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

[Birgitte SB]

--- On Fri, 9/19/08, Amir E. Aharoni <amir.aharoni at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: Amir E. Aharoni <amir.aharoni at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] deviation from the GFDL in smaller projects
> To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" <foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
> Date: Friday, September 19, 2008, 5:38 AM
> On Fri, Sep 19, 2008 at 1:22 PM, Nikola Smolenski
> <smolensk at eunet.yu> wrote:
> > Amir E. Aharoni wrote:
> >> One worrying thing that i noticed is that in some
> of these projects
> >> there is no strict adherence to GFDL-only text.
> Since my first day in
> >> Wikipedia i understood how important the GFDL is.
> I understood that
> >> articles cannot be copied verbatim even from
> sources whose copyright
> >> terms allow copying for non-commercial usage,
> because the "free" in
> >> "The Free Encyclopedia" does not refer
> only to price.
> >
> > Well, there is even more of that than you describe.
> >
> > There are projects that are either unable or unvilling
> to enforce proper
> > licencing of images. (Read: many/most images are
> without any copyright
> > templates.)
> 
> I intentionally limited my description of the problem to
> text. Image
> fair use is a separate issue.
> 
> > There are projects that, despite dedicating
> significant attention to
> > copyright issues, have significant amount of material
> copied from print
> > sources, and thus practically undetectable.
> 
> Yes, this exists. I am referring to cases where the
> projects (not just
> single contributors) are aware that the license of the text
> is not
> GFDL.
> 
> > This may come as a surprise to Westerners, but most
> people out there are
> > not really aware of copyright. Intelligent, educated
> adults may have no
> > knowledge or understanding of it, and rise a protest
> when you tell them
> > they can't copy text from somewhere.
> 
> True: I intentionally wrote "aware that the license of
> the text is not
> GFDL" above, because it is possible that they think
> that "free as in
> beer" is GFDL-compatible.
> 
> I would volunteer to approach such projects with an
> explanation of the
> importance of the GFDL, but i am not a lawyer and not an
> official
> representative of WMF. The WMF can tell me to "be
> bold", but since i
> am not talking about cases of singular articles, but whole
> projects
> which apparently have a policy of disregard to GFDL
> compatibility, i
> am quite unsure. The legitimacy of a project may be in
> question, so i
> am reluctant to handle it all by myself.
> 

Depending on the language, you may the person best able to educate some of these wikis. Or especially if you don't want publicize who they are ;) The legitimacy of the project should not brought up until some education effrt has proven to fail.  Do you know about the WMF licensing resolution [1]?  Is it translated into the languages in question?  If not, the first step would be working on such a translation and then bringing that to the attention of the community that is deviating.  Next figure out the likliest Wikipedia full of knowledge people on copyright to be able to communicate with this smaller wiki (look at the most common second languages on the small wiki).  Then recruit some people from the bigger wiki to help you answer questions and explain things.  

Birgitte SB

[1]http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Licensing_policy