Re: Wikipedia: one document or many? was Re:[Wikipedia-l] FDL used to stifledistribution of articles

From: "Andre Engels" <[email protected]>
To: "The Cunctator" <[email protected]>
Cc: <[email protected]>
Sent: Monday, December 01, 2003 5:34 AM
Subject: RE: [Wikilegal-l] Wikipedia: one document or many? was
Re:[Wikipedia-l] FDL used to stifledistribution of articles


> On Sun, 30 Nov 2003, The Cunctator wrote:
>
> > How is the former interpretation harder for redistributors? Us saying
> > the entire Wikipedia site is one Document doesn't mean that we're
> > insisting that redistributor's entire websites are one Document.
> >
> > I guess the difference is that if single pages are "The Document" then
> > redistribution is covered by 2. VERBATIM COPYING and not 5. MODIFIED
> > DOCUMENTS.
> >
> > We have a basic problem, which is that Wikipedia is missing a copyright
> > notice, which makes it impossible for redistributors to follow the
> > letter of the GFDL, among other things.
>
> It would not be hard to add such a copyright notice, would it? So why not
> do it? Just state the copyright holder as "various Wikipedia contributors"
> rather than anything more specific, and add it to the bottom text where we
> refer to the GNU/FDL.

There is no need to add a copyright notice. We already know that all the
articles
are copyrighted by all the Wikipedia contributors, though adding such a
notice
does not in anyway interfere with any copyright holder's rights and could be
seen as a way to avoid innocent infringement.  I would style the notice
thus:

"Copyright held by contributing authors unless otherwise noted."

Alex756