I am really not happy with the idea of crediting only those who will provide all this information. It is very contrary to my idea of what our project is. I am even less happy seeing editors should supposingly put that public on the net. What about everyone privacy ? When I buy a book by the way, nowhere is such an information provided on the book.
Can the lawyer guys here give some feedback on this issue ?
Anthere
I am not a "lawyer", but I have studied copyright law extensively and feel competent to answer some of these questions.
U.S. copyright code does require this information if you are going to formally "register" the copyrighted work. The idea is that the author's nationality directly influences what copyright laws apply to a given piece of literature, even if it was originally published in a place that is different from the nationality of the author. For instance, French law applies to French citizens for copyright even if the book was originally published in the USA, with all of the gory details that go with that issue as well. This is information that is also required under international copyright treaties as well.
For some more specific details of at least registration forms required for U.S. publication and registration, see: http://www.copyright.gov/
The information that I was requesting specifically when I wrote the stuff in question at Wikijunior asking for the full complete name was based on the registration forms from the above web site. This is also a matter of copyright law in the sense that we are asking for full details from anybody that wants to make a copyright claim on something that is found on Wikimedia content pages. Other authors that may want to stay anonymous can do so, but their ability to make a copyright claim later is going to be much more difficult. The U.S. copyright office does require information about all potential copyright claims for a given work.
Although not specifically stated on all Wikimedia websites, there is an implicit copyright applied to all content (except for older Wikinews content that was previously public domain content). We use various "licenses" to permit redistirbution and duplication of the information, but the copyright claim is still there. If we want to enforce the GFDL at some point due to somebody trying to abuse the content, at some point we as a community will have to collect all of the information asked above for each author in order to take the case to court and force the copyright violator to comply with the GFDL (taking Wikipedia content and claiming it as their own, for instance, under a propritary license).
BTW, if you buy a book all of that information can be found at the national copyright registration office, even if it isn't specifically provided inside the front cover of the book. And that information is going to be available generally through the internet anyway, but it may be a little harder to find than simply a single click from the main page of the on-line version of the book.
As far as being "very contrary to my idea of what our project is", I don't see how asking for voluntary information about nationality is contrary to the spirit of a Wiki. It is not required if you don't want to give the information, and as I pointed out is required if we want to keep the information "free" and availble under a copyleft arrangement. As far as privacy, that is up to you to decide on how much privacy you want to have in your life. If you are going to make waves in public (like trying to enforce your copyrights), you need to make claims to what you have written in a public manner. Authors throughout time have done this, and goes with the public nature of the written word. Yes, some authors may go to jail because of what they've written, and you can point to many people who have had that happen throughout all of time. That is what happens when you stick your neck out in public, and why in general you as a citizen of whatever country you live in should try to support free speech laws.
I tried to make a bug report on this earlier, asking for this information to be collected as a part of the user record directly on each Mediawiki project, but the bug report was squashed because the developers felt this is something that should have been debated first (presumably on Wikipedia by the comment of the one developer who opposed the bug). I still feel that this should be something that can and should be collected for each user, on a voluntary basis. From my reading of the GFDL, this may even be required information if we want to be able to enforce the GFDL.