[Foundation-l] Let's switch to CC-BY-SA

[Anthony]

On 9/10/07, Axel Boldt <axelboldt at yahoo.com> wrote:
> --- Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
> > as we do not have to resort to a legally risky move
>
> I guess that's what it boils down to: how legally risky is my
> proposition? Granted that I don't have any experience in these matters;
> I just find it hard to believe that a person could
>   1) prove that they own the copyright to some Wikipedia content
>   2) convince a jury that they never heard about the opt-out offer
>   3) claim that the license change caused damages larger than their
> legal costs.
>
3 is the only particularly unlikely one.  But change 3 into getting an
injunction and the value might be high enough for the right
individuals.  Think SCO vs. IBM, only with SCO having a rock-solid
legal case.

And when you consider how many mirrors there are out there, and
multiply by the number of articles the person bringing the suit might
have, the statutory damages alone might be big enough to make it
worthwhile.

> If such whimsical lawsuits are indeed a possibility, then the danger of
> action should be weighed against the danger of inaction: right now, any
> past contributor could sue for violating GFDL 4.A, failing to change an
> article's title after modification. I just don't see how suits like
> that are viable.
>
That is a particularly hard one to fix, and the draft GFDL 2.0 only
makes it worse.  But changing the license to CC-BY-SA and doing
nothing are not the only two choices.