Robert Scott Horning wrote:
Nicholas Moreau wrote:
On 10/6/05, foundation-l-request(a)wikimedia.org
<
foundation-l-request(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:What I am asking for is
that if
you want to claim copyright on your contribution, you need to give this
minimum amount of information for legal protection and to give a
realistic
copyright claim on your contributions. As it stands right now, there
is no
way that you can realisticly claim copyright on any of your
contributions
right now, and certainly there is no way that you canresolve potential
copyright claims on material if it goes to court in a dispute.
Okay, suppose I didn't include my information, and I wanted to claim
copyright on content in Wikijunior.
I take the Foundation to court, saying "I CLAIM MY COPYRIGHT ON THIS!"
The defendant's lawyer says "But, you can't. On the website, when you
contribute anything to any Wikimedia project, it says that you're
contributing this info to the Wikimedia Foundation."
Like, seeing that I have my information on the "contributors" page, does
that mean I own part of the Wikijunior project, and thus can profit
from my
"share" of the contribution? Every time one issue of the books is
published,
$0.02 come rolling into my PayPal account? What? If that's the case, I'm
doing fifty edits under fifty different usernames.
I honestly am dumb-founded on what you consider "claiming [my]
copyright",
on something solely copyrighten by the foundation.
I think you miss the point. The Foundation does not claim copyright
on anything for any Wikimedia project. There is a legitmate reason to
do this, and a good one as well. All the Wikimedia Foundation does is
claim trademarks on commonly used images and names that relate
directly to each one of the projects, and this is proper as well. I
can't set up another web site and claim it is Wikipedia with Wikipedia
content...that is a violation of trademark. In order to enforce
copyright, it is up to the individual authors for each web page to do
the enforcement and keep violators from getting away with breaking the
law.
Absolutely! Trademarks though are a different topic, and are not that
big of a problem for us. Getting into that aspect of IP law would only
muddy the waters. Copyright is another matter because we are in an area
that is not properly covered by the law. Free licensing was an unheard
of and unimaginable concept when these laws were written. In principle,
copyright was invented to protect the _financial_ rights of authors. It
has been more a matter of civil law than criminal law.. There is such a
thing as criminal infringement for wilfull violations, but I don't think
we need to worry about that aspect for now.
The Berne convention mandates automatic copyright such that no person
loses his copyrights because of a failure to register. The Berne
convention forbids signatory states from imposing obligatory
registration. The US, as a signatory to the Berne convention is also
bound by this. What it does is make registration a prerequisite to
filing an infringement law suit. This is useful because it helps to
establish a right of action; it also imposes a limitation on the damages
that can be claimed to those that were sufferred after registration. It
allows you to ignore copyright infringement claims from third parties
who have no personal interest in the claim.
The real issue is if somebody, like Microsoft Press or
Prentiss-Hall,
decides to claim copyright on something found on a Wikimedia Project,
like one of the Wikijunior books, and decides instead to claim
copyright on it for themselves. They do some "minor" modifications of
the content, research the images to make sure they are free and clear
to reproduce, and then say "to heck with the GFDL... we don't care"
and publish the book anyway as if they wrote it themselves.
I'm sure I commented on this a couple years ago. The big problem is not
with copyvio material on the wikis; we have already shown ourselves to
be diligent in trying to deal with that. The likelihood of being
defendants in a serious law suit are very rmote. It's far more likely
that our copyrights will be violated, and we will do fuck all about it.
We may go ahead with nice letters to the infringers begging them to
please, please, please not infringe, but what plan is there for when
they simply respond, "Go to hell!"? With copyrights lasting 70 years
beyond death, what plans are there to deal with that when the relevant
authors are dead, and it's not even clear who can give permission to sue.
Material by unidentified authors is copyrightable just as much as
material by identified authors, except that the term of copyright is
counted from the date of publication. The same term applies to
copyrights owned by corporations. The only practical solution would be
for all contributors to appoint Wikimedia as a non-exclusive copyright
agent that can go ahead and take action against copyright violators when
the occasion arises. This should be stated on every edit page along
with the reference to the GFDL. We should also be periodically (perhaps
quarterly) dumping the entire project on a CD and registering that as
evidence of the state of the wiki at a given time. Being non-exclusive
will still allow the heirs of properly identified authors to take action
for the longer period beyond their lifetimes.
Rights which are not defended are meaningless. I think that it is
essential that Wikimedia accept the responsibility to act as an agent
for the protection of our collective rights.
They can even go back and claim that the material on
Wikibooks in this
case is violating their copyright even and force the removal of the
content on Wikibooks.
I think that this is taking it a little far. The periodic registration
that I mentioned above will be prima facie evidence that the disputed
material was added at the date that we claim. That should make it
easier to shift the burden of proof that their material was written earlier.
As far as the "contributors" page is
concerned, who are they? Where
are they from? Can you certify that the author mentioned in the
contributors page even exist? Really, are you sure it isn't somebody
else? Are you sure they are in the USA/France/Germany like you claim
they are? Are you sure that it wasn't some hacker in Mongolia where
international copyright doesn't apply? Prove it. What court has
juristiction on enforcing the author's wishes? You can't even be sure
who the author is, so why do you think a particular court even has a
right to prosecute? So you think the server is in the USA and
therefore the USA has original juristiction on prosecuting copyright
because of the foundation. Guess what, the Wikimedia Foundation
doesn't claim copyright on any of the material, so that claim is
thrown out. Now what?
Mongolia is signatory to the Berne Convention. What is the basis of
your claim that international copyrights do not apply there?
This is a confused paragraph. Whatever the real problems, this is not
one. Legal jurisdiction is based on where the offence took place, not
on where the copyright owner or his servers are resident.
It gets even worse. Because we can point to comments
here on this
mailing list and on several talk pages that not only is this
information (about the country of birth and nationality of each
author, together with each full real name) is not collected but there
seems to be "official" opposition to even collecting it, all
contributions can be argued as anonymous contributions. This wasn't
just an oversight from somebody not understanding copyright, but a
deliberate policy of removing identification related to user
contributions even with specifics of copyright law being explained.
If individuals want to protect their privacy I recognize that as their
personal right for which they don't need to make an excuse. I don't
know of any "official" opposition to people freely providing that
information. A person who chooses to invoke his right to privacy does
need .to be aware of how this will limit his copyrights. A teen
contributor may still be alive and in his eighties when the copyright
expires.
In short, yes, we know who has contributed what stuff
to each
Wikimedia article/module/entry but trying to prove authorship is going
to be a major headache if any single page is going to be challenged on
its copyright claim. Already I've seen supposed copyright violations
when in fact it was the "other" website that was violating copyright
of the authors of a particular page. It is just a matter of time
before something on one of the Wikimedia projects is going to be
challenged and "forced" to be removed, not because of an obvious
copyright violation from a previously published source but because the
copyright of the Wikimedia content is in doubt.
Proof of authorship is still not essential to the subsistance of
copyright. It is only essential if that individual wants to pursue his
case as an individual. I agree that it is only a matter of time before
these issues need to be litigated, but it is up to us to carefully
circumscribe the issues so that we are not wasting our efforts on a lot
of red herrings.
In addition, one of the reasons I asked for this
information is that I
intend to do a formal copyright registration on Wikijunior books when
I send them into print format. I've already taken one Wikijunior book
down to a printing company and made a copy that I can send around to
some people as the tangible results of these projects. As a part of
this formal registration which I don't need any permission to do, I am
required by law when filing the registration to try and find all
copyright claims on the material that I am registering. At least a
reasonable attempt at collecting the information. In the case of the
Wikijunior Solar System book, there are over 50 different
contributors, and it would be nice to be able to give credit to all of
them, and give them all a "stake" in the book as it goes to press. I
was trying to be polite and ethical as I can, and then I find people
like you, Zanimum, who not only object to me collecting this from
people voluntarily, but seek to stop me from trying to collect this
information altogether.
Nothing prevents you from taking the material to the printer at your own
expense, or even making a personal profit when you sell it to the
public. You just need to follow the GFDL, and can't object when anyone
else does the same thing.
I do think this information can and should be a part
of the "user"
record for each Media Wiki user, and adding the information is very
trivial to accomplish from the viewpoint of a developer. Like I said,
voluntary information only, and you don't have to include the
information if you don't want to, but why it shouldn't be listed as
another field on the user preferences page is beyond my comprehension.
And it can save us some headaches in the future as well.
I'm sure that software could be written to handle this; go ahead and do
that. Maybe the developpers will agree to make your programming a part
of Mediawiki if it is fairly bug free. Nevertheless it is still not
clear that it is a legal necessity.
Ec