Copyright question (was: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Re: [Intlwiki-l] LA2)

Andre Engels engels at win.tue.nl
Tue Oct 16 16:42:30 UTC 2001


Thomas Hofer wrote:

> There's a point that I don't understand: Wikipedia has no records about 
> copyright-holders in its diffs and changelogs. When I create or edit a 
> page, the corporation that runs Wikipedia is the copyright-holder of 
> all my changes - which minimizes copyright-troubles. (And gives the 
> corporation the right to release modified or unmodified content under  
> any other license if they want). 

If this is true, I find it quite worrying - I have put material on Wikipedia
that I have also published elsewhere. Does this mean that it can be claimed
this other publishing goes against Wikipedia's copyright?

As far as I know, I have not signed away my copyright on the material I
submit to Wikipedia. In my opinion, this means that I still hold the
copyright of the pieces I have written, although the corporation is the
copyright-holder of the site as a whole. I have not given up copyright,
I just restricted my rights as the copyright holder by:
1. Putting the material under a Free Documentation License
2. Allowing any type of publishing and changing that one could reasonably
   expect be done to a Wikipedia entry



-- 
Andre Engels, engels at win.tue.nl
Telephone: +31(0)6-11181398 (GSM)
http://www.win.tue.nl/~engels/index_en.html
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If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise,
we don't believe in it at all			-- Noam Chomsky




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