> I think the whole situation is very unclear. If each
> Wikipedia-author is really copyright-holder of his material,
> we have at least to keep track of the authorships of the diffs,
> or else (IMHO, again IANAL) we violate the FDL. The current
> logs are not sufficient, we would need real accounts with
> mandatory real-world user-identification (*if* the author
> wants to retain his rights).
IANAL, but I have studied law and intellectual property law in
particular for a long time.
Overlapping, even contradictory, copyright claims are perfectly
normal and legally acceptable. Everything I write is in the public
domain; I (or you, or anyone) can use it in any way, including in
ways that violate te GFDL. When I add the text to Wikipedia, Bomis
makes the valid claim of a _collection copyright_ on the whole (which
is a valid claim), and and individual copyright to each article
(which is a specious but perfectly legal claim). It then grants the
public rights under the GFDL. Remember what a copyright license is:
it is a grant of permission to use something that I otherwise claim
as mine; it is saying, in essence, "if you use this text in
accordance with these terms, Bomis won't sue you for infringement".
Whether or not Bomis is actually _entitled_ to sue is a tricky issue,
but it's still OK for them to claim that they can. In the case of
text that's entirely mine, they don't have that right. In the case
of collaboratively-authored works, they might (or might not; none of
this has really been tested in court).
I think it is pretty clear--and should be clearly stated if it is not-
-that individual authors agree to the GFDL licensing terms for text
they post here. In other words, by putting text here, you are making
an overt grant of permission to use that text in ways consistent with
the GFDL, and you are further granting Bomis the right to grant that
same permission to others. Now as an author, you personally still
have the right to use your text in non-GFDL ways, but that's not
something that Bomis realy needs to care about. You've granted Bomis
the right to do what it needs to do; the fact that somebody else
happens to have _more_ rights shouldn't concern them.
The question is who has the right to sue for infringement if someone
other than the author violates the GFDL. If somebody tries to
violate the GFDL by copying large portions of Wikipedia as a whole,
Bomis's collection copyright comes into play. If someone does
something proprietary with an individual article, Bomis might still
have standing to sue under the GFDL under the theory that the author
(s) of the work granted them that right. If not, then the authors
have the right to sue, because they only granted GFDL-like
permissions. For works by one author (which are hopefully rare,
because that's where all the quirks appear), the author can also
refuse to sue, or even supply a brief in defense of the infringer by
claiming his own personal copyright and granting beyond-GFDL
permissions to the infringer.
In short, I don't think Bomis's continued use use a problem, but
their ability to enforce the terms of the GFDL _is_ a problem (if,
unlike me, you are concerned about that). I think the best way to
cure that is to place explicit notice near the "save" button on each
edit page stating that by putting text here, you explicitly transfer
to Bomis the right to sue for GFDL violations.
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