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. 0