I assume this is the post you intended for me to refute. I can't. I agree you THOUGHT the contents where assigned to Bomis. This makes no difference. The legal position I hold is that unless I have specifically, in writing, assigned copyright to somebody they do not hold copyright. When I've published in literary magazines, I generally refuse to sign any paper which assigns copyright to the publisher, and will only sign limited use licenses.

The FSF requires a paper document on file assigning copyright to them to be on file at their offices to accept a patch. It may be that now there's a way to attach a digital signature (which legally can be as simple as checking a box in a web page form) to some text assigning copyright to bomis rather than requiring a signed sheet of paper. But regardless, wikipedia has not done this in the past, and apart from specific verbiage assigning copyright to bomis it will be maintained by the author of the work in question. (The FSF objects to click through licenses, so their stance on paper signatures may be the result of this.)

If you have a specific REASON to believe that something in the language of the FDL, or in the wording of the submission text on an edit page actually does function to inform me specifically that I no longer maintain copyright to my work, then I'd be glad to refute that too.

Perhaps what you are trying to say it that you believed that Bomis released the contents of the wikipedia under the FDL, and could only do so if the contributors had already assigned copyright to Bomis. This however is as far as I can tell false, the text of the submission says that contributors, by submitting their text, are licensing it under the FDL. There is nothing about copyright assignment there.

What Axel, Jimbo, and I are saying is that wikipedia gets to use a contributors work only because that contributor licensed it to wikipedia (and everybody else) under the FDL. The contributor owns that piece of work, and can sell it under a different license, but he or she cannot stop others from using it as long as they comply with the terms of the original license (the FDL). This means that I could put the draft of a book on presocratic philosophers on the wikipedia, and then turn around and sell that book to Oxford press, granting them special rights not offered under the FDL.

What Bomis OWNS is the copyright on the collection, just as a magazine can own the copyright on the collection of works in the magazine while the contributors retain ownership of the individual works in the collection. In this case the magazine has a license to use the contributors works under specific circumstances, but the contributors could not get together and create a copy of the magazine for resale -- even if they collectively own all of the pieces in the magazine.

Overall, I think you've made to main points:

1) There has been no agreement about the issue of copyright assignment, and Axel's interpretation is just one among many.

2) It is possible to interpret the text of the FDL and the submission notice on the edit page as assigning copyright to Bomis.

I believe I've shown that at least, myself, Lee, Axel, and Jimbo have believed that Axel's interpretation was correct, and that there is evidence on the mailing list going back to the middle of last year that this was the primary position voiced during that time. I looked at my archive of messages which only goes back to Aug 2002, and found no significant alternative expressed.

I also believe that Axel has asked a valid question. If you believe that somehow we have actively assigned copyright of our work to Bomis, can you provide evidence of that, or explain FROM THE TEXT of the submission notice or the FDL, how you have arrived at this conclusion? I believe that you cannot, and that your belief that this was the case is not legally binding on me, as from the moment I first arrived at wikipedia I have assumed that this was not the case. Apart from specific text assigning copyright, I retain it. That is the law. And this makes wikipedia like Linux, and most other open source projects, in that the individual contributors maintain copyright on their work.

I hope this explains it well enough, I think we aren't connecting conceptually on the issue, and I'd be more than happy to try to explain my understanding of the facts in a different way, or to defend anything you believe to be controversial in the above statement.

Yours Mark

-----Original Message----- From: Larry Sanger [mailto:lsanger@nupedia.com] Sent: Tuesday, February 05, 2002 8:09 PM To: wikipedia-l@nupedia.com Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Copyrights

On Tue, 5 Feb 2002, Jimmy Wales wrote:

It is my understanding that copyright to everything in Wikipedia belongs to the contributors, who are releasing it under the GNU FDL.

I thought *Bomis* released *the contents of Wikipedia* under the GNU FDL, in any case; so then each individual contributor first must release their contributions to Bomis under the same license? This seems to be what several of you have been getting at.

I am not convinced. I'll have to write more later, when I have time.

Larry

[Wikipedia-l] To manage your subscription to this list, please go here: http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l