I'm not a lawyer. Anyone taking anything in the below text as legal advice should be drawn and quartered. on Wednesday 06 August 2003 00:40 -0700, Andre Engels wrote: To quote from 4B: "...unless they release you from this requirement." One could easily argue that Wikipedia recieves an implicit release based on the fact that it is self-evident to contributors before they submit anything that we do not list the authors in this way. To quote 4E in its entirety: "E. Add an appropriate copyright notice for your modifications adjacent to the other copyright notices." WHAT other copyright notices? The only person concievably able to try and enforce that provision on documents submitted to Wikipedia without looking like a complete idiot in front of everyone -- including U.S. courts -- would be the original author, and he'd have a time of it. First, if he edited any other articles on Wikipedia without following 4F himself, principles of mutually assured destruction apply; and people don't often submit an article and then go away (articles that stick around, that is). Secondly, are you aware of a principle called entrapment? When a law-enforcement officer (e.g. police) essentially force a person to commit a crime in order to arrest (and presumably prosecute) them for it, that's entrapment. In contract law (which copyright licenses are part of in the U.S.) it'll usually be under the broader concept of "bad faith". If someone comes to Wikipedia, it will be self-evident that 4F is not followed. If they then submitted an article and then sued when someone "violated" 4F, that'd be willful negligence at best, which by itself is good cause for dismissal/aquittal. In sane situations, it's called "bad faith", and not only nullifies the claim, but may expose the complaintant to legal action. "Judge! The contractor built my house two inches from where I told him to build it in the middle of my empty 20-acre lot!" "Did this cause you any damage or substantial emotional distress?" "Err..." Need I say more?