On Wed, 4 Jun 2003, Toby Bartels wrote:
[Note: This is crossposted to <wikitech-l> and <wikipedia-l> for continuity. Replies should go to <wikipedia-l>, since it's a policy discussion.]
As a reminder, none of us are real lawyers, and nothing in this discussion is going to get anyone anywhere. May I suggest we all agree to disagree and keep our options open until such time as the project receives professional advice?
Axel Boldt wrote on <wikitech-l>:
Derivative work are required to be under GFDL; what constitutes a derivative work is defined by copyright law. The technical detail that text and images are typically kept in separate files is irrelevant; illustrating an article by adding a picture is a classical case of a derivative work.
This is the primary concern, which needs to be answered by a professional with a firm knowledge of the law, the licenses involved, and the precedent set by other cases.
On Wed, 4 Jun 2003, Toby Bartels wrote:
Including quotations would indeed be a technical gimmick, and our server would provide a single HTML file, a derivative work.
Careful there -- someone will suggest using an <iframe> tag to pull the quote from a separate file. ;)
Our copyright notice at the bottom of the page even refers only to "text"; a result of this feature is that the text is easily separated.
As we've heard before, saying something in a copyright statement doesn't make it true.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)