To be perfectly clear, I am *not* opposed to seeing material produced by Wikipedia, Wikibooks, Wikisource, or any other project published per se. Nor do I believe that the person who did this acted in bad faith. I do not.
What I find problematic is as follows: 1. The material is presented as being copyrighted by the Wikimedia Foundation. It is not. 2. Being copyrighted by the WMF would mean legal liability for the content. We are not in a position to accept such liability. 3. A third party, Lulu Press, is using the trademarked name of the Foundation to sell a book. While I believe that they are doing this unwittingly, it nonetheless infringes on our trademark. 4. All of this is taking place in the midst of negotiations to obtain a grant to secure more money for the development of the Wikijunior books. One of the issues being discussed is print. When they come to us and say "But you are already printing the books," we will look pretty stupid answering "Actually, we didn't know that."
Of course, I defer to Brad and the other lawyers on the WMF to tell me I am wrong about this.
Danny
On 7/4/06, daniwo59@aol.com daniwo59@aol.com wrote:
To be perfectly clear, I am *not* opposed to seeing material produced by Wikipedia, Wikibooks, Wikisource, or any other project published per se. Nor do I believe that the person who did this acted in bad faith. I do not.
What I find problematic is as follows:
- The material is presented as being copyrighted by the Wikimedia
Foundation. It is not.
I'd like to see it stated officially somewhere that Wikimedia disclaims all copyright interest in Wikijunior Big Cats (and whatever other content it wishes to disclaim copyright on). It's unclear that you are speaking on behalf of the foundation with this statement you just made, and it's also unclear that you are authorized to make such a statement.
I also should point out that the copyright statement you're talking about has been in the PDF distributed by Wikimedia since at least December 2005. It nothing new, and it's still there, Go to [[Wikijunior Big Cats]] and click on "Print Version (PDF) (as of December 11th, 2005. pp. 65)" - http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikibooks/en/c/cc/Big_Cats.pdf
If Wikimedia wants a different copyright statement in any print version, a PDF with such a copyright statement on it should be available.
- Being copyrighted by the WMF would mean legal liability for the content.
We are not in a position to accept such liability.
So in your opinion everyone who contributes to Wikipedia is liable for the entire content? This seems like an odd legal position.
- A third party, Lulu Press, is using the trademarked name of the
Foundation to sell a book. While I believe that they are doing this unwittingly, it nonetheless infringes on our trademark.
How are they using the trademarked name of the Foundation to sell a book (or, how were they, as they pulled it)? How can a verbatim copy (under the GFDL) be produced which doesn't do this?
This relies in part on whether or not you think the PDF at http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikibooks/en/c/cc/Big_Cats.pdf is a trademark infringement.
- All of this is taking place in the midst of negotiations to obtain a
grant to secure more money for the development of the Wikijunior books. One of the issues being discussed is print. When they come to us and say "But you are already printing the books," we will look pretty stupid answering "Actually, we didn't know that."
Well, now you know.
Of course, I defer to Brad and the other lawyers on the WMF to tell me I am wrong about this.
Danny
Anthony
daniwo59@aol.com wrote:
Snip
- All of this is taking place in the midst of negotiations to obtain a
grant to secure more money for the development of the Wikijunior books. One of the issues being discussed is print. When they come to us and say "But you are already printing the books," we will look pretty stupid answering "Actually, we didn't know that."
Actually we might look awesomely committed to "free" content available to any human being who follows the FDL requirements of attribution if we could smartly point out that, although we were not previously aware of this specific publisher, they appear to following our suggested format for attribution of content creation back to our wiki communities of authors.
regards, lazyquasar
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org