In a message dated 4/25/2011 9:34:16 AM Pacific Daylight Time, jrgoma@gmail.com writes:
My interest in a legal opinion is not to know if what they do is legal or not.
My interest is to know for example what can they do if I copy the content they previously have translated from an English Wikipedia article I have previously written.
How do they put a dollar figure on the damages suffered if the income they get from that content is obtained from my work they have translated without my permission?
They only have my permission to publish derived works under same license. Then I have the right to copy the derived works back. So any damage they could claim is exactly the same damage I suffer for not being able to do those copies. >>
I don't believe you could make the case that individual contributors have any standing to sue for copyright violations. Similarly, when you contribute to the project, you are intrinsically giving up any rights you may think you possess in what you have written. "Your permission" is a non-existent entity in the case of what you give to Wikipedia.
Will Johnson
I don't think so. You license the material to be published subject to certain conditions. You don't release it without any conditions on the reuser, nor disclaim ownership of the text. You remain the copyright holder. If the reuse conditions are breached, you are the owner of the rights that were breached and have standing.
What you don't have is a case that the loss was of any economic impact to you. You also might not have an argument that they used your text, if "your" edits have been significantly reworked or only a minor part was in fact used. You may have other remedies but that depends on local law - not all countries recognize the same legal structures (equitable remedies, injunctions/orders, etc). In many ways the Foundation may be the sole body that could take *effective* action if it came to law.
This is a definite weak area of copyright law, which mainly seems to have been designed with the primary purpose of covering identifiable works whose reuse was clear, identifiable and economically impacted on the creator. A wiki article, made of edits by 20 people, where any one person's contribution is a sentence or so, and where no economic gain (just attribution) was sought by the author, is not copyright law's main focus.
Deferring to lawyers on the list :)
FT2
On Mon, Apr 25, 2011 at 6:13 PM, WJhonson@aol.com wrote:
get from that content is obtained from my work they have translated without my permission? How do they put a dollar figure on the damages suffered if the income
they
I don't believe you could make the case that individual contributors have any standing to sue for copyright violations. Similarly, when you contribute to the project, you are intrinsically giving up any rights you may think you possess in what you have written. "Your permission" is a non-existent entity in the case of what you give to Wikipedia.
FT2, 25/04/2011 19:57:
This is a definite weak area of copyright law, which mainly seems to have been designed with the primary purpose of covering identifiable works whose reuse was clear, identifiable and economically impacted on the creator. [...]
It's true, but you seem to forget moral rights, which are quite important in civil law countries and seem to exist in China as well: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_rights_%28copyright_law%29#Moral_rights_in_the_People.27s_Republic_of_China
Nemo
On 04/25/11 10:13 AM, WJhonson@aol.com wrote:
I don't believe you could make the case that individual contributors have any standing to sue for copyright violations. Similarly, when you contribute to the project, you are intrinsically giving up any rights you may think you possess in what you have written. "Your permission" is a non-existent entity in the case of what you give to Wikipedia.
If the individual contributors don't have the standing to sue than nobody can! If contributing implies giving up "intrinsic" rights, why even bother with the mention of licences? If I understand it correctly Wikimedia has consistently refused even an assignment of the right to sue for infringement lest it jeopardize its status as an ISP. The WMF has no standing of its own on which to base an infringement suit. One's "permission" may still legally not amount to much, but that's not the same as it's non-existence.
Ray
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