Milos Rancic wrote:
On Thu, Jan 22, 2009 at 8:43 PM, Michael Snow wikipedia@verizon.net wrote:
I'm afraid I simply don't understand what you're trying to say, then. It sounded like you were talking about having one document (web, print, whatever medium) point to another, something that might be done for attribution or a variety of other purposes. And if it's a question of pointing, I'm puzzled what difference it makes which medium is used or which direction one points across different media.
I'm also not sure what you mean by a right to demand a printed legal document. It sounds sort of like you're referring to this as a right you hold as an author (whether as part of basic copyright or a moral right). That's not something I'm familiar with at all. So it's likely that I've not understood what you mean correctly there, either.
No, I am referring to my right as a user of the content. (Implicitly, it is about my right as an author of the content, but, explicitly, it is not.)
In that case, I really don't know where you get the notion of a right to a printed legal document. If the user has been given a license, then the user has whatever rights are in that license. But neither the GFDL nor any of the Creative Commons licenses indicate that you have a right to be provided with a printed form. And in the context of copyright law more generally, there's nothing at all like this.
The right of a reader of a book has to be "Send me the list of the authors [in the paper form]." (and, again, I think that you should know that better than me). If it is an explicit legal right (and I don't see a reason why it shouldn't be), then every publisher has the obligation to send the list of authors to every reader on demand.
It's an interesting concept, but simply doesn't exist anywhere that I know of. Perhaps you should suggest to those who want to have the identity of people editing from IP addresses exposed, that they push this idea as legislation. As it currently stands, I can publish something with no identifiable authors, no copyright notice, and no legal information whatsoever. Requirements like that (the US used to require a copyright notice) have been stripped away as an unreasonable burden on authors.
--Michael Snow