[Foundation-l] deviation from the GFDL in smaller projects

[Amir E. Aharoni]

On Fri, Sep 19, 2008 at 12:50 PM, John Vandenberg <jayvdb at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 19, 2008 at 7:41 PM, Amir E. Aharoni <amir.aharoni at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Fri, Sep 19, 2008 at 12:28 PM, Amir E. Aharoni
>> <amir.aharoni at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Another Wikipedia has a template on thousands of articles saying that
>>> they were copied from a copyrighted online encyclopedia and asks the
>>> editors not to enhance them. (I have to admit that i have limited
>>> understanding of this language, but i'm pretty sure that i got this
>>> one correctly.) Unlike in the first example, this is a very well
>>> established literary language with millions of educated writers.
>>
>> One thing that i forgot to mention is that i often fix interwiki links
>> in Wikipedias in other languages in cases of complicated interwiki
>> conflicts which interwiki bots cannot resolve automatically. Such
>> fixes must be made across all Wikipedias; if even one Wikipedia is
>> left unmaintained, the interwiki bots cannot update the links in other
>> Wikipedias. (Or worse, they may update them incorrectly.)
>>
>> When i start fixing interwiki links in a group of related articles in
>> different languages and see such a template on an article in one of
>> the Wikipedias, what am i supposed to do? I AM NOT *FREE* TO EDIT IT -
>> i may be infringing the copyright of the author of the original text.
>> Of course i understand that fixing an interwiki link is a small and
>> technical edit, but i do not have any warranty that the copyright
>> holder's lawyers will not sue me for that after seeing my name in the
>> history.
>
> You are not infringing the copyright by your edit.  The person who
> clicked save asserted that it was their own text, and released it
> under the GFDL - they are responsible!  If you notice, you should tag
> it as a copyright violation, but it is not your duty to check.

I don't know. You are probably right, but the template has a big
octagon STOP sign on it. Like, "it's a wiki, but don't dare editing
it."

It also reiterates the need for wider inter-language coordination and
cooperation, but that's a separate thread.

-- 
Amir Elisha Aharoni

heb: http://haharoni.wordpress.com | eng: http://aharoni.wordpress.com
cat: http://aprenent.wordpress.com | rus: http://amire80.livejournal.com

"We're living in pieces,
 I want to live in peace." - T. Moore