[Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal

[Ray Saintonge]

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote:
> Ray Saintonge wrote:
>   
>> I have no complaints about commercial use, but I am concerned when a 
>> commercial user massively takes freely licensed or public domain 
>> material and parks them under the umbrella of his copyrights so that the 
>> users of "his" material unwittingly respect a copyright that has no 
>> basis in fact.  If the only ones with rights of action against the 
>> fraudster are the separate owners of the fragments, we will have loosed 
>> the tactic of divide and conquer upon our own selves.  I would really 
>> like to see a situation where we nominate someone as an non-exclusive 
>> agent with the right to prosecute serious copyright violations on a 
>> class action basis.
>>     
> Is it possible to make this work for copy-left licenses?
> That is can one transfer even partially the right to seek
> redress to another party?  If so, that would be wonderful.
> I am sure many contributors would take the advantage of
> it.
>   
It should be.  In the same way one appoints a lawyer to pursue one's 
case in court instead of doing so personally.  The lawyer who launches a 
case does not do so because his own personal rights have been violated.  
The case here would not really be about seeking redress.  We who write 
for the Wiki projects do not do so for direct financial gain, so we 
should not expect to receive such gain through a lawsuit.  Any 
distribution of the proceeds of a successful lawsuit would be mostly 
symbolic.

For me it all comes down to regarding what is in the public domain as 
belonging to everyone instead of no-one.  Protecting the public domain 
then becomes a question of collective rights.
> To be most careful, I would suggest that such party would
> be legally differentiated from the Foundation, and would
> accept on an equal basis such nominations from contributors
> to non-WMF projects as well. Specifically since - at least in
> theory - the agent might be requested to act against the
> Foundations stated interests.
>   
I agree.  If I suggested that the Foundation should be the one to do 
this that may have been a little too casual.  In theory, my first 
impression would be that protecting the public domain should be a 
government duty, but I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for that to 
happen.  Perhaps a separate "Custodian of the Public Domain" may be the 
answer.

Ec