[WikiEN-l] Knol - Our first major scandel

[Anthony]

On Sun, Apr 26, 2009 at 5:52 AM, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:

> 2009/4/26  <WJhonson at aol.com>:
> > I, along with seven other co-authors, write an article on say.... Cheese
> > Whiz.  In the article we state that anyone may copy the article, provided
> that
> > they state where they got it from, and that the article may be copied by
> > anyone else provided that they state where they got it from...
> >
> > Can I alone bring a lawsuit against anyone else copying the article
> without
> > stating where they got it from?  Since the article is not exactly
> > *copyright* I would say it's freely licensed under one condition.  Does
> this really
> > fall under copyright law?  Or would it be more in the way of a standard
> > contract?
>
> It falls under copyright law. See Jacobsen v. Katzer.
>
> Multiple authors for the most part isn't a problem. With the possible
> exception of a few major battleground or very popular articles most
> wikipedia articles have someone who would have standing to sue.


In Will's example it's even easier than that, as there's no GFDL muddying
the waters, so the article is more likely a work of joint authorship, so
therefore *all* the authors have an undivided interest in the work, and
therefore standing to sue.