Ray Saintonge wrote:
I have no complaints about commercial use, but I am concerned when a commercial user massively takes freely licensed or public domain material and parks them under the umbrella of his copyrights so that the users of "his" material unwittingly respect a copyright that has no basis in fact. If the only ones with rights of action against the fraudster are the separate owners of the fragments, we will have loosed the tactic of divide and conquer upon our own selves. I would really like to see a situation where we nominating someone as an non-exclusive agent with the right to prosecute serious copyright violations on a class action basis.
Is it possible to make this work for copy-left licenses? That is can one transfer even partially the right to seek redress to another party? If so, that would be wonderful. I am sure many contributors would take the advantage of it.
To be most careful, I would suggest that such party would be legally differentiated from the Foundation, and would accept on an equal basis such nominations from contributors to non-WMF projects as well. Specifically since - at least in theory - the agent might be requested to act against the Foundations stated interests.
Yours,
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen