Dominic McDevitt-Parks wrote: While I would agree that a "local copy" is a good idea, it is not in a very strict sense necessary. All that is necessary is to have a copy that is accessable through the network you are using, somehow. Having a local copy means that it is accessable at the same time the rest of the site is up/down. As for the requirement to have the content link to the original source article, that is not necessary either. It may be a good idea, but it is not required by the GFDL, nor a legal requirement. All that is necessary is that you credit five authors of the text, presumably the five "leading contributors". It isn't clear exactly which five, or if random vandals on the history page qualify, or what edits done that are credited only to an IP address really mean, but only five are strictly needed. The metric for determining the five "leading contributors" is certainly a very grey area in terms of what the GFDL asks you for here. Edit count is hardly the best metric for many reasons. All of the other requirements are completely made up here and are not needed by the GFDL. If this is something the Wikipedia community wants to put into here, they ought to change the license that Wikipedia is licensed under. Good luck on trying to do that. That would mean restarting Wikipedia from scratch, essentially. I'm not suggesting that these are bad recommendations in terms of being nice to Wikipedia and helping to grow Wikimedia projects, but be very clear that this is what you are saying and not that these are legal requirements that are strictly necessary to copy the content, or even republish it in the form of another website. While "good advise" in terms of being nice, this is awful legal advise on the whole. -- Robert Scott Horning

On 1/21/07, Dominic McDevitt-Parks <dmcdevit(a)cox.net> wrote: Please read the GFDL before makeing comments like this. This is painfully wrong. -- geni

On 1/21/07, Jeffrey V. Merkey <jmerkey(a)wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote: It isn't the foundation's content. Lets look at an example shall we: http://en.wikigadugi.org/wiki/Rolle_Canal First there is no direct link to a copy of the GFDL that I can find which is less than ideal Now you list 3 authors in the history tab : Mervyn geni Rosser1954 Problem is that list isn't complete list of the authors or even 5 major authors. If we look at: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Rolle_Canal&action=history There are more than three authors Now you could either fix this by hosting the full history of the article localy or linking to the wikipedia history. Your choice. Now we move onto the images: Image:Rolle canal lock.JPG You have correctly stated that the work is under the GFDL but have failed to credit the author (in this case geni). It gets even worse if we look at other images such as: Image:Wilts and Berks Canal link to Thames.JPG which fails to mention the GFDL or the author. So in short you need to fix your author crediting and links to the GFDL -- geni

I see you redirected Project:About to http://en.wikigadugi.org/wiki/GFDL. That page is not what was meant. You need the *verbatim text of the GFDL*, which can be found at Wikipedia:Text of the GFDL. On 1/21/07, geni <geniice(a)gmail.com> wrote: -- Gary Kirk

On 1/21/07, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com> wrote: He's got one. I'm a major copyright holder on the article I linked to. There are other ways of staying within the GFDL. -- geni

Robert Scott Horning wrote: It could potentially be trademark infrginement and trading on the goodwill of the foundation in certain situations. In any event, companies are not about civil disobediance. WMG needs permission or implied pemission in the form of a statement by he Foundation that use if its valuable trademark rights is granted for purposes of attribution through the use of its trademarks. Apolicy page on wikimedia.org would probably address any issues on this topic. Jeff

On 1/21/07, Dmcdevit <dmcdevit(a)cox.net> wrote: The problem in short is that neither wikipedia or the foundation are significant copyright holders. Thus there is not normaly a need to credit them. The people who need to be credited are the authors. In the case of the pictures I mentioned that would be me. Legaly I could file a DMCA takdown notice over those pics (well once I figured out which legal system applied). The foundation couldn't. The GFDL requires the author be credited not a publisher. -- geni

On 1/22/07, Jeffrey V. Merkey <jmerkey(a)wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote: Please re-read the GFDL: 4. B List on the Title Page, as authors, one or more persons or entities responsible for authorship of the modifications in the Modified Version, together with at least five of the principal authors of the Document (all of its principal authors, if it has fewer than five), unless they release you from this requirement. I do not release you from this requirement. That isn't the case. see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyrights#Reusers.27_rights_and_obl… There are a number of ways of following the GFDL. Which one you chose it up to you. IF you think you can't mention wikipedia to give credit then you must give credit localy. I would be rather impressed if the foundation managed to win a legal case against someone useing thier name to say where the text was taken from. -- geni

geni wrote: Unfortunately, I do. Jeff

geni wrote: Then Wikipedia in its dumps must IDENTIFY AT LEAST FIVE AUTHORS AUTHORS since I have no crystal ball as to who wrote what. In this case, Wikimedia is violating the GFDL by failing to publish authors along with content. No progress I see here ... Jeff

On 1/22/07, Jeffrey V. Merkey <jmerkey(a)wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote: Need to make sure that all images correctly state their copyright status (you appear to have lost some GFDL tags and the like somewhere) and need include a more prominent link to the GFDL. -- geni

Jeffrey V. Merkey wrote: Note that what I said here was a bibliographic reference to Wikipedia. Where the trademark infringement comes from is something like the sorts of publications done by Wikipress (see http://www.wikipress.de/Hauptseite) These have the words "Wikipedia" spelled out boldly on the title page, implying some sort of strong connection to Wikipedia. These are IMHO uses of WMF trademarks that perhaps ought to be used with formal permission. If instead you have inside the "many thanks to" page of a published book a mention of Wikipedia and noting that the information came from there, I don't see where the problem comes here. Or better still if you list on a formal bibliographic reference list of where the content came from, having Wikipedia listed near the top of the list in perhaps even a featured position on the list as a major source of the information. That shouldn't be a problem. I hope the WMF doesn't take issue when WMF trademarks are used in this fashion. For a web site something either on a special "About" page or as a "fine print" at the bottom of the page noting that the content came from Wikipedia originally would IMHO be essentially the same thing. An infringing use would be to completely reproduce a Wikipedia page, completely with the "meatball" logo and be designed to look identical in all other ways to Wikipedia pages, making no distinction between Wikipedia and your copy. Unfortunately some people have done exactly this, even with very similar URLs that are very similar to Wikipedia, but with all kinds of advertisement all over all of the pages. What is interesting in the GFDL is that there is a "title clause" that actually *requires* the use of the title in the publication that is republished via permissions granted through the GFDL. How exactly this relates to Wikipedia is very vague, and statements by the WMF have muddied the waters even more in an attempt to try and protect the WMF trademarks. As I've noted, the name "Linux" is also trademarked in a fashion that presumably "Wikipedia" is also intended to be used. The one huge difference here, however, is that the WMF is trying to capitalize on the use of the term "Wikipedia" for fund raising activities, while Linus Torvald doesn't seem to care all that much, and is mainly holding the trademark to keep it from being claimed by some other 3rd party. I guarentee that many people are using the term "Linux" without even consulting or talking with Linus. From an ethical standpoint, it seems very responsible to note clearly where the original source of the material came from. And the only reasonable way you can do that is to use a WMF trademark such as "Wikipedia", even if the name appears only in the URL. The issue about seeking permission from the WMF in order to do bibliographic reference is that by requiring premission, it invalidates the GFDL. The content reverts to a strong propritary copyright, which simply can't be copied unless you have formal permission from all of the authors of that content. On the pratical side, it makes it impossible to reproduce the content at all. Presumably it could also get the WMF into problems as the content was given to the WMF (on their server farms) under the terms of the GFDL, so it couldn't even be displayed at all unless the WMF also has independent authorization (aside from the GFDL) to publish the content. -- Robert Scott Horning