FDL attribution by reference was Re: [Wikipedia-l] FDL used to stifle distribution of articles

From: "Erik Moeller" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>

> A user of the German Wikipedia, Ulrich Fuchs, has threatened to take legal
> action against any third party who makes commercial use of their material
> without following a very narrow interpretation of the FDL "five author"
> requirement, which reads as follows:

Who is the "they" that Ulrich Fuchs is talking about. Certainly he can only
take legal action against anyone who uses his articles, but he is not
authorized
by Wikipedians to sue for them, is he?

> Our recommendation for third parties using Wikipedia material so far has
> been that it is completely sufficient in the spirit of the FDL to point to
> the original Wikipedia article on which the copy is based, because that
> page contains the history and therefore the list of *all* authors. Ulrich
> claims that this is not sufficient because it does not meet the conditions
> of modification set forth in the FDL.

Something like a separate link to the page history that says something
like Look [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki/pagehistory... here] to see the
names of the authors of this article.

> This is not just theoretical. There is a new commercial German project
> called "Flexicon" which uses Wikipedia material. Currently they don't give
> any credit whatsoever, but since Flexicon itself is a wiki, some
> Wikipedians have added links to the original Wikipedia articles in order
> to meet the conditions of the FDL. Ulrich now threatens anyone with legal
> action who copies material to Flexicon from the German Wikipedia which he
> has worked on without having the unworkable "list of five principal
> authors" on the target page.
>
> This would place an unacceptable burden on third parties as they would
> have to carry along the complete history of every page thtey use (since
> there is no automated way to determine who is a principal author),

I agree. This makes sense.

 <..snip..>


> In my opinion, legal threats like these are dangerous to this project and
> to the very idea of open content. They also show once again that the FDL
> is a fundamentally flawed, overly complex license with lots of loopholes
> for pedants who want to get their way instead of working with the
> community.

Any member can threaten legal action in their own name, but how do they
say they can do

> There may be a solution to prevent this problem from escalating. We could
> amend the edit notice on Wikipedia to require the author to release third
> parties from the need to maintain a list of five "principal authors" per
> page, since such a release is explicitly provided for in the FDL..

I don't think that would work. Why? Because it clearly says that you cannot
alter the FDL and that any attempt to alter it is null and void as it states
in
the license: (ver. 1.2):

"9. TERMINATION
You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Document except as
expressly provided for under this License. Any other attempt to copy,
modify,
sublicense or distribute the Document is void, and will automatically
terminate
your rights under this License. However, parties who have received copies,
or rights, from you under this License will not have their licenses
terminated
so long as such parties remain in full compliance."

Usually people who are stating that you must "strictly" comply are wrong.
Under US common law, generally speaking,  the interpretation of legal texts
is waht is "reasonable". Thus usually (but not necessarily always) a judge
would listen to an argument that one is acting in the "spirit of the law,"
even
if it appears that one is not following the "letter of the law". In this
case I
would argue that the spirit of the law is to provide a link to the authors,
because on a wiki the number of authors of a page can be a prohibitively
long list, thus a reference to the list of authors should satisfy the GFDL.
It would be interesting to see someone litigate this, but I doubt that they
would prevail over the above argument.

Alex756