[WikiEN-l] GFDL lawsuits - who can sue?

[Fastfission]

It seems to me that the most plausible place in which someone could
use the GFDL in suing is if you re-used improperly re-used material.

For example: Company X downloads GFDL material from Wikipedia but does
not correctly comply with the terms of the GFDL. Company Y knows
Company X's material is GFDL and re-uses it themselves. Company X sues
Company Y; Company Y pulls out the GFDL, proves the material was
originally licensed under it, counter-sues Company X for having
claimed they had copyright control over something they they did not.

Of course, Wikipedia/media gets nothing out of this.

Other than that, though, unless we are talking about a class-action
suit (all Wikipedians who had worked on a given article), I don't know
how you'd ever coordinate something like this...

FF

On 5/15/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> On 5/15/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 5/15/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Rob Church wrote:
> > > > On 12/05/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > > >>> And if that's the case, can we sue?  Please?
> > > >>>
> > > >> Good luck with that.
> > > >
> > > > The Foundation can't, because it doesn't own the copyright to the
> > > > material. It's up to the copyright holder to enforce their licencing.
> > > >
> > >
> > > Could The Foundation sue /on behalf of/ those authors whose copyright
> > > has been violated?
> >
> > INAL but my understanding is.
> > Under US law they could if given permission to do so by the copyright
> > holders (the situtation is compicated in the case of minors. The
> > foundation would probably need their parents/gardians permissions).
> >
> At the very least it would certainly be possible for anyone who can
> enter into a contract to assign their copyright to the foundation.
>
> How many people you need permission from depends if you consider
> Wikipedia to be a work of joint ownership or not (the other
> alternative is that each work is independently created as a derivative
> of the previous).  I tend to believe it would be considered a joint
> work, as it makes the application of the GFDL a lot cleaner.
> Actually, I think the cleanest interpretation would be that Wikipedia
> is a collection of joint works, where in some cases those works
> consist of single articles and in other cases they stretch out more
> widely (due to copy/paste/etc).  But I don't really buy into the
> interpretation that each version of each article is independently
> created under permission of the GFDL, in part because the GFDL simply
> isn't being followed.
>
> Anyway, with a joint work all joint copyright owners (anyone who has
> contributed copyrighted material) has "an equal right to register and
> enforce the copyright".
> [http://www.techtransfer.fsu.edu/jointownership.html]
>
> > I don't know how chinese copyright law works and international
> > copyright law tends to get very complex very fast.
>
> Especially when the company in question is working directly with the
> government in question.  Hence, "good luck with that".
>
> Anthony
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>