[Foundation-l] WikiGadugi Wikipedia Rating???

[Robert Scott Horning]

Jeffrey V. Merkey wrote:

>Robert Scott Horning wrote:
>  
>
>>I'll defer here to Brad in terms of strict legal requirements, but I 
>>fail to see how it is a violation and abuse of trademarks to cite 
>>Wikipedia as the source of the material, in a bibliographic reference. 
>>Or that you even need permission to do this sort of citation.  Indeed, 
>>I would think it to be a violation of the GFDL on the part of the WMF to 
>>even require permission in this manner, as it would then be legally 
>>impossible to comply with the GFDL when giving this content to a 3rd party.
>>
>>You should not have to seek permission from the WMF or anybody on 
>>Wikipedia in order to copy content from Wikipedia.  That is the whole 
>>point of the GFDL.
>>    
>>
>It could potentially be trademark infrginement and trading on the 
>goodwill of the foundation in certain situations. In any event, companies
>are not about civil disobediance. WMG needs permission or implied 
>pemission in the form of a statement by he Foundation that use if its
>valuable trademark rights is granted for purposes of attribution through 
>the use of its trademarks.
>
>Apolicy page on wikimedia.org would probably address any issues on this 
>topic.
>
>Jeff
>
Note that what I said here was a bibliographic reference to Wikipedia.

Where the trademark infringement comes from is something like the sorts 
of publications done by Wikipress (see 
http://www.wikipress.de/Hauptseite)  These have the words "Wikipedia" 
spelled out boldly on the title page, implying some sort of strong 
connection to Wikipedia.  These are IMHO uses of WMF trademarks that 
perhaps ought to be used with formal permission.

If instead you have inside the "many thanks to" page of a published book 
a mention of Wikipedia and noting that the information came from there, 
I don't see where the problem comes here.  Or better still if you list 
on a formal bibliographic reference list of where the content came from, 
having Wikipedia listed near the top of the list in perhaps even a 
featured position on the list as a major source of the information. 
 That shouldn't be a problem.  I hope the WMF doesn't take issue when 
WMF trademarks are used in this fashion.  For a web site something 
either on a special "About" page or as a "fine print" at the bottom of 
the page noting that the content came from Wikipedia originally would 
IMHO be essentially the same thing.

An infringing use would be to completely reproduce a Wikipedia page, 
completely with the "meatball" logo and be designed to look identical in 
all other ways to Wikipedia pages, making no distinction between 
Wikipedia and your copy.  Unfortunately some people have done exactly 
this, even with very similar URLs that are very similar to Wikipedia, 
but with all kinds of advertisement all over all of the pages.

What is interesting in the GFDL is that there is a "title clause" that 
actually *requires* the use of the title in the publication that is 
republished via permissions granted through the GFDL.  How exactly this 
relates to Wikipedia is very vague, and statements by the WMF have 
muddied the waters even more in an attempt to try and protect the WMF 
trademarks.

As I've noted, the name "Linux" is also trademarked in a fashion that 
presumably "Wikipedia" is also intended to be used.  The one huge 
difference here, however, is that the WMF is trying to capitalize on the 
use of the term "Wikipedia" for fund raising activities, while Linus 
Torvald doesn't seem to care all that much, and is mainly holding the 
trademark to keep it from being claimed by some other 3rd party.  I 
guarentee that many people are using the term "Linux" without even 
consulting or talking with Linus.

 From an ethical standpoint, it seems very responsible to note clearly 
where the original source of the material came from.  And the only 
reasonable way you can do that is to use a WMF trademark such as 
"Wikipedia", even if the name appears only in the URL.

The issue about seeking permission from the WMF in order to do 
bibliographic reference is that by requiring premission, it invalidates 
the GFDL.  The content reverts to a strong propritary copyright, which 
simply can't be copied unless you have formal permission from all of the 
authors of that content.  On the pratical side, it makes it impossible 
to reproduce the content at all.  Presumably it could also get the WMF 
into problems as the content was given to the WMF (on their server 
farms) under the terms of the GFDL, so it couldn't even be displayed at 
all unless the WMF also has independent authorization (aside from the 
GFDL) to publish the content.

-- 
Robert Scott Horning