disclaimer section and interlingal compatibility

Nobody answered this very important post, so I'll give it a try.

Tomos wrote:
>At Japanese wikipedia, some of us have been discussing about 
>introducing disclaimer section, but deterring the introduction 
>because of some legal questions (as follows). Any advice or 
>opinion would be appreciated. 

Well IANAL but that has never stopped me from commenting on these things 
before. :) 

>1. Should we take it as the disclaimers as defined/ described in 
>GFDL? For example, should we take it something that we have 
>to preserve when we modify the GFDL'd work? (see 4-O of GFDL 
>ver.1.2) 

IMO, we should consider that section of the GFDL fullfilled if the third party 
user of our content provides a link back to the original Wikipedia article 
(which in turn will have prominent disclaimer links). I never really liked 
that part of the GNU FDL because it is another way to introduce what is in 
effect invariant sections into our good work here. 

IMO, invariant sections are evil and should never be allowed in any Wikimedia 
project. 

>2. What is the implications of the disclaimer to inter-lingual 
>or inter-project transfer of contents? Has there been any 
>discussion? 

Good question. But since all compilation copyrights go back to the Wikimedia 
Foundation (who is also the publisher), we may be able to use that as a way 
out. But this brings-up the point that the GNU FDL is in fact not ideal for a 
large set of wiki projects like Wikimedia that exchange text and translations 
(which are in fact derivative works!) back and forth rather freely. IMO, it 
would be absurd for us to follow the letter of the GNU FDL. So I guess we 
must follow its spirit by interpreting it liberally. 

>If "the whole wikipedia" or "all the wikimedia projects" are NOT the 
>one and single work as defined in GFDL, but instead independent 
>articles, images, and other files are the works, the following might 
>not be in compliance of  GFDL.
>
>*copyng a page from Wikipedia to Wiktionary/Wikisource without 
>preserving the disclaimer section when the page has a disclaimer which is 
different from Wiktionary/Wikisource's.
>*copying an image from one language Wikipedia to another without 
>preserving the disclaimer section.
>*chaniging the content of disclaimer section.

I think these are all legal for the reasons I gave above. But IANAL, so what 
do I really know. Alex, you reading? ;) 

>3. Would you say that we should develop disclaimer that is exactly 
>the same as en. which seems to be already in place? Or we should 
>develop disclaimer as we see fit and try to coordinate/combine with 
>other language-wikipedias' later in some ways?

My personal opinion is that you use the English one as a general guide, but 
mostly develop a disclaimer that you think works best and that does not say 
anything wrong or illegal. Ask this list if you are unsure about particular 
points. 

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)