User:Anthony DiPierro appears to be hell-bent to put the FDL to the test. He has created a complete fork of the English Wikipedia called "McFly": http://www.slashdotsucks.com:8080/wik/
None of the individual articles make any mention of Wikipedia nor of the FDL. Only the main page does, but not exactly in desirable form either. It does not link to Wikipedia, instead it contains the text:
"by Andre Engels, Bryan Derksen, Brion Vibber, Michael Hardy, Vicki Rosenzweig, Anthony DiPierro, thousands of Wikipedians, and various others worldwide"
And regarding the FDL:
Copyright (c) 2004 Anthony DiPierro. [Standard FDL short version follows.] Warning: this license extends solely to those parts of this document which are copyright by Anthony DiPierro, who makes no claims as to the license status of other document parts. Use at your own risk!
To summarize 1) Neither the McFly main page nor individual pages link back to Wikipedia or to its page histories 2) The main page does *not* state that the content which is not written by Anthony is licensed under the FDL.
We have to determine whether Wikipedia as a whole is "the document" or whether individual articles are. In my opinion, the English Wikipedia is no more a single document than the combined English and German Wikipedias are -- the English Wikipedia is an aggregation of separately FDL-licensed articles. This is clear because each document has a separate "history" section, a separate license footer, and most documents have different contributors.
Under this interpretation, Anthony is clearly in violation. If he refuses to make the necessary changes I strongly recommend taking legal action as otherwise this could easily become a precedent for third parties to use Wikipedia content without giving proper credit. We should probably send a warning letter anyway because of the "this license extends solely .." part.
The way I know Anthony he won't listen to anyone without legal standing. I therefore would like to ask Alex in particular to take a look at this case and help in preparing the necessary letter.
When I temp-banned Anthony for vandalism a few days ago I knew that he was a troll. But this goes beyond simple trolling. Anthony's actions here could do serious long-term damage to our project, and we need to quickly respond.
Regards,
Erik
Erik Moeller wrote:
We have to determine whether Wikipedia as a whole is "the document" or whether individual articles are. In my opinion, the English Wikipedia is no more a single document than the combined English and German Wikipedias are -- the English Wikipedia is an aggregation of separately FDL-licensed articles. This is clear because each document has a separate "history" section, a separate license footer, and most documents have different contributors.
On the other hand, we've indicated intent to publish a paper version of the encyclopedia, which would very clearly be a single document. Or are we claiming it wouldnt' be? If each Wikipedia article is a separate document, any paper version we produce would have to have a list of five authors and the "history" section on *every single* article, which would take up a pretty large percentage of the total encyclopedia.
-Mark
Delirium-
On the other hand, we've indicated intent to publish a paper version of the encyclopedia, which would very clearly be a single document. Or are we claiming it wouldnt' be? If each Wikipedia article is a separate document, any paper version we produce would have to have a list of five authors and the "history" section on *every single* article, which would take up a pretty large percentage of the total encyclopedia.
Not at all. A typical article would look like this:
Donald Rumsfeld
....
<small font> This is a copy of the Wikipedia article "Donald Rumsfeld", see www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Rumsfeld for the current version and history. It is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License (Appendix A). </small font>
Regards,
Erik
Erik Moeller wrote:
Delirium-
On the other hand, we've indicated intent to publish a paper version of the encyclopedia, which would very clearly be a single document. Or are we claiming it wouldnt' be? If each Wikipedia article is a separate document, any paper version we produce would have to have a list of five authors and the "history" section on *every single* article, which would take up a pretty large percentage of the total encyclopedia.
Not at all. A typical article would look like this:
Donald Rumsfeld
....
<small font> This is a copy of the Wikipedia article "Donald Rumsfeld", see www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Rumsfeld for the current version and history. It is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License (Appendix A). </small font>
But that's not permitted. The history must be *part* of the document, not a link to a history available elsewhere. So if you're distributing a paper encyclopedia, you must distribute a paper history as well.
-Mark
From: "Erik Moeller" erik_moeller@gmx.de
<..snip..>
User:Anthony DiPierro appears to be hell-bent to put the FDL to the test. He has created a complete fork of the English Wikipedia called "McFly": http://www.slashdotsucks.com:8080/wik/
I have had some discussions with ADP regarding copyrights. He has his own opinions regarding the interpretation of the GFDL.
None of the individual articles make any mention of Wikipedia nor of the FDL. Only the main page does, but not exactly in desirable form either. It does not link to Wikipedia, instead it contains the text:
I think what he is trying to say is that Wikipedia is one encyclopedia, and the GFDL does not require a history for each section of the publication but for the whole publication.
"by Andre Engels, Bryan Derksen, Brion Vibber, Michael Hardy, Vicki Rosenzweig, Anthony DiPierro, thousands of Wikipedians, and various others worldwide"
This is his attempt at fulfilling the fiver principal author rule of attribution. No doubt he looked for the individuals who made the most edits and he determined them to be: Andre Engels, Bryan Derksen, Brion Vibber, Michael Hardy, and Vicki Rosenzweig. Then he added himself and also gave credit to Wikipedians as he believes that they hold the copyright, not Wikipedia (just as JamesDay believes).
And regarding the FDL:
Copyright (c) 2004 Anthony DiPierro. [Standard FDL short version follows.] Warning: this license extends solely to those parts of this document which are copyright by Anthony DiPierro, who makes no claims as to the license status of other document parts. Use at your own risk!
This is his warranty disclaimer that he is adding.
To summarize
- Neither the McFly main page nor individual pages link back to Wikipedia
or to its page histories
He does have a history section that links back: http://www.slashdotsucks.com:8080/wik/History
- The main page does *not* state that the content which is not written by
Anthony is licensed under the FDL.
Just as Wikipedia has rather unequivocally stated (until I changed it recently) "Please note that all contributions to McFly are considered to be released under the GNU Free Documentation License. If you don't want your writing to be edited mercilessly and redistributed at will, then don't submit it here. You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource. DO NOT SUBMIT COPYRIGHTED WORK WITHOUT PERMISSION! "
We have to determine whether Wikipedia as a whole is "the document" or whether individual articles are.
What ADP is stating by his actions is that it does not matter what "we" think. He has interpreted the GFDL in his own manner, providing the names of the five principal authors, links back to the original texts (history) that all contributions are considered released under the GFDL, and that he is publishing a documentation work that is encyclopedic. I see his strategy clearly.
In my opinion, the English Wikipedia is no more a single document than the combined English and German Wikipedias are -- the English Wikipedia is an aggregation of separately FDL-licensed articles. This is clear because each document has a separate "history" section, a separate license footer, and most documents have different contributors.
Under this interpretation, Anthony is clearly in violation. If he refuses to make the necessary changes I strongly recommend taking legal action as otherwise this could easily become a precedent for third parties to use Wikipedia content without giving proper credit. We should probably send a warning letter anyway because of the "this license extends solely .." part.
The question is who are the owners of these individual articles? Some argue that the joint copyright is owned by all contributors to a particular article, and thus they have the "exclusive right" to issue a 512 takedown notice, no one else has that authority. My interpretation is that Wikipedia is a collective copyright that is distinct from all individual contributions because the whole cannot exist without these parts and thus Wikipedia, as a voluntary association has an exclusive right and can issue the required notices. No one has tested the law in this regard and it is not clear what the ISP will do if they receive a takedown notice. If they do nothing then Wikipedia will not only sue ADP but the ISP as well.
The way I know Anthony he won't listen to anyone without legal standing.
I
therefore would like to ask Alex in particular to take a look at this case and help in preparing the necessary letter.
I will gladly help, but this may really be a test case and could require a lot of work and effort. I don't know if anyone would be able to do it for free. Also since Wikipedia has not published its work or registered it federally it cannot file suit against this individual (whom may be difficult to locate).
When I temp-banned Anthony for vandalism a few days ago I knew that he
was
a troll. But this goes beyond simple trolling. Anthony's actions here could do serious long-term damage to our project, and we need to quickly respond.
Maybe this shows that using the GFDL is not necessarily the best licensing scheme to use. But what are the actual damages, everyone wants the content of Wikipedia copied, he is copying it, it is just that his interpretation of what the GFDL says is not the same as the interpretation of what is being done on Wikipedia. Who is to say that Wikipedia is right and he is wrong? I have argued for Terms of Use and Submission Standards, but everyone keeps saying, "Oh Alex you want us to sound like lawyers, we don't like lawyers we want to be an open community." ADP's actions are testing how open Wikipedians are willing to be.
BTW, even if people start complaining about violation their attribution rights on articles, he could just list five contributors for each article and then say he is complying no? It would take as many take down notices as there are articles, he would get them, add the five authors who sent the notice under sect. 512 and then he would say that he was complying and refuse to take the material off his site (he is probably running the site off his own dynamic DNS server so he is the ISP). Then for each page the five prinicpal authors will have to sue him and he will say that he is already complying and that at best the damages are nominal ($1) which would mean that they would have to pay their attorney fees ($2,000 per suit) and he would be in compliance. This would have to be repeated for every Wikipedia article if you follow the JamesDay theory of Wikipedian copyright (which I do not subscribe to, I think that Wikipedia has copyright because of the collective nature of a wiki project, we would have to sue him in the name of the association of Wikipedians and argue that the page histories are part of the article and that a transparent link has to go back to each article page, not just the Wikipedia.org page mentioned on his "history section".
Will the Board of Trustees or the President of the Wikipedians start registering Wikipedia at the US Copyright Office soon? Copyright registration is necessary to file suit or the Copyright office has to be added as a party.
Alex756
On Thursday 12 February 2004 01:57 am, Alex R. wrote:
Maybe this shows that using the GFDL is not necessarily the best licensing scheme to use. But what are the actual damages, everyone wants the content of Wikipedia copied, he is copying it, it is just that his interpretation of what the GFDL says is not the same as the interpretation of what is being done on Wikipedia. Who is to say that Wikipedia is right and he is wrong?
If someone were to visit http://www.slashdotsucks.com:8080/wik/Philosophy they would not see any GFDL notice, and would therefore assume that the text was copyrighted by the owner of the site, and not available under any "free" license such as the GFDL. In this sense it is a violation of the spirit of the GFDL by making it as hard as possible for uninformed visitors to know the copyright and license status of the texts.
This is exactly the kind of trolling anthony engages in all over wikipedia.
Best, Sascha Noyes
From: "Sascha Noyes" sascha@pantropy.net
On Thursday 12 February 2004 01:57 am, Alex R. wrote:
Maybe this shows that using the GFDL is not necessarily the best
licensing
scheme to use. But what are the actual damages, everyone wants the
content
of Wikipedia copied, he is copying it, it is just that his
interpretation
of what the GFDL says is not the same as the interpretation of what is being
done
on Wikipedia. Who is to say that Wikipedia is right and he is wrong?
If someone were to visit http://www.slashdotsucks.com:8080/wik/Philosophy
they
would not see any GFDL notice, and would therefore assume that the text
was
copyrighted by the owner of the site, and not available under any "free" license such as the GFDL. In this sense it is a violation of the spirit of the GFDL by making it as hard as possible for uninformed visitors to know
the
copyright and license status of the texts.
If you open the page of a book is there a copyright notice on that page? No you go to the title page. If he thinks it is an encyclopedia then he will go to the main page and see the link on the main page. Some people on Wikipedia think that the use of all those copyright and disclaimer links on every page is overkill. Most major sites have one copyright link, and that suffices for the whole site. Isn't that a reasonable interpretation of how book publishing is adapted to the web? It is not just one article, it is a collection of articles and the copyright notice is only one link away as it can always be found on the main page.
Just being a devil's advocate, not necessarily agreeing with what he is doing, but there are always three sides to every dispute, the two disputants and the truth.
Alex
Erg, looks like it didn't go to the list last time I sent this, let's try that again...
My thought is to set up a page, say on meta, where people can list themselves if they wish to object to his use of articles to which they've contributed. With just a few major contributors, that'll encompass a large portion of the article space. Coordinated action can be quite effective.
-- Jake
On Feb 12, 2004, at 3:27 AM, Jake Nelson wrote:
Erg, looks like it didn't go to the list last time I sent this, let's try that again...
My thought is to set up a page, say on meta, where people can list themselves if they wish to object to his use of articles to which they've contributed. With just a few major contributors, that'll encompass a large portion of the article space. Coordinated action can be quite effective.
Again, I'm no lawyer, but wouldn't it be possible (even appropriate) for a section to be added to the Copyrights page, specifying the owner(s) of the copyright for Wikipedia to be the Wikipedian community as a group, with certain people (probably Jimmy Wales, for example, among others) as the designated representative(s)? This would grant certain people the "authority" to speak for a larger number of members in cases like this.
Of course, the GFDL doesn't really allow for group ownership like that, does it? And adding something that involves such a big change might not be legally feasible considering Wikipedia's already lengthy history.
(Aside: Would this be a good idea for other communities, like the "Star Trek" wiki that I've helped get off the ground in recent months?)
Dan Carlson, Administrator Memory Alpha: A Star Trek WikiWiki http://memoryalpha.st-minutiae.com/
On Feb 12, 2004, at 3:22 AM, Alex R. wrote:
If you open the page of a book is there a copyright notice on that page? No you go to the title page. If he thinks it is an encyclopedia then he will go to the main page and see the link on the main page. Some people on Wikipedia think that the use of all those copyright and disclaimer links on every page is overkill. Most major sites have one copyright link, and that suffices for the whole site. Isn't that a reasonable interpretation of how book publishing is adapted to the web? It is not just one article, it is a collection of articles and the copyright notice is only one link away as it can always be found on the main page.
Just being a devil's advocate, not necessarily agreeing with what he is doing, but there are always three sides to every dispute, the two disputants and the truth.
(Okay, I understand you're being Devil's Advocate here... I just want to refute the argument as I see it.)
However, this argument assumes that a Web page can be treated in the same way as a paper Encyclopedia. I think it's been very clearly established that this is not the case. A book is clearly a single work -- you don't tear pages out of it to share around at all. And if, for example, a professor shares an article from the encyclopedia, every professor I've ever had has always included a photocopy of the title page along with it, so that the attributions and copyright are included.
However, that is clearly not likely to happen in the case of the World Wide Web. Every individual page is treated as a work in its own right. A collection of pages like Wikipedia, creating a distinct "site", is certainly analogous to a book in a way. But if you print out a single Web page, the browser (should) always include the date/time/URL of that page along with the information. Each Web page, though part of a greater whole, is also a unique entity in its own right in a way that a single page out of a book really cannot.
Therefore, it's essential to provide attributions and copyright information on every page.
(Is this logical enough? I'm not a legal expert, of course, but I'd like to think that my philosophy/logic classes are up to the task. ;-))
Dan Carlson, Administrator Memory Alpha: A Star Trek WikiWiki http://memoryalpha.st-minutiae.com/
On Feb 12, 2004, at 3:22 AM, Alex R. wrote:
If you open the page of a book is there a copyright notice on that page? No you go to the title page. If he thinks it is an encyclopedia then he will go to the main page and see the link on the main page. Some people on Wikipedia think that the use of all those copyright and disclaimer links on every page is overkill. Most major sites have one copyright link, and that suffices for the whole site. Isn't that a reasonable interpretation of how book publishing is adapted to the web? It is not just one article, it is a collection of articles and the copyright notice is only one link away as it can always be found on the main page.
Just being a devil's advocate, not necessarily agreeing with what he is doing, but there are always three sides to every dispute, the two disputants and the truth.
(Okay, I understand you're being Devil's Advocate here... I just want to refute the argument as I see it.)
However, this argument assumes that a Web page can be treated in the same way as a paper Encyclopedia. I think it's been very clearly established that this is not the case. A book is clearly a single work -- you don't tear pages out of it to share around at all. And if, for example, a professor shares an article from the encyclopedia, every professor I've ever had has always included a photocopy of the title page along with it, so that the attributions and copyright are included.
However, that is clearly not likely to happen in the case of the World Wide Web. Every individual page is treated as a work in its own right. A collection of pages like Wikipedia, creating a distinct "site", is certainly analogous to a book in a way. But if you print out a single Web page, the browser (should) always include the date/time/URL of that page along with the information. Each Web page, though part of a greater whole, is also a unique entity in its own right in a way that a single page out of a book really cannot.
Therefore, it's essential to provide attributions and copyright information on every page.
(Is this logical enough? I'm not a legal expert, of course, but I'd like to think that my philosophy/logic classes are up to the task. ;-))
Dan Carlson, Administrator Memory Alpha: A Star Trek WikiWiki http://memoryalpha.st-minutiae.com/
Alex-
I think what he is trying to say is that Wikipedia is one encyclopedia, and the GFDL does not require a history for each section of the publication but for the whole publication.
When I view a Wikipedia article, I can view the article directly -- I do not have to pass through a title page, as I would when viewing an FDL- licensed book. I could search for "Donald Rumsfeld" on Google and immediately end up on the Wikipedia article about him.
Or on the McFly article, in which case I would be told nothing about the fact that the article is licensed under the GNU FDL, or about its history, its authors etc.
This is clearly in violation of both the letter and the spirit of our license.
And regarding the FDL:
Copyright (c) 2004 Anthony DiPierro. [Standard FDL short version follows.] Warning: this license extends solely to those parts of this document which are copyright by Anthony DiPierro, who makes no claims as to the license status of other document parts. Use at your own risk!
This is his warranty disclaimer that he is adding.
Warranty disclaimer? He effectively says that only what he writes is under the FDL. That means that he does not fulfill the requirement of the FDL that derivative works must be put under the same license.
To summarize
- Neither the McFly main page nor individual pages link back to Wikipedia
or to its page histories
He does have a history section that links back: http://www.slashdotsucks.com:8080/wik/History
This shows clearly that he doesn't follow the FDL. Each page has an individual history section. The data on the page above comes from his ass (Marxists.org? WTF?).
- The main page does *not* state that the content which is not written by
Anthony is licensed under the FDL.
Just as Wikipedia has rather unequivocally stated (until I changed it recently) "Please note that all contributions to McFly are considered to be released under the GNU Free Documentation License. If you don't want your writing to be edited mercilessly and redistributed at will, then don't submit it here. You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource. DO NOT SUBMIT COPYRIGHTED WORK WITHOUT PERMISSION! "
I fail to see the relationship here. Anthony fails to follow the requirements of the FDL. The above text is a licensing agreement for putting the text under the FDL in the first place.
The question is who are the owners of these individual articles? Some argue that the joint copyright is owned by all contributors to a particular article,
Seems reasonable. I don't make any copyright claims to Wikipedia's sports- related articles, for example. We can ask our contributors to transfer authority to the Wikimedia Foundation, of course, and that's exactly what we should do.
Maybe this shows that using the GFDL is not necessarily the best licensing scheme to use.
The FDL sucks, everyone knows it.
But what are the actual damages, everyone wants the content of Wikipedia copied, he is copying it, it is just that his interpretation of what the GFDL says is not the same as the interpretation of what is being done on Wikipedia. Who is to say that Wikipedia is right and he is wrong?
Morally there's no question for me that Anthony is doing this for one single purpose: to create trouble, to poison the community well. I can easily imagine him spending hours scouring the FDL for loopholes which he could use to piss people off.
For this reason alone I believe that Anthony should be immediately and indefinitely banned from all Wikimedia venues. Some will argue that he should be given a chance to make things right first. Maybe he should, but I doubt that it will make any difference.
BTW, even if people start complaining about violation their attribution rights on articles, he could just list five contributors for each article and then say he is complying no? It would take as many take down notices as there are articles
In this case it would be more efficient to just group some major Wikipedia contributors as complainants and file suit, perhaps even class action.
Regards,
Erik
On Thu, 12 Feb 2004, Erik Moeller wrote:
Alex-
I think what he is trying to say is that Wikipedia is one encyclopedia, and the GFDL does not require a history for each section of the publication but for the whole publication.
When I view a Wikipedia article, I can view the article directly -- I do not have to pass through a title page, as I would when viewing an FDL- licensed book. I could search for "Donald Rumsfeld" on Google and immediately end up on the Wikipedia article about him.
Or on the McFly article, in which case I would be told nothing about the fact that the article is licensed under the GNU FDL, or about its history, its authors etc.
This is clearly in violation of both the letter and the spirit of our license.
Before a violation of the license, it's a violation of the copyright/author's rights. References to the authors has been removed. This case is before a licensing issue, it's a violation of the copyright. The nuance is quite important because we don't go directly of the question of licensing and its validity. Various cases around GNU GPL was not around the license itself but only on the violation of the author's rights principle.
just my 0.02 EUR,
adulau
Op do 12-02-2004, om 08:41 schreef Alexandre Dulaunoy:
Before a violation of the license, it's a violation of the copyright/author's rights. References to the authors has been removed. This case is before a licensing issue, it's a violation of the copyright.
But the FDL allows you to remove authors as long as you keep five principal authors listed. So this would always violate the other author's rights?
Wouter Vanden Hove
From: "Alexandre Dulaunoy" alexandre.dulaunoy@ael.be
On Thu, 12 Feb 2004, Erik Moeller wrote:
Alex-
I think what he is trying to say is that Wikipedia is one
encyclopedia,
and the GFDL does not require a history for each section of the
publication
but for the whole publication.
When I view a Wikipedia article, I can view the article directly -- I do not have to pass through a title page, as I would when viewing an FDL- licensed book. I could search for "Donald Rumsfeld" on Google and immediately end up on the Wikipedia article about him.
Or on the McFly article, in which case I would be told nothing about the fact that the article is licensed under the GNU FDL, or about its
history,
its authors etc.
This is clearly in violation of both the letter and the spirit of our license.
Before a violation of the license, it's a violation of the copyright/author's rights. References to the authors has been removed. This case is before a licensing issue, it's a violation of the copyright. The nuance is quite important because we don't go directly of the question of licensing and its validity. Various cases around GNU GPL was not around the license itself but only on the violation of the author's rights principle.
Why is it a violation of author's rights? There is no law that says you have to have a copyright notice on every page of a book and a web site is like a book. You open the book and look at the page, you link into a web site and see the page. If you want to see the copyright you go to the title page of the book or the main page of the web site. There is nowhere in the GFDL that says that you have to link to each page of a web site? In fact the GFDL was not written for web sites, it was written for "documentation manuals". If it is applied by someone to a web site without modification then that person (or entity or group of people) is suggesting that the web site is like a book, no? I doubt any judge would say that Wikipedia requires downstream users to interpret the GFDL the way Wikipedians say it should be interpreted. It is not their license and it is interpreted the way any other legal text is interpreted.
I am not saying that I agree with what McFly Network is doing, just that there are links back to Wikipedia and that the texts are "considered released under the GFDL" and there may be a reading of the GFDL that would say that McFly Network is in compliance with the GFDL, try and convince me otherwise, please.
Alex756
From: "Erik Moeller" erik_moeller@gmx.de To: wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org Sent: Thursday, February 12, 2004 3:22 AM Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] An FDL test case: McFly
Alex-
I think what he is trying to say is that Wikipedia is one encyclopedia, and the GFDL does not require a history for each section of the
publication
but for the whole publication.
When I view a Wikipedia article, I can view the article directly -- I do not have to pass through a title page, as I would when viewing an FDL- licensed book. I could search for "Donald Rumsfeld" on Google and immediately end up on the Wikipedia article about him.
And then if you wanted to find out about Wikipedia you would click around the site to find out what the GFDL is, what Wikipedia is about. You would not, if you knew nothing about Wikipedia and wanted to know more, not click on any of the links on the page. That is what links are for.
Or on the McFly article, in which case I would be told nothing about the fact that the article is licensed under the GNU FDL, or about its history, its authors etc.
This is clearly in violation of both the letter and the spirit of our license.
I do not think anyone whould disagree with it being a violation of the spirit of Wikipedia, but my problem is that he is trying to argue, by his actions, that what "we" feel is a reasonable interpretation of the GFDL is not the only interpretation of the GFDL. I agree with you Eric, it is not nice, but I really am having trouble with figuring out what we can really do to stop him short of adapting a new Terms of Use that is linked to every page that essentially requires some of the things that Wikipedians want to be included in the GFDL to be included in the terms of use, and even then this might be considered an attempt to modify the GFDL and held to be void by the FSF.
And regarding the FDL:
Copyright (c) 2004 Anthony DiPierro. [Standard FDL short version
follows.]
Warning: this license extends solely to those parts of this document
which
are copyright by Anthony DiPierro, who makes no claims as to the
license
status of other document parts. Use at your own risk!
This is his warranty disclaimer that he is adding.
Warranty disclaimer? He effectively says that only what he writes is under the FDL. That means that he does not fulfill the requirement of the FDL that derivative works must be put under the same license.
This is a disclaimer. He is not stating that the rest is NOT released according to the FDL but only that he can only copyright his particular contributions, the rest of the site is covered by the stated that everything is "considered released under the GFDL".
To summarize
- Neither the McFly main page nor individual pages link back to
Wikipedia
or to its page histories
He does have a history section that links back: http://www.slashdotsucks.com:8080/wik/History
This shows clearly that he doesn't follow the FDL. Each page has an individual history section. The data on the page above comes from his ass (Marxists.org? WTF?).
He is suggesting that the page histories are not equivalent to the FDL idea of history. He is taking the tack that the whole of Wikipedia is released as a "documentation manual" and all he has to do is link back somewhere to a transparent copy of the whole Wikipedia, which he has done. I agree with your interpretation too, but there is nothing requiring McFly to interpret the GFDL the way you want to have it interpreted is there? Since the summer I have been trying to get a Submission Standards/Terms of Use adopted and at every step of the way people are complaining that I am being too legalistic, well this is what happens when you don't listen to someone who has some concept of what copyright law and contract law is all about. All I can say is "I told you so". Sorry.
- The main page does *not* state that the content which is not written
by
Anthony is licensed under the FDL.
Just as Wikipedia has rather unequivocally stated (until I changed it recently) "Please note that all contributions to McFly are considered to be
released
under the GNU Free Documentation License. If you don't want your writing to be edited mercilessly and redistributed at will, then don't submit it here. You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it
from a
public domain or similar free resource. DO NOT SUBMIT COPYRIGHTED WORK WITHOUT PERMISSION! "
I fail to see the relationship here. Anthony fails to follow the requirements of the FDL. The above text is a licensing agreement for putting the text under the FDL in the first place.
Is it? I have had discussions with Wikipedians who say that there is no "agreement" between Wikipedians and Wikipedia. It is saying that "all contribution are released under the GNU FDL? How is that not a copyright notice?
The question is who are the owners of these individual articles? Some
argue
that the joint copyright is owned by all contributors to a particular article,
Seems reasonable. I don't make any copyright claims to Wikipedia's sports- related articles, for example. We can ask our contributors to transfer authority to the Wikimedia Foundation, of course, and that's exactly what we should do.
Maybe this shows that using the GFDL is not necessarily the best
licensing
scheme to use.
The FDL sucks, everyone knows it.
But what are the actual damages, everyone wants the content of Wikipedia copied, he is copying it, it is just that his
interpretation of
what the GFDL says is not the same as the interpretation of what is being done on Wikipedia. Who is to say that Wikipedia is right and he is wrong?
Morally there's no question for me that Anthony is doing this for one single purpose: to create trouble, to poison the community well. I can easily imagine him spending hours scouring the FDL for loopholes which he could use to piss people off.
For this reason alone I believe that Anthony should be immediately and indefinitely banned from all Wikimedia venues. Some will argue that he should be given a chance to make things right first. Maybe he should, but I doubt that it will make any difference.
I think he would argue that he is just following his interpretation of the letter of the law. Even if you do ban him from using Wikipedia how can you ban him from downloading it? Wouldn't someone argue that that is against the letter and spirit of the GFDL? If he can download the database he can release it under his interpretation of the GFDL. How banning will stop him from doing that I do not understand?
BTW, even if people start complaining about violation their attribution rights on articles, he could just list five contributors for each
article
and then say he is complying no? It would take as many take down notices as there are articles
In this case it would be more efficient to just group some major Wikipedia contributors as complainants and file suit, perhaps even class action.
Under this scenario every single Wikipedian now has to apply to the US Copyright office to register his/her rights so that they have standing to apply to the courts. If it is done as a class action the argument will be that each case should be a separate case. This would require that resources be put together to pay for contacting each contributor and getting them to file the notices. Typically in ClassActions the defendants (who normally have deep pockets) pay for this noticing, or the class action lead plaintiffs have law firms who invest in the costs (even with the web this would cost tens of thousands in filing fees alone). The law firms invest because they eventually get compensated by the deep pocket defendants. Here you are suing an individual who is probably just a pseudonym, who may be hard to obtain jurisdiction over and who may not have any assets. I know of no law firm that would be able to do this and I don't think that Wikimedia would decide to invest, lets say $100,000 in getting this process going just because someone is not compliant with the interpretation of the GFDL that Wikipedians say, morally, should be interpreted the way they say it should be interpreted.
The reality is that the GFDL as applied to Wikipedia is very close to a grant into the public domain. A federal judge (or even an appeal panel) is likely to suggest that by releasing your work under the GFDL that you are waiving a lot of rights, allowing your work to enter into a joint ownership scheme that may only require someone to give you attribution rights if you are one of the five major contributors to an article. Even then the case law states that the only right that joint copyright holders have against each other is sharing of royalties, there is nothing in the GFDL that gives the co-authors any right to the royalties of a license so there is no grounds that one can sue a co-owner or license under the GFDL and under the contract license theory the damages are at best only nominal. It is, after all, a free license so that the guys who use it to make money are allowed to do so and the other coauthors cannot take them to court.
It begs the question, how enforceable is the GFDL? Even if Wikipedia was now to require copyright assignment that would not be retroactive, and even if it could be retroactive what about all the people who have left the project their agreements with Wikipedia cannot be changed no without their consent, can it? I would argue that it could because Wikipedia was always a voluntary association, but it is going to take people taking some drastic steps that a lot of users are going to complain about as being against "consensus" and "community standards". They might even start to side with ADP because he is recognizing a broad (albeit Marxist) interpretation of the FDL and copyleft whereas we are suggesting a contractual and more limited interpretation of Wikipedia as a collaborative venture that is only using the FDL as a way to insure that downstream users recognize moral rights.
Interesting that creating a mirror in more moral rights oriented jurisdiction and filing suit there may be a way to get McFly Network into more trouble because with the stringent rules of attribution over text works in those jurisdiction your arguments Eric have much more weight. US law is really too weak in this area, but that was done to protect publishers, not authors, who have most of the lobbyists in the US (unlike EU states that have a more cultural interpretation of copyright rather than the US commercial interpretation).
Alex756
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