[Foundation-l] GFDL Q&A update and question

[Brian]

I was under the impression that the WMF does hold a copyright over the
entirety of a particular Wikipedia as they offer that collection for
download. And re-users often use these dumps as seeds for their "illegal"
re-use.

http://download.wikimedia.org

On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 3:20 PM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com>wrote:

> 2009/1/8 Brian <Brian.Mingus at colorado.edu>:
> > Another question: Given the WMF admission in the FAQ that the GFDL has *
> > never* been followed in re-use of Wikipedia content due to the insane
> > difficulty of doing so, and given its rampant  "illegal" re-use on the
> web,
> > and the WMF's ignoring this illegal re-use for years on end, what chance
> is
> > there that a court of law would find that the GFDL actually applies to
> this
> > content were someone to sue a re-user?
> >
> > Isn't it true that the efforts to force re-users to appropriately
> atrribute
> > the content have not actually asked them to follow the letter of the
> GFDL?
> >
> > Is a license that is never enforced truly a license, in the legal sense?
>
> The license is between the author and the re-user, the fact that the
> WMF has tolerated it being violated is irrelevant. You can lose a
> trademark by not defending it, but I don't think the same applies to
> copyrights, so unless the individual owner can be shown to have said
> it was all right not to follow the license to the letter, I don't see
> why they can't sue. (IANAL, YMMV, BBQ)
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>



-- 
You have successfully failed!