Of all the books to come out of print-on-demand, this one is possibly the most problematic. I am certainly not a lawyer but, as I see it, not only is it using the name of the Foundation without the explicit permission of the Foundation (and hence, in violation of our trademark), it is attributing the content to the Foundation. This, in turn, could make us liable for any copyvios in the book (text and images). Despite numerous requests from Print on Demand publishers (including Lulu), the Foundation has consistently avoided such an arrangement for precisely these reasons.
Furthermore, the content was developed as a result of a grant made to the Foundation with the stated goal of creating *free* content. After considerable discussions with them, we have made it clear that we intend to keep the books online and not take them to print. This is precisely what we said we will *not* do, and it is timed perfectly to coincide with negotiations to get a considerably larger grant from that same foundation to expand the Wikijunior project.
This is not commendable. It is the bad result of people acting unilaterally on behalf of the Foundation without fully understanding the implications of what they are doing.
Danny
Do you see yourself getting involved in the ordeal? I mean, you ARE the Wikimedia Office...r.
On 7/3/06, daniwo59@aol.com daniwo59@aol.com wrote:
Of all the books to come out of print-on-demand, this one is possibly the most problematic. I am certainly not a lawyer but, as I see it, not only is it using the name of the Foundation without the explicit permission of the Foundation (and hence, in violation of our trademark), it is attributing the content to the Foundation. This, in turn, could make us liable for any copyvios in the book (text and images). Despite numerous requests from Print on Demand publishers (including Lulu), the Foundation has consistently avoided such an arrangement for precisely these reasons.
Furthermore, the content was developed as a result of a grant made to the Foundation with the stated goal of creating *free* content. After considerable discussions with them, we have made it clear that we intend to keep the books online and not take them to print. This is precisely what we said we will *not* do, and it is timed perfectly to coincide with negotiations to get a considerably larger grant from that same foundation to expand the Wikijunior project.
This is not commendable. It is the bad result of people acting unilaterally on behalf of the Foundation without fully understanding the implications of what they are doing.
Danny
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
daniwo59@aol.com wrote:
Of all the books to come out of print-on-demand, this one is possibly the most problematic. I am certainly not a lawyer but, as I see it, not only is it using the name of the Foundation without the explicit permission of the Foundation (and hence, in violation of our trademark), it is attributing the content to the Foundation. This, in turn, could make us liable for any copyvios in the book (text and images). Despite numerous requests from Print on Demand publishers (including Lulu), the Foundation has consistently avoided such an arrangement for precisely these reasons.
Furthermore, the content was developed as a result of a grant made to the Foundation with the stated goal of creating *free* content. After considerable discussions with them, we have made it clear that we intend to keep the books online and not take them to print. This is precisely what we said we will *not* do, and it is timed perfectly to coincide with negotiations to get a considerably larger grant from that same foundation to expand the Wikijunior project.
This is not commendable. It is the bad result of people acting unilaterally on behalf of the Foundation without fully understanding the implications of what they are doing.
Danny
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
I have reviewed this website and it appears to violate the Wikimedia Foundation's trademark rights. I don't think the content is an issue, but the use of the Wikimedia Foundations trademarks and trading on the goodwill of the Foundation seems to impinge on its rights. We are also publishing College Level textbooks in Cherokee from Wikipedia content, however, we are not selling the textbooks, we are paying for the printings ourselves and donating the books to the Cherokee Nation language immersion programs and donating them to our schools of information technology.
Jeff
On 7/3/06, daniwo59@aol.com daniwo59@aol.com wrote:
Of all the books to come out of print-on-demand, this one is possibly the most problematic. I am certainly not a lawyer but, as I see it, not only is it using the name of the Foundation without the explicit permission of the Foundation (and hence, in violation of our trademark), it is attributing the content to the Foundation. This, in turn, could make us liable for any copyvios in the book (text and images). Despite numerous requests from Print on Demand publishers (including Lulu), the Foundation has consistently avoided such an arrangement for precisely these reasons.
[[Wikibooks:Copyrights]] needs to be changed to reflect this. It currently states (among other things):
"You may use the same title as the Wikibooks book and/or module(s) but trademark law prevents you from advertising the Wikibooks or Wikimedia names without our written permission. This does not prevent you from giving either Wikibooks or Wikimedia credit for the work by name; as a matter of fact we very much appreciate all the credit we can get (this is a separate issue from author credit; see below). But it does legally prevent you from leading your readers to believe that your version of our work is in fact an official Wikibooks or Wikimedia publication."
This paragraph is somewhat contradictory, but it does explicitly say that trademark law does not prevent giving Wikimedia credit for the work by name.
Anthony
Anthony wrote:
snip
This paragraph is somewhat contradictory, but it does explicitly say that trademark law does not prevent giving Wikimedia credit for the work by name.
Anthony _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
If my understanding of the FDL is correct, then the publisher must at least provide a pointer back to the original authors and perhaps must list all of the authors in the published materials somewhere.
What would the Wikimedia Foundation's reaction be if the material were published without giving any credit to the Foundation or the original authors?
regards, lazyquasar
On Mon, Jul 03, 2006 at 10:02:04PM -0400, daniwo59@aol.com wrote:
Furthermore, the content was developed as a result of a grant made to the Foundation with the stated goal of creating *free* content.
Just checking: Free as in speech, not as in beer, right?
sincerely, Kim Bruning
Kim Bruning wrote:
On Mon, Jul 03, 2006 at 10:02:04PM -0400, daniwo59@aol.com wrote:
Furthermore, the content was developed as a result of a grant made to the Foundation with the stated goal of creating *free* content.
Just checking: Free as in speech, not as in beer, right?
Absolutely.
Put simply: we should welcome developments such as this, this is exactly what we intend people to do with our content, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with people taking this content, packaging it, and selling it.
There CAN BE something very wrong with using wikibooks itself to advertise/promote a third-party venture, and there CAN BE something very wrong with using the community's names to promote such work, but the exact parameters of these things is something that we have to feel our way forward with carefully.
My feeling here is that with some minor adjustments and communication about what is going on, this can go forward without difficulty.
--Jimbo
On 7/4/06, Michael R. Irwin michael_irwin@verizon.net wrote:
Anthony wrote:
snip
This paragraph is somewhat contradictory, but it does explicitly say that trademark law does not prevent giving Wikimedia credit for the work by name.
If my understanding of the FDL is correct, then the publisher must at least provide a pointer back to the original authors and perhaps must list all of the authors in the published materials somewhere.
What would the Wikimedia Foundation's reaction be if the material were published without giving any credit to the Foundation or the original authors?
Yes, this is all very unclear. Hopefully Brad Patrick can start tackling this in the near future, so that there can be an official statement as to what copyright interest, if any, the Wikimedia Foundation claims on content, and if they claim any, then how they intend the GFDL to be applied to such content. It would also be nice to once and for all answer the question as to whether or not Wikimedia claims to be the "publisher" as the term is used in the GFDL.
Of course this likely only solves a small sliver of the problem, as every individual contributor *also* holds a copyright interest in the content. One can hope that a court would consider Big Cats (for instance) to be a joint work, in which case permission only need to be granted by a single contributor, but it's quite up in the air whether or not that is true.
Anthony
daniwo59@aol.com wrote:
Of all the books to come out of print-on-demand, this one is possibly the most problematic. I am certainly not a lawyer but, as I see it, not only is it using the name of the Foundation without the explicit permission of the Foundation (and hence, in violation of our trademark), it is attributing the content to the Foundation. This, in turn, could make us liable for any copyvios in the book (text and images). Despite numerous requests from Print on Demand publishers (including Lulu), the Foundation has consistently avoided such an arrangement for precisely these reasons.
Furthermore, the content was developed as a result of a grant made to the Foundation with the stated goal of creating *free* content. After considerable discussions with them, we have made it clear that we intend to keep the books online and not take them to print. This is precisely what we said we will *not* do, and it is timed perfectly to coincide with negotiations to get a considerably larger grant from that same foundation to expand the Wikijunior project.
I guess this is the free as in beer vs. free as in liberty argument. The content certainly is free in the sense that it is available to anybody, and we certainly havn't granted any exclusive publication rights to a particular user. In this sense, I have no real understand of why this is such a problem, nor why it would affect any sort of negotiations. If it was promised to be free as in beer and a grant given to be able to do that, you should involve the community who is developing the content and let us know exactly what was promised and how we can get stuff like this published in a more productive manner. Besides, the GFDL prohibits restricting publication in precisely the manner that you are complaining about here.
The only real issue is if a link will be on a project page or not, and to offer a strong policy on how to accomplish this. By simply prohibiting links of this nature IMHO is the wrong way to approach this issue, and this is something that the WMF needs to deal with and allow at least some sort of path to accomplish the goal: selling content in some sort of on-line bookstore with links on project pages. At the moment there is no path other than what this user has accomplished.
This is not commendable. It is the bad result of people acting unilaterally on behalf of the Foundation without fully understanding the implications of what they are doing.
Danny
This user is not acting unilaterally on behalf of the WMF, but is trying to be bold and acting on good faith to acomplish a goal that has been dismissed on this list in the past, where comments encouraging this specific kind of behavior have been offered and no rebuttal by people like yourself until the actions occured.
Jeffrey V. Merkey wrote:
I have reviewed this website and it appears to violate the Wikimedia Foundation's trademark rights. I don't think the content is an issue, but the use of the Wikimedia Foundations trademarks and trading on the goodwill of the Foundation seems to impinge on its rights. We are also publishing College Level textbooks in Cherokee from Wikipedia content, however, we are not selling the textbooks, we are paying for the printings ourselves and donating the books to the Cherokee Nation language immersion programs and donating them to our schools of information technology.
Jeff
I am asking for some reasonable guidelines to be offered to Wikimedia users who do things like this so compliance with trademark issues can made in terms that can also protect the WMF. If you are suggesting that each Wikimedia user must have a lawyer before they do something bold like this, it defeats the whole purpose of putting the content available as free (GFDL) content. Clearly this user and any similar kinds of publishers of content like this would like to acknowledge the WMF as the source of the information, or at least the people that helped get the group together that wrote this content.
I'll say this again, the GFDL does not prohibit making a profit off of content like this, and saying that the content is free as in beer is not the point of the GFDL. I'm sorry that this one book is pushing the issue, but there seems to be a serious misunderstanding of what the GFDL is really all about here. If you can give away book because you have found some sort of philonthropic donor to help out in paying for the physical paper, fine. That is a very noble thing. But don't muddle up the waters here and confuse the issue. I can also make money off of content like this, as can you, Jeff, and everybody else. The GFDL mainly says that nobody has exclusive publication rights, and why it is called copyleft.
Michael R. Irwin wrote:
Anthony wrote:
snip
This paragraph is somewhat contradictory, but it does explicitly say that trademark law does not prevent giving Wikimedia credit for the work by name.
Anthony _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
If my understanding of the FDL is correct, then the publisher must at least provide a pointer back to the original authors and perhaps must list all of the authors in the published materials somewhere.
What would the Wikimedia Foundation's reaction be if the material were published without giving any credit to the Foundation or the original authors?
regards, lazyquasar
That becomes an issue of copyright law. At least according to U.S. copyright law, you need to list all of the authors who have a copyright claim over the content. It is for this reason why I added the "authors" pages to the Wikijunior books, and this is now common practice for most Wikibooks that are at a substantial level of completion. If you want to have your name included in the credits (which can be verified through page edits) of the Wikibook, you are asked to add your name to the list of authors. Academic ethics alone would have you include these names, although the order of the names can be debated.
As far as using the name of the book (aka Wikijunior Big Cats) that is another story, and it is also a matter of how far does the WMF want to go with protecting their trademarks and how can ordinary users trying to act in good faith be able to make publications that also acknowlege that this content was created using WMF servers. Certainly offering a credit on the "authors page" is not a violation of trademark law, and a minor issue is over if the WMF has any sort of copyright claim on content produced and edited on WMF servers. On that point, I don't know. It gets into fine points of copyright law where I know similar situations where copyright can be asserted by 3rd parties under some circumstances.
For instance, Microsoft can assert copyright over all software that is generated by using their compilers, even if they didn't "author" that actual computer software. In this case it doesn't change the GFDL, but the question does arise if there can be any sort of copyright claim by the WMF on content produced by Wikimedia projects. The typical response on this mailing list is "No", but I wouldn't be so quick to jump to that conclusion unless it was in the form of an official statement by the WMF that they don't claim any copyright on any project materials. In other words, even if there could be a copyright claim, the WMF is renoucing any potential copyright claims. It is a two-edged sword in the sense that copyright claim also implies liability for content, although the WMF seems to be acting as though they are liable for Wikimedia project content as well.
Man, you play with your kid for a couple of hours and look what you miss!
So, I think the issues are being fairly well vetted here. We are differentiating GFDL compliance and copyright/authorship on the one hand, and use of a registered trademark on the other. That doesn't need a whole lot of further discussion; everyone seems to intuitively agree that there is a good way for projects like this to proceed, and another way that tends to get people in a fluster. The important point is that it is being discussed.
The trademark issue is another one altogether. We have a "brand" (technical trademark term) to manage. It is valuable. It can be misused. There exist people who would do us ill will, and who will attempt to profit improperly from our brand. For this reason it is extraordinarily important that the community understand that WMF will be vigilant in enforcing its trademark rights against the bad guys. By the same token, however, it is our intention and hope that we can work out very simple licensing agreements for those who wish to "brand" their works as being associated with the Foundation. That may or may not involve money changing hands for the benefit of the Foundation. We obviously are not going to charge a fee for licensing a handful of books for schools in Africa.
From my perspective, WMF has a portfolio of valuable rights which it can
license and which can bring in revenue. Good for WMF - we get money for other people's use of our logo and trademark. This is pointedly *not* about any compromise on free as in free, not as in beer or anything of the sort. It is the byproduct of the interaction of our projects with capitalism. We should benefit from that.
As to publishing, our safe harbor is online, so taking the step into the publishing world is a large one indeed. Licensing others to publish, from the WMF perspective is not a big step, and is to WMF's great financial advantage. For those who are not familiar with the particulars, please be careful about comparing for-profit activities and non-profit activities. This is a rich and deeply complicated area of US tax law, with several contrary reported cases, and people who are not attorneys should proceed to offer their "IANAL" advice with caution. The typical example is a museum, which has a gift shop. Licensing the museum's works for the art is a pure royalty; the tshirts are not, and the costs of that operation are part of what is termed "unrelated business taxable income". See generally http://www.irs.gov/charities/article/0,,id=96106,00.html and related documents, if you care to look for yourself.
To wrap up, it's a great thing to see books coming out of the projects. It is also something that should be done in a proper fashion. Taking the good intentions of those on this list to heart, we can work to streamline the process for licensing for published works.
Robert, what would an efficient process look like to you, assuming the licensing component is a requirement?
On 7/4/06, Brad Patrick bradp.wmf@gmail.com wrote:
As to publishing, our safe harbor is online, so taking the step into the publishing world is a large one indeed. Licensing others to publish, from the WMF perspective is not a big step, and is to WMF's great financial advantage. For those who are not familiar with the particulars, please be careful about comparing for-profit activities and non-profit activities. This is a rich and deeply complicated area of US tax law, with several contrary reported cases, and people who are not attorneys should proceed to offer their "IANAL" advice with caution. The typical example is a museum, which has a gift shop. Licensing the museum's works for the art is a pure royalty; the tshirts are not, and the costs of that operation are part of what is termed "unrelated business taxable income". See generally http://www.irs.gov/charities/article/0,,id=96106,00.html and related documents, if you care to look for yourself.
There are other exceptions to UBTI, though. Two appropriate ones would be the sale of donated (and volunteer produced) goods and the provision of token goods to donors. And then of course there's the fact that the purpose of Wikimedia is not the same as the purpose of a museum. Distributing content (including in print form) *is* the purpose of Wikimedia.
I'm glad a foundation employee with knowledge of these things is finally getting involved in discussing them publically, though.
All this said, there seems to be very little in Wikijunior Big Cats which needs to be licensed. Even if the term Wikijunior is considered to be trademarked by the foundation, it's easy enough to drop that word from the title. The Wikijunior brand, if it even exists, isn't very valuable right now. In this sense I can see how it's important that Wikimedia be involved in the first print publication.
Anthony
Brad Patrick wrote:
Robert, what would an efficient process look like to you, assuming the licensing component is a requirement?
To make it simple, on Wikibooks we have been developing some content now for close to three years, some of which is nearing a publishable state that the contributors would like to be able to "share with the world". And since these are books that have been developed, it seems reasonable that they be made into bound printed matter at some point, particularly if they are of value to other people. One of the stated goals of Wikibooks is to produce textbooks that can compete with other educational texts, and that would also include physical books as well for this purpose. Having physcial books like this is something that adds value to the Wikibooks project as a whole, and acts as a validation for what we are trying to accomplish.
I think I can speak for most Wikibooks users to say that we don't want to harm the WMF, but rather even see that this can be something beneficial to help out the foundation and "pay back" for the generosity of being able to have a place to develop this sort of content. Even in the case of the Wikijunior Big Cats, the user who put it up for sale wasn't even making any profit, all he wanted was to make it available in some form, and the cost was simply the publication fee alone. From my own experience trying to publish similar content, the price he was asking was typical in North America for small print runs for books of that size if you went to any printer.
This needs to be a community-driven approach, where ordinary Wikimedia users who contribute to various project have the opportunity to participate and make this sort of content available. There is also no need for having a dozen independent "publishers" that all go off on their own direction. Certainly once it is apparent that you can make some money off of publishing content like this, there will be a dozen different companies offering Wikimedia content for sale, so your caution is justified. In this case, we are talking about publishing content as a Wikibooks community rather than as a bunch of mavericks.
Ideally, what I'd like to see is some sort of "official" WMF store that is able to offer books like this. There should be some restrictions placed on such content that are primarily quality based restrictions. This would imply some sort of "editorial board" or some others that would have the ability to accept or offer suggestions on improving the content to meet publication standards. All of this can be accomplished with volunteers, and doesn't require anything new other than some extra web pages to help organize the effort and helping select the editorial board. In addition, any such gatekeepers should be selected by the community and come up from the users rather than something appointed by the WMF board, as is the tradition for other such people like admins, stewards, etc.
If you want to "publish" a book you've written that has Wikimedia project content, you can organize it and then submit it to this board for review. If the book is accepted for publication, it is somehow added to the WMF store. Other "features" at the store can include featured books, or the host of things you find for book retailers. Or simply make the book available with an ISBN and it would be available from Amazon.com or a bunch of other on-line bookstores. The exact path to publication isn't so important as that it is made available.
This is something that I see local Wikimedia chapters being involved with, as they can help find local printers to make content like this available to people in their respective countries. Certainly it would make much more sense to print a book in Poland for Polish readers than ship something from North America to do the same thing. Still, it would be nice to have an established process to show high quality Wikimedia materials that would enhance rather than detract from Wikimedia projects.
I guess I would like to see it done through the community as well to help reduce costs. Particularly in the printing business, there are economies of scale that help to reduce costs significantly. This book which was for sale at $12 a copy could be brought down to $4 or even less in large volumes. It only makes sense that this is something that can and should be done with a centralized coordinated effort for this reason alone.
One huge issue on top of everything else is simply inventory control. As this is physical items, that means they can be damaged, stolen, cause damage, and a host of other related problems. Lulu Press does offer this sort of inventory control, and there are other for-profit businesses who are willing to do print-on-demand, but that does involve other compromises. Certainly we shouldn't be tied down to one printer in any case, and in this situation the Wikimedia Foundation should be the publisher of the content, not Lulu Press.
There are some legal issues such as placement and usage of trademarks. You hit that one well, and in this situation we need to have it defined exactly how and in what ways that the WMF would like to have their trademarks and logos used on publications. If it is an "official" publication, there is obviously some more lieniency than for "non-official" publications, and some clear guidelines should be in place for at least people like me (an admin) can point to and say "it says here that you can (can't) do what you are asking." I think [[b:en:Wikibooks:Copyrights]] does a pretty good job for instance, but that was something written by decidely a non-lawyer when Wikibooks was a much smaller project (Thanks mav for your work on that!) Certainly that needs to be reviewed formally by the WMF to see if that is what is intended, together with similar copyright statements on the other Wikimedia projects.
BTW, thanks to everybody for your comments on this matter.
On 7/4/06, Robert Scott Horning robert_horning@netzero.net wrote:
If you want to "publish" a book you've written that has Wikimedia project content, you can organize it and then submit it to this board for review. If the book is accepted for publication, it is somehow added to the WMF store.
I'd like to see this process eventually involve much more collaboration than it currently does. Right now the process seems to be that someone takes the content offline, builds a pdf, and then uploads it. Can't we make this a wiki process, where the pdf source code can be edited online directly, and then the pdf generated on demand? Sure, before the print run starts a stable version has to be chosen, but before that it'd be nice to be able to edit things. It's also a GFDL requirement to provide the source code. Is the source to [[Image:Big_Cats.pdf]] available somewhere?
I guess I would like to see it done through the community as well to help reduce costs. Particularly in the printing business, there are economies of scale that help to reduce costs significantly. This book which was for sale at $12 a copy could be brought down to $4 or even less in large volumes. It only makes sense that this is something that can and should be done with a centralized coordinated effort for this reason alone.
A big question needs to be answered here. Is Wikimedia more interested in the greatest distribution, or in obtaining revenue? If the books are sold at cost, many more will be sold. Brad, in mentioning UBTI, seems to be implying that the sale of books will be a revenue source, though. Personally I don't have much of an opinion either way, but some others probably do feel strongly about this.
One huge issue on top of everything else is simply inventory control. As this is physical items, that means they can be damaged, stolen, cause damage, and a host of other related problems. Lulu Press does offer this sort of inventory control, and there are other for-profit businesses who are willing to do print-on-demand, but that does involve other compromises. Certainly we shouldn't be tied down to one printer in any case, and in this situation the Wikimedia Foundation should be the publisher of the content, not Lulu Press.
I'll let Brad respond to this rather than trying to guess his response (I do have a good guess though). Note that German Wikipedia is published by Directmedia, not Wikimedia.
Anthony
Anthony wrote:
On 7/4/06, Robert Scott Horning robert_horning@netzero.net wrote:
I'll let Brad respond to this rather than trying to guess his response (I do have a good guess though). Note that German Wikipedia is published by Directmedia, not Wikimedia.
Anthony
The difference with the German Wikipedia is that Directmedia has, on their own inititive, created the "product" and are selling it according to the terms of the GFDL. Some arrangements have been made with the WMF, but that is to deal with the fine points of trademark issues.
I guess it is the same thing in this case, as far as a bold user going off and publishing a book of Wikimedia content on his own. Certainly no "permission" is needed from the WMF, but it does help if this sort of thing is coordinated somehow. There is a percieved need for something like this with the Wikibooks community, and it would involve more than simply a distribution of a CD-ROM set. Some of my solititation of comments on this matter is to see just how involved the WMF really wants to get in this sort of publication, or if a group of project users can (or should) get together and form another "company" to deal with this. That was more the direction I was going to go simply because it seemed as though the WMF didn't want to get involved.
I would rather work through the WMF as it does solve some legal hassles, but I can understand if they (the WMF board) wants to stay away from this completely.
If this content is made available, the other real issue that I havn't seen addressed in the replies is what policy should be in place to external websites that offer content like this for sale? If there were an "official" WMF website, it would be much more reasonable to have a policy that only the "official" site could be linked from project pages, especially if they are very prominent pages like [[Main Page]]. It would be from my perspective to be reasonable to ban all other types of site links, although in some ways this does deal with the whole ISBN link issue that has plagued this mailing list in the past.
Anthony wrote:
On 7/4/06, Robert Scott Horning robert_horning@netzero.net wrote:
If you want to "publish" a book you've written that has Wikimedia project content, you can organize it and then submit it to this board for review. If the book is accepted for publication, it is somehow added to the WMF store.
I'd like to see this process eventually involve much more collaboration than it currently does. Right now the process seems to be that someone takes the content offline, builds a pdf, and then uploads it. Can't we make this a wiki process, where the pdf source code can be edited online directly, and then the pdf generated on demand? Sure, before the print run starts a stable version has to be chosen, but before that it'd be nice to be able to edit things. It's also a GFDL requirement to provide the source code. Is the source to [[Image:Big_Cats.pdf]] available somewhere?
Sorry to break this up into two replies, although this is two different topics.
The issue right now for editing the PDF file is mainly dealing with the markup of whatever system you are using to generate the PDF file. The process I've used in the past is to import the HTML into Open Office and do some minor fix-up of the content where HTML doesn't seem to do a good job for publication. This involves downloading higher resolution images and clearing out fluff that comes from HTML that looks good on-line but doesn't seem to work with a print format.
Some efforts have gone into streamlining this process, including using transclusion to make an entire Wikibook available as a single web page, and adding the <includeonly> <noinclude> markup tags at various places to help determine what is going to be in the final publication. Still, there is unfortunately a bit more hand labor to get the process accomplished than I would normally like, and there is some personal taste and flavor that goes into formatting a book. An automated HTML to PDF process may be possible, but I do question if HTML is really up to the task.
Essentially, this is an issue where there are people with editing/processing skills that are not developers, and part of the gulf that seperates the Wikimedia contributor/editors from the MediaWiki developers. Certainly an "automated" process would be desireable, but at the moment we are doing as best as we can with the tools currently available. Making a Wiki-syntax to PDF converter would be a non-trivial task that could be a whole major software project unto itself. I'm not convinced that the results from such a converter would look good either, or if it would look very amaturish simply because the content isn't designed to be displayed as a PDF for most of the Wikimedia project pages. Certainly PDF to HTML converters (like found on Google) look forced and don't seem to work out very well either, although in that situation it is mainly to read the content rather than having something "pretty" to look at.
BTW, if you want the "source" to Big_Cats.pdf, the full downloadable version is at: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikijunior_Big_Cats/Complete_Edition
It is from this version that the pdf was created, although admittedly with some minor tweaks. It is debateable if this conforms to the GFDL completely, but all of the original source material is there in machine readable form. It at least complies with the spirit of the GFDL and we are doing as best as we can. Perhaps the original *.swx files need to be uploaded as well, but any major update is going to need to come from the original source HTML anyway. This is an experiment just to test the waters and see what direction we really need to head, so certainly any criticisms of what is going on are welcome.
Criticisms of creating the PDF and the "source files" can also be made to [[b:en:Image:Wikijunior bigcats frontpag.jpg]], which is also published under the GFDL but the "source" layers are not available for manipulation. I see these two issues as essentially the same thing.
On 7/4/06, Robert Scott Horning robert_horning@netzero.net wrote:
Essentially, this is an issue where there are people with editing/processing skills that are not developers, and part of the gulf that seperates the Wikimedia contributor/editors from the MediaWiki developers. Certainly an "automated" process would be desireable, but at the moment we are doing as best as we can with the tools currently available. Making a Wiki-syntax to PDF converter would be a non-trivial task that could be a whole major software project unto itself.
I was thinking more like a wiki-syntax to LaTeX converter then the LaTeX could be edited collaboratively then converted to PDF. But I didn't realize the current PDF had been generated with Open Office. swx certainly doesn't lend itself to collaboration through the web in the way I was thinking about.
As for the GFDL, I suppose PDF itself could be considered a "transparent" format.
Anthony
Am Dienstag, 04. Juli 2006 18:25 schrieb Robert Scott Horning:
The difference with the German Wikipedia is that Directmedia has, on their own inititive, created the "product" and are selling it according to the terms of the GFDL. Some arrangements have been made with the WMF, but that is to deal with the fine points of trademark issues.
Maybe I can give some further information here as I am involved member of the de.wikipedia community (note: I am not part of Directmedia I am a de.wikipedia community member).
Directmedia did not only publish the German Wikipedia DVD but also the WikiPress books (http://www.wikipress.de) which are compiled parts of de.wikipedia (to be precise the books get published by a sister company called Zenodot run by the same people). In case of the DVD and the books all authors get named, the source, the license (full print in English and German) and the relationship of that product towards Wikipedia, the community and Wikimedia.
In order to see how exactly the license conditions and so forth were respected by the books have for example a look at the Wikipress book that I did compile:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bild:WikiPress_6_Sonnensystem.pdf
If there are people interested I (and some other people) can share some more experience about the creation process of that books.
All these products have in common that they stress the point that they weren't created and released by "a Wikimedia organisation" but by the (interested) individuals of Wikipedia in cooperation with Directmedia/Zenodot in the "wiki style" which is radical new for such products like DVDs and books. So the community aspect is one of the key selling points.
Of course these products do support Wikimedia and are appreciated and supported by Wikimedia after some arrangements have been done.
This rather independent working style has also something to do with the relationship of de.wikipedia community and Wikimedia. Generally Wikimedia Foundation is the necessary support organisation for de.wikipedia that generously enables them creating their own content within a wide range of possibilities and which doesn't interfere a lot with their daily business as long there's no absolut (legal) emergency. So it's mostly some kind of respect towards a separated organisation people normally wouldn't advance in order to support their own business but which gets credited for the shadow work that made their work possible.
I personally would suggest the following policy: * Do not give the impression creating an official Wikimedia product as long as there hasn't been an official agreement. * Speak only for yourself and involved people as long there hasn't been an official agreement. * Respect Wikimedia trademarks. * If it is a community project (community is nothing official just a larger crowd of good faith people) make a project page in the wiki for organisating the matter that naturally also can contain links to offsite pages connected with it. * Try to merge back any improvements. * Never link from article namespace to the project (page) and it's results only link from the relevant project and portal page (I generally think that portal and project page links should be removed from articles). * If the book can be buyed link the ISBN (not Amazon book numbers and such in order to be vendor neutral) alongside (!) a link to the free downloadable pdf at the allowed places in the wiki, so that people can freely choose by themselves. * An upload of the final pdf to the wiki is part of the back merge and thatfor appreciated.
So I personally think that Wikisource project page link of the "Wikijunior" book would have been ok if the book wouldn't give that false impression that it is an official Wikimedia product and and if the book would have another name (beside respecting the GFDL).
Arnomane
Brad Patrick wrote in part:
Licensing others to publish, from the WMF perspective is not a big step, and is to WMF's great financial advantage.
snip
Robert, what would an efficient process look like to you, assuming the licensing component is a requirement? _______________________________________________
This is a poor set of assumptions and I think gives a contrary impression to what is intended.
The FDL is specifically designed to allow anyone to modify the material and republish it in any form that meets the attribution requirements and the requirement that the FDL propagate to the recipient. It specifically prohibits publishing in a form that does not include an FDL for the recipient to republish the "free" content at will.
This would seem to require that the content be kept separate from the Logos and Trademarks. Essentially we could sell the right to use the logo and trademark in advertising and promotion efforts but not for packaging with the FDL material unless the Trademark and Logo were also released under the FDL.
Assuming the content must be licensed from the WMF is a violation of the FDL and it could be argued an attempt to exploit the name brand recognition of the GNU FDL without meeting the responsibilities of its use.
It seems pretty easy to me to delineate that the trademarks and logos of the WMF may be licensed separately for use in advertising and sales promotion to any publishing effort using the FDL'ed material in ways mutually acceptable to the WMF and the publisher. Any customer who purchased the content could in turn modify the content and the attributions appropriately and then republish without the use of the WMF trademarks or logos.
Clearly any licensing arrangement for the trademarks or logos should include a right to review and cancel the use of the trademarks and logos in inappropriate fashions.
regards, lazyquasar
Robert Scott Horning wrote:
Brad Patrick wrote:
Robert, what would an efficient process look like to you, assuming the licensing component is a requirement?
snip
This needs to be a community-driven approach, where ordinary Wikimedia users who contribute to various project have the opportunity to participate and make this sort of content available. There is also no need for having a dozen independent "publishers" that all go off on their own direction. Certainly once it is apparent that you can make some money off of publishing content like this, there will be a dozen different companies offering Wikimedia content for sale, so your caution is justified. In this case, we are talking about publishing content as a Wikibooks community rather than as a bunch of mavericks.
We need to be a little cautious in how the community proceeds to proactively to publish its materials.
By all means I think it would be excellent for the community to publish its materials to create revenue for the Foundation by licensing the Logos and Trademarks.
However, "mavericks" should not be discouraged or encounter systematic hostility from any components of the "community" or the WMF in future participation because they choose to publish material in accordance with the FDL.
regards, lazyquasar
Michael R. Irwin wrote:
However, "mavericks" should not be discouraged or encounter systematic hostility from any components of the "community" or the WMF in future participation because they choose to publish material in accordance with the FDL.
regards, lazyquasar
Just to see how difficult of a job it was for this user who put the Wikijunior Big Cats up on the Lulu website, I decided to create a new account with Lulu and go through the process itself (without actually offering the book for sale). For an average Wikimedia user who can deal with uploading images and handle a typical wiki: It was so easy I almost forgot that this was controversial and just about offered the same content for sale in the same manner all over again.
The fact that Wikibooks is offering so many "books" via PDF makes it all that more tempting to have somebody do exactly this again, and this time with the entire inventory of Wikibooks and not just one Wikijunior book. Mind you, Lulu Press is just the printing house. *I* would have been the publisher and assuming the associated risks in that situation. I'm still thinking of doing exactly that in the near future, although I would like to set up a joint account that would include some of the more active Wikibooks users as well if this were to get going.
I will say that I've been very cautious about doing this, and knowing how far to go and not tread on project space inappropriately has been a major concern of my. Certainly I don't want to be seen as abusing my admin status to promote a business that I may be starting in this way.
Daniel Arnold wrote:
I personally would suggest the following policy:
- Do not give the impression creating an official Wikimedia product as long as
there hasn't been an official agreement.
That is easy to say as a guideline, but the line between acknowledging the WMF and appearing as endorsed by the WMF can seem to be a fine line here. The Wikijunior Big Cats book did not really imply being endorsed by the WMF, but simply stated that the WMF had a copyright claim. Apparently that was in error, although I still havn't seen a formal statement by the Foundation disclaiming copyright as well, even though I've read statements here on this mailing list suggesting that the Foundation doesn't want to have copyright over Wikimedia content.
- Speak only for yourself and involved people as long there hasn't been an
official agreement.
Agreed.
- Respect Wikimedia trademarks.
This is a tricky point here in some ways. Trademarks identify all of the various Wikimedia projects in a number of ways, and it gets into similar issues with what happened regarding simply using the name of the WMF in any capacity, even for an ackowledgement that the WMF was involved with the creation and preparation of the content (which they were.... the content originated on WMF servers).
The use of the title "Wikijunior Big Cats" is itself a trademark, as is even just "Big Cats". BTW, this is exactly the situation that the Free Software Foundation got into when they established the invariant sections portion of the GFDL, where they tried to make a way for free content to keep a registered trademark (aka Wikijunior Big Cats) but still allow others to be able to freely print and distribute textual content. In this case the title would be one of the invariant sections under the GFDL, perhaps with a disclaimer that publication does not imply endorsement by the WMF.
This would be the same issue as if you printed a physical edition of Wikipedia, such as has been done by the German Wikipress group: http://www.wikipress.de/Bild%3AWikipedia_Cover.png
Mind you, I think there are going to be some individuals who are going to go beyond simply using the names and really will imply endorsement by the WMF, as does happen already with mirrors of Wikipedia content. And I think that the WMF does have justification to protect trademarks. The question here is should 3rd parties simply not use any Wikimedia trademarks of any kind on any product, including even the name of the WMF not even being named in the credits, nor even links to WMF servers? Or should there be reasonable uses of these trademarks where it is noted that while the content was developed on WMF servers, this is an independent publication.
- If it is a community project (community is nothing official just a larger
crowd of good faith people) make a project page in the wiki for organisating the matter that naturally also can contain links to offsite pages connected with it.
That is a safe way to proceed, as it removes any liability problems from the WMF for any actions of a group of users going independent and publishing on their own. And if there is a group doing this sort of organizing, it makes sense that it should be on a seperate website. I think that even if it becomes an "official" and sanctioned project, it should be on a seperate wiki as well anyway.
- Try to merge back any improvements.
Agreed.
- Never link from article namespace to the project (page) and it's results
only link from the relevant project and portal page (I generally think that portal and project page links should be removed from articles).
- If the book can be buyed link the ISBN (not Amazon book numbers and such in
order to be vendor neutral) alongside (!) a link to the free downloadable pdf at the allowed places in the wiki, so that people can freely choose by themselves.
This is the point I really don't understand. I'm discussing a way to publish content and as a "publisher" I generate the ISBN number. We are in a very interesting situation with the GFDL as you can have multiple ISBN numbers for the same book, each one of which goes to a seperate publisher. In other words, the attempt to be vendor neutral just got lost by even including the ISBN link in the first place. All you have done is open up additional sales outlets to handle the distribution of the content in the first place with the inclusion of the ISBN number.
Normally this isn't a big deal with traditional copyrighted material as there are exclusive publication rights for a single publisher, so one book title has only one ISBN. For free content, that is no longer the case.
It is very natural path for some people to want to have a physcial printed copy of some of the project content on Wikimedia projects. Indeed, there is a "printable version" link on every page right now that encourages this. The question then comes up on where to get a printed copy you can simply purchase with a couple of clicks of the mouse? Offering any link, including just ISBN numbers, is going to imply some sort of endorsement in this situation.
- An upload of the final pdf to the wiki is part of the back merge and thatfor
appreciated.
So I personally think that Wikisource project page link of the "Wikijunior" book would have been ok if the book wouldn't give that false impression that it is an official Wikimedia product and and if the book would have another name (beside respecting the GFDL).
Arnomane
Using the name Wikipedia (as the Wikipress group has done) is pretty much the same thing here in terms of how the name Wikijunior was used. Again, the only implied endorsement for the Wikijunior book was because the WMF was listed as a copyright claimant. Offering a title to some of this content is going to be an interesting task, as the titles themselves for many other Wikibooks (like Blender 3D: Noob to Pro) can be defensibly considered trademarks of the WMF. Indeed this title uses the trademark for another non-profit foundation, Blender.
My impression is that using the title of the book (Wikijunior Big Cats) is an acceptable use of trademarks, but perhaps I'm wrong. How this sort of trademark applies to GFDL'd content is untested legally. The GFDL implies (as do comments by the Free Software Foundation on this issue) that titles of content are important for recognizing, even "branding" content, yet they also want to make this sort of content freely available for redistribution. This is no different than having a GPL'd copy of Firefox and putting it on a CD-ROM with the name "Firefox" and the Firefox logo on the label, then trying to sell the CD-ROM. This is not only happens, but is encouraged. You don't change the name of this software simply because it has been handed to a 3rd party. I'm sure there are contrary opinions to all of this, but the point is that copyleft content does have some different rules to work under than traditionally copyrighted content.
We really are moving into an interesting legal area here, and it is natural to try and be very cautious before trying to push any legal point including telling people to not do things that may in fact be perfectly legal to do anyway. Much of how this content will be published is going to depend on the tone toward trademarks that the WMF sets toward such usage and what is even going to be considered a trademark. I don't think that the board members are trying to be anti-user or anti-publication, but it is also natural for people like Brad and Jimbo to try and strongly defend trademark usage and keep it tightly controlled. I am also not trying to push the legal envelope but rather trying to do what is best for the Wikimedia projects and offer something that has been requested by some Wikibooks users and readers.
On 7/5/06, Robert Scott Horning robert_horning@netzero.net wrote:
The use of the title "Wikijunior Big Cats" is itself a trademark, as is even just "Big Cats".
Could you expand on this point?
On 7/5/06, Robert Scott Horning robert_horning@netzero.net wrote:
My impression is that using the title of the book (Wikijunior Big Cats) is an acceptable use of trademarks, but perhaps I'm wrong. How this sort of trademark applies to GFDL'd content is untested legally.
The GFDL is rather explicit with this, at least with regard to derivative works. Derivatives are supposed to "Use in the Title Page (and on the covers, if any) a title distinct from that of the Document, and from those of previous versions (which should, if there were any, be listed in the History section of the Document)." Verbatim copies would presumably have the same title, but I suppose the GFDL doesn't explicitly state this.
However, [[Wikibooks:Copyrights]] states that "You may use the same title as the Wikibooks book and/or module(s) but trademark law prevents you from advertising the Wikibooks or Wikimedia names without our written permission."
Anthony
I hate to point this out, but I have through this discussion been made aware of the Wikibooks:Copyright page, which was written by two very well known non-lawyers. The purported copyright notice at the top of that very page does not even identify by whom the supposed copyright is owned. This is not a simple question, and I expect to have a closer look at the page line by line in the future.
All I'm saying is, beware quoting the Wikibooks:Copyright page as sacred text.
On 7/4/06, Michael R. Irwin michael_irwin@verizon.net wrote:
Brad Patrick wrote in part:
Licensing others to publish, from the WMF perspective is not a big step, and is to WMF's great financial advantage.
snip
Assuming the content must be licensed from the WMF is a violation of the FDL and it could be argued an attempt to exploit the name brand recognition of the GNU FDL without meeting the responsibilities of its use.
I have never suggested such a thing.
It seems pretty easy to me to delineate that the trademarks and logos of
the WMF may be licensed separately for use in advertising and sales promotion to any publishing effort using the FDL'ed material in ways mutually acceptable to the WMF and the publisher. Any customer who purchased the content could in turn modify the content and the attributions appropriately and then republish without the use of the WMF trademarks or logos.
Bingo.
Clearly any licensing arrangement for the trademarks or logos should
include a right to review and cancel the use of the trademarks and logos in inappropriate fashions.
It's not extortion of free content. It's being smart about marketing and endorsements. Managing licenses implies quality control; that is not the same thing as instituting a requirement for every single book composed of WMF-project related content.
I wasn't around for Big Cats. Going forward, I hope we can achieve clarity with minimal transactional friction from the community and publishers. We aren't here to be obstructionist.
Anthony wrote:
On 7/5/06, Robert Scott Horning robert_horning@netzero.net wrote:
My impression is that using the title of the book (Wikijunior Big Cats) is an acceptable use of trademarks, but perhaps I'm wrong. How this sort of trademark applies to GFDL'd content is untested legally.
The GFDL is rather explicit with this, at least with regard to derivative works. Derivatives are supposed to "Use in the Title Page (and on the covers, if any) a title distinct from that of the Document, and from those of previous versions (which should, if there were any, be listed in the History section of the Document)." Verbatim copies would presumably have the same title, but I suppose the GFDL doesn't explicitly state this.
However, [[Wikibooks:Copyrights]] states that "You may use the same title as the Wikibooks book and/or module(s) but trademark law prevents you from advertising the Wikibooks or Wikimedia names without our written permission."
Anthony
Although in this case it is the verbatim copy of a document, not a derivitive document that merely uses some of the content of the previous document. Any changes are merely formatting and are not related to the content of the document.
For some (I guess IANAL) advise you can go to [[Wikipedia: Verbatim copying]] that seems to give the exact opposite advise as to what you are suggesting here. Indeed it says that you *MUST NOT* change the title of the document (i.e.Wikijunior Big Cats). So which bit of advise is correct here?
This would stop you from claiming that you have created a book like "Anthony's Big Cats" when in fact it really is a Wikijunior book that you have changed the title of and republished as if you created it in the first place, even if you have small print somewhere that says otherwise buried near the back page of the book.
I can see all kinds of problems either way in terms of both using trademarks and changing titles of books that you republish. It is precisely in this situation where copyleft law is undefined and why this is a totally new beast from traditional copyright law and how it would be treated if it were a publication from a traditional publisher who doesn't give copyleft permissions. Again, it is an issue of how the WMF wants to treat their trademarks, and how anal they want to get about protecting those trademarks.
This does have a small impact on even page names, and I see a hard-nosed view of protecting trademarks running straight into the GFDL like a brick wall, especially for individual project names as trademarks.
geni wrote:
On 7/5/06, Robert Scott Horning robert_horning@netzero.net wrote:
The use of the title "Wikijunior Big Cats" is itself a trademark, as is even just "Big Cats".
Could you expand on this point?
I'm just pointing out that if for some reason a book called "Wikijunior Big Cats" is widely known as a valuable book and appears in many different classrooms and the hands of many parents and children, it is something by itself that is a brand that is highly recognized.
Some companies, notably Paramount Studios with their Star Trek franchise, have gone to incredible lengths to trademark all kinds of related words as trademarks and even have gone through the effort to register them with the USPTO. Notably Captain Kirk, Spock, Uhura, Scotty, and other names are formally trademarked and can't be used theoretically without formal permission from Paramount, keeping you from even potentially writing fan fiction using those characters or even writing commentary about Star Trek episodes. This very posting to the mailing list, under extreme interpretation of the law, could be considered an infringing use of trademarks for that company.
In this same token, it might be possible for the WMF to control publication rights to Wikimedia project content merely on the basis of trademark infringement, as has appeared to have occured here with the Wikijunior Big Cats book. Clearly this is the name of the Wikibook and it is being worked on by Wikibooks users, with numerous links to the project page under that name from many other sources both within and outside of Wikimedia projects.
Robert Scott Horning wrote:
Brad Patrick wrote:
Robert, what would an efficient process look like to you, assuming the licensing component is a requirement?
This needs to be a community-driven approach, where ordinary Wikimedia users who contribute to various project have the opportunity to participate and make this sort of content available. There is also no need for having a dozen independent "publishers" that all go off on their own direction. Certainly once it is apparent that you can make some money off of publishing content like this, there will be a dozen different companies offering Wikimedia content for sale, so your caution is justified. In this case, we are talking about publishing content as a Wikibooks community rather than as a bunch of mavericks.
We obviously don't "need" a dozen independant publishers producing the same thing., but should we even be trying to stop it. With more of them doing it they will soon end up trying to undercut each others' prices. It would also be easy to spread doubts about whether these people are even producing the most recent version. In all likelhood this dozen publishers will have a dozen different editions. What they do to make sure that they are producing the latest edition is their problem.
Ideally, what I'd like to see is some sort of "official" WMF store that is able to offer books like this. There should be some restrictions placed on such content that are primarily quality based restrictions. This would imply some sort of "editorial board" or some others that would have the ability to accept or offer suggestions on improving the content to meet publication standards. All of this can be accomplished with volunteers, and doesn't require anything new other than some extra web pages to help organize the effort and helping select the editorial board. In addition, any such gatekeepers should be selected by the community and come up from the users rather than something appointed by the WMF board, as is the tradition for other such people like admins, stewards, etc.
If you want to "publish" a book you've written that has Wikimedia project content, you can organize it and then submit it to this board for review. If the book is accepted for publication, it is somehow added to the WMF store. Other "features" at the store can include featured books, or the host of things you find for book retailers. Or simply make the book available with an ISBN and it would be available from Amazon.com or a bunch of other on-line bookstores. The exact path to publication isn't so important as that it is made available.
Some of this may be fine for "official" Wikimedia publications, but a general policy of requiring approval for all third party versions would strike me as contrary to copyleft principles.
This is something that I see local Wikimedia chapters being involved with, as they can help find local printers to make content like this available to people in their respective countries. Certainly it would make much more sense to print a book in Poland for Polish readers than ship something from North America to do the same thing. Still, it would be nice to have an established process to show high quality Wikimedia materials that would enhance rather than detract from Wikimedia projects.
Absolutely. The right of any person to produce the material should not be exclusive.
I guess I would like to see it done through the community as well to help reduce costs. Particularly in the printing business, there are economies of scale that help to reduce costs significantly. This book which was for sale at $12 a copy could be brought down to $4 or even less in large volumes. It only makes sense that this is something that can and should be done with a centralized coordinated effort for this reason alone.
One huge issue on top of everything else is simply inventory control. As this is physical items, that means they can be damaged, stolen, cause damage, and a host of other related problems. Lulu Press does offer this sort of inventory control, and there are other for-profit businesses who are willing to do print-on-demand, but that does involve other compromises. Certainly we shouldn't be tied down to one printer in any case, and in this situation the Wikimedia Foundation should be the publisher of the content, not Lulu Press.
Allowing others to produce the physical formats does save us the need to hire people for inventory maintenance and shipping, or to rent facilities for storing these goods. I agree that longer print runs do benefit from economies of scale, but short runs make updating without wastage of obsolete stock easier.
There are some legal issues such as placement and usage of trademarks. You hit that one well, and in this situation we need to have it defined exactly how and in what ways that the WMF would like to have their trademarks and logos used on publications. If it is an "official" publication, there is obviously some more lieniency than for "non-official" publications, and some clear guidelines should be in place for at least people like me (an admin) can point to and say "it says here that you can (can't) do what you are asking." I think [[b:en:Wikibooks:Copyrights]] does a pretty good job for instance, but that was something written by decidely a non-lawyer when Wikibooks was a much smaller project (Thanks mav for your work on that!) Certainly that needs to be reviewed formally by the WMF to see if that is what is intended, together with similar copyright statements on the other Wikimedia projects.
What's really needed in terms of trademarks in general is a clear policy statement from the Board about the kind of activities that it considers to be violation of its rights. This may be greater of less than what is available in its rights under the law, though it stands to reason that the more it deviates from its legal rights the more the policy will be challenged. None of this prejudges what an actual legal proceeding would produce. The primary effect of such a policy would be to give a safe harbour for activities that are not clearly forbidden.
BTW, thanks to everybody for your comments on this matter.
Your bold steps in this direction are to be commended. Without such steps there would be no progress.
Ec
On 7/12/06, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Some of this may be fine for "official" Wikimedia publications, but a general policy of requiring approval for all third party versions would strike me as contrary to copyleft principles.
I don't see anyone proposing any limitation on free reuse; rather, given the choice between an "official" Wikimedia publication at a fair price and a dirt-cheap unedited screen dump, which would you buy?
Austin
Ray Saintonge wrote:
I guess I would like to see it done through the community as well to help reduce costs. Particularly in the printing business, there are economies of scale that help to reduce costs significantly. This book which was for sale at $12 a copy could be brought down to $4 or even less in large volumes. It only makes sense that this is something that can and should be done with a centralized coordinated effort for this reason alone.
One huge issue on top of everything else is simply inventory control. As this is physical items, that means they can be damaged, stolen, cause damage, and a host of other related problems. Lulu Press does offer this sort of inventory control, and there are other for-profit businesses who are willing to do print-on-demand, but that does involve other compromises. Certainly we shouldn't be tied down to one printer in any case, and in this situation the Wikimedia Foundation should be the publisher of the content, not Lulu Press.
Allowing others to produce the physical formats does save us the need to hire people for inventory maintenance and shipping, or to rent facilities for storing these goods. I agree that longer print runs do benefit from economies of scale, but short runs make updating without wastage of obsolete stock easier.
It still helps out even with print on demand systems if you have a high volume of sales. The point I was trying to make is that by trying to pool our efforts to publish content jointly, we can help reduce costs not only for ourselves, but for everybody involved. It helps even if all we are doing is moving from one print-on-demand printing house to another for competitive rates. If it becomes in our interest (Wikimedia users trying to physically print content) to purchase physcial facilities due to increased savings, perhaps that is something that can be discussed when that makes a wise business decision.
I will say that the print industry is very competitive in almost every aspect, and so many options available that we shouldn't be tied down to a specific business model. Lulu Press and places like that, however, seem to be the easiest way to do some initial printing and get started in the process. There are more things, however, that can be done with an organized group of Wikimedia users, and I would like to be involved with those who want to do this with English-language content.
There are some legal issues such as placement and usage of trademarks. You hit that one well, and in this situation we need to have it defined exactly how and in what ways that the WMF would like to have their trademarks and logos used on publications.
What's really needed in terms of trademarks in general is a clear policy statement from the Board about the kind of activities that it considers to be violation of its rights. This may be greater of less than what is available in its rights under the law, though it stands to reason that the more it deviates from its legal rights the more the policy will be challenged. None of this prejudges what an actual legal proceeding would produce. The primary effect of such a policy would be to give a safe harbour for activities that are not clearly forbidden.
Agreed. I'm not demanding that the WMF drop everything just to help fix this squeeky wheel, but I would point out that by cooperating with Wikimedia users and providing a path that seems reasonable will make everybody comfortable. There will eventually be some genuine sleezebags who will push the envelope and perhaps force legal action by the WMF into trademark defense, but we are not trying to push the limits of legality here. All I'm asking for is to see what the WMF would consider to be reasonable uses of their trademarks with print publications. The sense I am getting is absolutely no use of any trademark is permitted, even if it is a mere URL or even a side mention like "Thanks to the Wikimedia Foundation for hosting the servers that made this content possible." If those need to be removed to keep Brad and the WMF board happy, I will oblige. I think that would be unfortunate, however.
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