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