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

[Anthony]

On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 5:58 PM, Mike Godwin <mgodwin at wikimedia.org> wrote:

> Anthony writes:
> >> 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
> >
> >
> > The WMF doesn't hold a copyright over the dumps, they merely
> > distribute it
> > (in violation of copyright law, I might add).
>
> Could you spell out your legal theory here, counselor?


Which part is unclear?  The dumps contain my copyrighted work.  You have no
license to distribute them (you might have once had a license under the
GFDL, but I explicitly and permanently terminated those rights over 30 days
ago in an email to you).

On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 5:52 PM, Mike Godwin <mgodwin at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
> My suggestion that editors might choose to opt out was informed by my
> strong belief that only a very editors would even want to.
> Contributions to wiki projects are already subject to an immense
> amount of merger and conflation with other people's contributions, but
> I suppose if anyone really felt that the copyrights in *his particular
> edits* were being used in a way that violated his intent to license
> them freely for others to use, that that person probably would feel
> strongly enough to review some or all of his edits and remove them.
> Obviously, anyone that passionate about this issue will have the
> energy to do this. My expressed view was that we not stand in such a
> person's way.


If I thought others would follow your suggestion I might actually take you
up on that, but considering that 1) it's merely a suggestion and not WMF
policy, and 2) that would require me logging in to Wikipedia and hitting
"submit", which is something I haven't done since the new version of the
GFDL appeared; I'm not going to do that at this time.