[Foundation-l] Copies of Wikipedia's articles found on Knol

[David Goodman]

Anything anybody writes can claim to be copyrighted by somebody else,
so you might as well get used to the idea. Whether the claim is valid
is another matter.

On Fri, Aug 1, 2008 at 9:29 AM, Nikola Smolenski <smolensk at eunet.yu> wrote:
> On Friday 01 August 2008 06:01:08 David Goodman wrote:
>> Everything we do beyond this is a practical restriction on the use of
>> our content. Rather than making it free in any real sense of the word
>> except the artificiality of copyleft, it makes it less free. Freedom
>> with respect to intellectual property is the opportunity to take
>> intellectual content and do what you will with it. Free material is
>> material you can us for your own purposes, whatever they may be. (and
>> I point out that putting restrictive licenses on something and
>> republishing it does not destroy the underlying freedom; you can claim
>> what copyright you want to claim, but it doesn't mean you have it.
>> People do this with PD US government material routinely.)
>
> No. You are not free to make free content nonfree. I do not want to see things
> I wrote claimed as copyrighted by someone else, claimed to be not free or,
> the worst, translated and enhanced and claimed nonfree (which has actually
> happened).

Anything anybody writes can claim to be copyrighted by somebody else,
so you might as well get used to the idea. Whether the claim is valid
is another matter.

>
>> we want to do, and find a legal way of doing it.  I'm not one, but I
>> think  the easiest legal way is to change our license to the freest
>> possible, and give people the right to ask that the content they
>> contributed under another assumption be withdrawn and their text
>> rewritten. If we need to rewrite two paragraphs a year, which is what
>> i expect, i hereby offer to do it.
>
> And if by "the freest possible" you mean CC-BY, I hereby offer to revert you.

I must misunderstand you. I can rewrite anything or anyone has ever
posted on wp and doing so to avoid a claimed or even a possible
copyright violation is one of the best reasons for doing so, whether
or not there is an actual copyvio.

If you mean I propose to change the rules personally, I know perfectly
well that I cannot do this.

>
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-- 
David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG