whole site v. page as a work (was: FDL used to stifle distribution of articles)

I am currently in short of time and I am sorry if I am just repeating 
someone elses' questions.

I have some questions and concerns about interpretations of the GFDL, 
particularly related to the issue of whole site v. individual articles being 
a "work".

1. Who can decide/choose the interpretation?

Can we decide (choose) if whole site of wikipedia (meaning either each 
language version or the whole wikipedia as a multilingual project) or 
individual article is a work? Who can? My guess is it is up to anyone to 
make arguments, but ultimately the court to decide.

So even if we, some of active and vocal Wikipedians, say "individual article 
is a separate work licensed under GFDL" or "the whole wikipedia is licensed 
under GFDL" we should still think about the possibility that our idea could 
be rejected in the court.

2. Copying an Wikipedia article in verbatim constitute a modification?

If the whole site of Wikipedia (individual language) is a work, then copying 
any article or image from it might constitute a modification.

According to the ver 1.2:

" A "Modified Version" of the Document means any work containing the 
Document or a portion of it, either copied verbatim, or with modifications 
and/or translated into another language.  "

I personally think this is a very difficult situation for redistributors and 
wikipedians. Verbatim copying of one article might be taken as a 
modification. In addition, anyone who translates other Wikipedia articles or 
policy pages, cut-and-paste some pages, or importing images from other 
language wikipedia would also be subject to the section 4 since those things 
are also modifications.

If the whole site is one work, what the redistributors has to preserve in 
light of 4-I might be the history sections of the whole Wikipedia. Just 
linking back to the page history section of the article is not enough.

The history of a whole wikipedia site might be created, I imagine, as a page 
titled "History" (as specified by ver.1.2) and somehow linking to all 
history sections of all pages - maybe like Special:Allpages do to all 
articles. If there were a back log of RecentChanges, that would do.

I am glad to know that in the U.S. courts, reasonable rather than strict 
interpretation of law is deemed important. But I am not sure if US court 
always has the jurisdiction when it comes to inter-wiki translation.

3. Editing an Wikipedia article is a modification of the whole Wikipedia 
site

I have been wondering if it is okay to copy-and-paste a part of a page into 
another (including merging articles, moving VillagePump talks to other talk 
pages) within a wikipedia site. And I see that, if the whole site is one 
work, there might be some ground to justfy those actions as not violating 
any GFDL terms.

But when the whole site is a work, there is another kind of problems. When 
one wikipedian adds an article, s/he indeed "modified" the site's content, 
and therefore subject to section 4.

4. Author of the work

If a whole site is a work, I think all wikipedians is a coauthor of the 
work, and therefore able to sue copyright violation.

In that case, even I can say, "Hey, English Wikipedia is partly my work, 
even though I only edited small number of pages, and anyone who copies any 
part of it without strict compliance to GFDL should be prepared to be sued 
by me." or "Hey, any wikipedian who copies an image from Japanese wikipedia 
without strict compliance should be..."

I am not sure if this is particularly a good or bad thing.


Regards,

Tomos

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