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

[Robert Scott Horning]

Anthere wrote:

> Nicholas Moreau wrote:
>
>> Wikijunior, as many already know, is publishing a series of books, 
>> the first
>> of which is funded by the mysterious Beck Foundation.
>>
>> This message has worried many of us:
>>
>> "According to the United States Code for registering a copyrighted 
>> work, you
>> must include your nationality (what country you claim citizenship in) 
>> and
>> the country you are currently residing in, if different.
>
>
>
> ??????
>
> Can you cite this piece of law ?
> Is the law the same in all countries ? If not, why having to respect 
> this one ?
> If this is correct, should we follow the law ? Or explore a new 
> territory ?
>
> I am really not happy with the idea of crediting only those who will 
> provide all this information. It is very contrary to my idea of what 
> our project is. I am even less happy seeing editors should supposingly 
> put that public on the net. What about everyone privacy ? When I buy a 
> book by the way, nowhere is such an information provided on the book.
>
>
> Can the lawyer guys here give some feedback on this issue ?
>
> Anthere

I am not a "lawyer", but I have studied copyright law extensively and 
feel competent to answer some of these questions.

U.S. copyright code does require this information if you are going to 
formally "register" the copyrighted work.  The idea is that the author's 
nationality directly influences what copyright laws apply to a given 
piece of literature, even if it was originally published in a place that 
is different from the nationality of the author.  For instance, French 
law applies to French citizens for copyright even if the book was 
originally published in the USA, with all of the gory details that go 
with that issue as well.  This is information that is also required 
under international copyright treaties as well.

For some more specific details of at least registration forms required 
for U.S. publication and registration, see:  http://www.copyright.gov/

The information that I was requesting specifically when I wrote the 
stuff in question at Wikijunior asking for the full complete name was 
based on the registration forms from the above web site.  This is also a 
matter of copyright law in the sense that we are asking for full details 
from anybody that wants to make a copyright claim on something that is 
found on Wikimedia content pages.  Other authors that may want to stay 
anonymous can do so, but their ability to make a copyright claim later 
is going to be much more difficult.  The U.S. copyright office does 
require information about all potential copyright claims for a given work.

Although not specifically stated on all Wikimedia websites, there is an 
implicit copyright applied to all content (except for older Wikinews 
content that was previously public domain content).  We use various 
"licenses" to permit redistirbution and duplication of the information, 
but the copyright claim is still there.  If we want to enforce the GFDL 
at some point due to somebody trying to abuse the content, at some point 
we as a community will have to collect all of the information asked 
above for each author in order to take the case to court and force the 
copyright violator to comply with the GFDL (taking Wikipedia content and 
claiming it as their own, for instance, under a propritary license).

BTW, if you buy a book all of that information can be found at the 
national copyright registration office, even if it isn't specifically 
provided inside the front cover of the book.  And that information is 
going to be available generally through the internet anyway, but it may 
be a little harder to find than simply a single click from the main page 
of the on-line version of the book.

As far as being "very contrary to my idea of what our project is", I 
don't see how asking for voluntary information about nationality is 
contrary to the spirit of a Wiki.  It is not required if you don't want 
to give the information, and as I pointed out is required if we want to 
keep the information "free" and availble under a copyleft arrangement. 
 As far as privacy, that is up to you to decide on how much privacy you 
want to have in your life.  If you are going to make waves in public 
(like trying to enforce your copyrights), you need to make claims to 
what you have written in a public manner.  Authors throughout time have 
done this, and goes with the public nature of the written word.  Yes, 
some authors may go to jail because of what they've written, and you can 
point to many people who have had that happen throughout all of time. 
 That is what happens when you stick your neck out in public, and why in 
general you as a citizen of whatever country you live in should try to 
support free speech laws.

I tried to make a bug report on this earlier, asking for this 
information to be collected as a part of the user record directly on 
each Mediawiki project, but the bug report was squashed because the 
developers felt this is something that should have been debated first 
(presumably on Wikipedia by the comment of the one developer who opposed 
the bug).  I still feel that this should be something that can and 
should be collected for each user, on a voluntary basis.  From my 
reading of the GFDL, this may even be required information if we want to 
be able to enforce the GFDL.

-- 
Robert Scott Horning