This raises an important question in my mind. The Wikipedia FAQ says that "the articles" are licensed under the FDL, but says nothing about the collection. Is it, like all of the articles, licensed under the FDL?
It has been my understanding that Bomis has released the collection under the terms of the Free Document License, but, as I did a quick search of the list archive and on the wikipedia I find that it shows no specific text stating that this is the case.
I did find an e-mail from Larry Sanger saying that he thought everybody assigned copyright to Bomis, and then Bomis which licensed everything thing under the GNU/FDL. I think the part about copyright assignment has been hashed out sufficiently on this list, but I would like clarification on the issue of the license status of the collection.
My best guess is that it is. I'm fairly certain that Jimbo and Larry intended for the entirety of the "free encyclopedia" to be licensed under the FDL. If I am correct in assuming that the FDL also applies to the collection copyright, then I'd amend Lee's analysis to mention that: though copyright law gives Bomins the right to control the use of the wikipedia collection, the FDL explicitly allows republication and modification. Therefore anyone who downloads and republishes the wikipedia would not be in violation of copyright unless they violate the terms of the FDL. Moreover, since it is only the FDL that grants anybody the right to reproduce Wikipedia articles at all, it is not particularly burdensome to be required to abide by the FDL if somebody publishes enough of it to violate Bomis's collection copyright.
-----Original Message----- From: lcrocker@nupedia.com [mailto:lcrocker@nupedia.com] Sent: Monday, April 29, 2002 2:23 PM To: wikipedia-l@nupedia.com Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Collection copyrights
This means that Bomis' collection copyright would be violated if somebody were to copy the website wholesale. If on the other hand the wiki sources of the articles are downloaded one by one, and a new web site created out of those, then Bomis' collection copyright won't be violated. If this new web site doesn't offer the articles under GFDL, then the individual article authors could sue of course.
There's a little more to it than that: copyrights apply to "creative expression", and "selection" of what to present is a creative act specifically recognized (see Feist v. Rural). So it doesn't matter how they acquire the whole collection, whether they copy the website whole or download the articles one by one; if they present the same collection of articles that we do, they have violated our copyright on that creative choice of which articles to present.
This is similar to a Linux distribution. If you create a distribution, you can claim collection copyright, and somebody who copies the CDROM image without permission is in violation.
...that's true...
Everybody can however create their own distribution out of the exact same free software components that you used, without violating your collection copyright.
...but that's not true. You /can/ be sued for violating a collection copyright for publishing the same collection of free components as someone else, regardless of how you acquired them, and even if you package them differently. Choice of what to present is a creative act, and is protected. 0
Right. (I'm back, by the way, but will be deeply behind in email for a few days.)
The only real reason to consider what kind of copyright Bomis might have in the collection of articles is to consider whether we have standing to sue people who violate the GFDL. My position is that the individual articles are released GFDL by the author(s), and the collection is released GFDL by Bomis. (And the software is all GPL.)
Let's imagine a scenario. Imagine that a paper-book publisher downloads our tarball and polishes it into multi-volume book form. That's great! But let's imagine further that they publish it merely with a copyright notice, i.e. they don't relicense it. Imagine still further that they start sending someone (or me!) cease-and-desist letters for copying and modifying "their" version.
I'd like to serve as a convenient focal point for a lawsuit against them.
However, it's probably a minor point either way. If someone did something that annoyed the community, I have little doubt that we could quickly work together to establish ownership of a significant portion. At that time, I could offer to buy individual copyrights from you all, i.e. we could go through the copyright assignment process.
I think that in reality, all of this is fairly pedantic, though. If someone tried to violate the GFDL, there would be such a huge outcry from the wider free software community, that almost anyone would have to back down in the face of the negative publicity.
Mark Christensen wrote:
This raises an important question in my mind. The Wikipedia FAQ says that "the articles" are licensed under the FDL, but says nothing about the collection. Is it, like all of the articles, licensed under the FDL?
It has been my understanding that Bomis has released the collection under the terms of the Free Document License, but, as I did a quick search of the list archive and on the wikipedia I find that it shows no specific text stating that this is the case.
I did find an e-mail from Larry Sanger saying that he thought everybody assigned copyright to Bomis, and then Bomis which licensed everything thing under the GNU/FDL. I think the part about copyright assignment has been hashed out sufficiently on this list, but I would like clarification on the issue of the license status of the collection.
My best guess is that it is. I'm fairly certain that Jimbo and Larry intended for the entirety of the "free encyclopedia" to be licensed under the FDL. If I am correct in assuming that the FDL also applies to the collection copyright, then I'd amend Lee's analysis to mention that: though copyright law gives Bomins the right to control the use of the wikipedia collection, the FDL explicitly allows republication and modification. Therefore anyone who downloads and republishes the wikipedia would not be in violation of copyright unless they violate the terms of the FDL. Moreover, since it is only the FDL that grants anybody the right to reproduce Wikipedia articles at all, it is not particularly burdensome to be required to abide by the FDL if somebody publishes enough of it to violate Bomis's collection copyright.
-----Original Message----- From: lcrocker@nupedia.com [mailto:lcrocker@nupedia.com] Sent: Monday, April 29, 2002 2:23 PM To: wikipedia-l@nupedia.com Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Collection copyrights
This means that Bomis' collection copyright would be violated if somebody were to copy the website wholesale. If on the other hand the wiki sources of the articles are downloaded one by one, and a new web site created out of those, then Bomis' collection copyright won't be violated. If this new web site doesn't offer the articles under GFDL, then the individual article authors could sue of course.
There's a little more to it than that: copyrights apply to "creative expression", and "selection" of what to present is a creative act specifically recognized (see Feist v. Rural). So it doesn't matter how they acquire the whole collection, whether they copy the website whole or download the articles one by one; if they present the same collection of articles that we do, they have violated our copyright on that creative choice of which articles to present.
This is similar to a Linux distribution. If you create a distribution, you can claim collection copyright, and somebody who copies the CDROM image without permission is in violation.
...that's true...
Everybody can however create their own distribution out of the exact same free software components that you used, without violating your collection copyright.
...but that's not true. You /can/ be sued for violating a collection copyright for publishing the same collection of free components as someone else, regardless of how you acquired them, and even if you package them differently. Choice of what to present is a creative act, and is protected. 0 [Wikipedia-l] To manage your subscription to this list, please go here: http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
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