[Foundation-l] Authoring on wikijunior : providing private information.

[Ray Saintonge]

Robert Scott Horning wrote:

> Nicholas Moreau wrote:
>
>> On 10/6/05, foundation-l-request at wikimedia.org <
>> foundation-l-request at wikimedia.org> wrote:What I am asking for is 
>> that if
>> you want to claim copyright on your contribution, you need to give this
>> minimum amount of information for legal protection and to give a 
>> realistic
>> copyright claim on your contributions. As it stands right now, there 
>> is no
>> way that you can realisticly claim copyright on any of your 
>> contributions
>> right now, and certainly there is no way that you canresolve potential
>> copyright claims on material if it goes to court in a dispute.
>>
>> Okay, suppose I didn't include my information, and I wanted to claim
>> copyright on content in Wikijunior.
>>
>> I take the Foundation to court, saying "I CLAIM MY COPYRIGHT ON THIS!"
>>
>> The defendant's lawyer says "But, you can't. On the website, when you
>> contribute anything to any Wikimedia project, it says that you're
>> contributing this info to the Wikimedia Foundation."
>>
>> Like, seeing that I have my information on the "contributors" page, does
>> that mean I own part of the Wikijunior project, and thus can profit 
>> from my
>> "share" of the contribution? Every time one issue of the books is 
>> published,
>> $0.02 come rolling into my PayPal account? What? If that's the case, I'm
>> doing fifty edits under fifty different usernames.
>>
>> I honestly am dumb-founded on what you consider "claiming [my] 
>> copyright",
>> on something solely copyrighten by the foundation.
>
> I think you miss the point.  The Foundation does not claim copyright 
> on anything for any Wikimedia project.  There is a legitmate reason to 
> do this, and a good one as well.  All the Wikimedia Foundation does is 
> claim trademarks on commonly used images and names that relate 
> directly to each one of the projects, and this is proper as well.  I 
> can't set up another web site and claim it is Wikipedia with Wikipedia 
> content...that is a violation of trademark.  In order to enforce 
> copyright, it is up to the individual authors for each web page to do 
> the enforcement and keep violators from getting away with breaking the 
> law. 

Absolutely! Trademarks though are a different topic, and are not that 
big of a problem for us.  Getting into that aspect of IP law would only 
muddy the waters.  Copyright is another matter because we are in an area 
that is not properly covered by the law.  Free licensing was an unheard 
of and unimaginable concept when these laws were written.  In principle, 
copyright was invented to protect the _financial_ rights of authors.  It 
has been more a matter of civil law than criminal law..  There is such a 
thing as criminal infringement for wilfull violations, but I don't think 
we need to worry about that aspect for now.

The Berne convention mandates automatic copyright such that no person 
loses his copyrights because of a failure to register.  The Berne 
convention forbids signatory states from imposing  obligatory 
registration.  The US, as a signatory to the Berne convention is also 
bound by this.  What it does is make registration a prerequisite to 
filing an infringement  law suit.  This is useful because it helps to 
establish a right of action; it also imposes a limitation on the damages 
that can be claimed to those that were sufferred after registration.  It 
allows you to ignore copyright infringement claims from third parties 
who have no personal interest in the claim.

> The real issue is if somebody, like Microsoft Press or Prentiss-Hall, 
> decides to claim copyright on something found on a Wikimedia Project, 
> like one of the Wikijunior books, and decides instead to claim 
> copyright on it for themselves.  They do some "minor" modifications of 
> the content, research the images to make sure they are free and clear 
> to reproduce, and then say "to heck with the GFDL... we don't care" 
> and publish the book anyway as if they wrote it themselves. 

I'm sure I commented on this a couple years ago.  The big problem is not 
with copyvio material on the wikis; we have already shown ourselves to 
be diligent in trying to deal with that.  The likelihood of being 
defendants in a serious law suit are very rmote.  It's far more likely 
that our copyrights will be violated, and we will do fuck all about it.  
We may go ahead with nice letters to the infringers begging them to 
please, please, please not infringe, but what plan is there for when 
they simply respond, "Go to hell!"?  With copyrights lasting 70 years 
beyond death, what plans are there to deal with that when the relevant 
authors are dead, and it's not even clear who can give permission to sue.

Material by unidentified authors is copyrightable just as much as 
material by identified authors, except that the term of copyright is 
counted from the date of publication.  The same term applies to 
copyrights owned by corporations.  The only practical solution would be 
for all contributors to appoint Wikimedia as a non-exclusive copyright 
agent that can go ahead and take action against copyright violators when 
the occasion arises.  This should be stated on every edit page along 
with the reference to the GFDL.  We should also be periodically (perhaps 
quarterly) dumping the entire project on a CD and registering that as 
evidence of the state of the wiki at a given time.  Being non-exclusive 
will still allow the heirs of properly identified authors to take action 
for the longer period beyond their lifetimes.

Rights which are not defended are meaningless.  I think that it is 
essential that Wikimedia accept the responsibility to act as an agent 
for the protection of our collective rights.

> They can even go back and claim that the material on Wikibooks in this 
> case is violating their copyright even and force the removal of the 
> content on Wikibooks. 

I think that this is taking it a little far.  The periodic registration 
that I mentioned above will be prima facie evidence that the disputed 
material was added at the date that we claim.  That should make it 
easier to shift the burden of proof that their material was written earlier.

> As far as the "contributors" page is concerned, who are they?  Where 
> are they from?  Can you certify that the author mentioned in the 
> contributors page even exist?  Really, are you sure it isn't somebody 
> else?  Are you sure they are in the USA/France/Germany like you claim 
> they are?  Are you sure that it wasn't some hacker in Mongolia where 
> international copyright doesn't apply?  Prove it.  What court has 
> juristiction on enforcing the author's wishes?  You can't even be sure 
> who the author is, so why do you think a particular court even has a 
> right to prosecute?  So you think the server is in the USA and 
> therefore the USA has original juristiction on prosecuting copyright 
> because of the foundation.  Guess what, the Wikimedia Foundation 
> doesn't claim copyright on any of the material, so that claim is 
> thrown out.  Now what? 

Mongolia is signatory to the Berne Convention.  What is the basis of 
your claim that international copyrights do not apply there?

This is a confused paragraph.  Whatever the real problems, this is not 
one.  Legal jurisdiction is based on where the offence took place, not 
on where the copyright owner or his servers are resident.

> It gets even worse.  Because we can point to comments here on this 
> mailing list and on several talk pages that not only is this 
> information (about the country of birth and nationality of each 
> author, together with each full real name) is not collected but there 
> seems to be "official" opposition to even collecting it, all 
> contributions can be argued as anonymous contributions.  This wasn't 
> just an oversight from somebody not understanding copyright, but a 
> deliberate policy of removing identification related to user 
> contributions even with specifics of copyright law being explained. 

If individuals want to protect their privacy I recognize that as their 
personal right for which they don't need to make an excuse.  I don't 
know of any "official" opposition to people freely providing that 
information.  A person who chooses to invoke his right to privacy does 
need .to be aware of how this will limit his copyrights.  A teen 
contributor may still be alive and in his eighties when the copyright 
expires.

> In short, yes, we know who has contributed what stuff to each 
> Wikimedia article/module/entry but trying to prove authorship is going 
> to be a major headache if any single page is going to be challenged on 
> its copyright claim.  Already I've seen supposed copyright violations 
> when in fact it was the "other" website that was violating copyright 
> of the authors of a particular page.  It is just a matter of time 
> before something on one of the Wikimedia projects is going to be 
> challenged and "forced" to be removed, not because of an obvious 
> copyright violation from a previously published source but because the 
> copyright of the Wikimedia content is in doubt. 

Proof of authorship is still not essential to the subsistance of 
copyright.  It is only essential if that individual wants to pursue his 
case as an individual.  I agree that it is only a matter of time before 
these issues need to be litigated, but it is up to us to carefully 
circumscribe the issues so that we are not wasting our efforts on a lot 
of red herrings.

> In addition, one of the reasons I asked for this information is that I 
> intend to do a formal copyright registration on Wikijunior books when 
> I send them into print format.  I've already taken one Wikijunior book 
> down to a printing company and made a copy that I can send around to 
> some people as the tangible results of these projects.  As a part of 
> this formal registration which I don't need any permission to do, I am 
> required by law when filing the registration to try and find all 
> copyright claims on the material that I am registering.  At least a 
> reasonable attempt at collecting the information.  In the case of the 
> Wikijunior Solar System book, there are over 50 different 
> contributors, and it would be nice to be able to give credit to all of 
> them, and give them all a "stake" in the book as it goes to press.  I 
> was trying to be polite and ethical as I can, and then I find people 
> like you, Zanimum, who not only object to me collecting this from 
> people voluntarily, but seek to stop me from trying to collect this 
> information altogether. 

Nothing prevents you from taking the material to the printer at your own 
expense, or even making a personal profit when you sell it to the 
public.  You just need to follow the GFDL, and can't object when anyone 
else does the same thing.

> I do think this information can and should be a part of the "user" 
> record for each Media Wiki user, and adding the information is very 
> trivial to accomplish from the viewpoint of a developer.  Like I said, 
> voluntary information only, and you don't have to include the 
> information if you don't want to, but why it shouldn't be listed as 
> another field on the user preferences page is beyond my comprehension. 
> And it can save us some headaches in the future as well. 

I'm sure that software could be written to handle this; go ahead and do 
that.  Maybe the developpers will agree to make your programming a part 
of Mediawiki if it is fairly bug free.  Nevertheless it is still not 
clear that it is a legal necessity.

Ec