On 2005-12-30 19:12, Orna Agmon wrote: > Wallapedia http://pedia.walla.co.il/ has taken a snapshot of Wikipedia > content (which is under the GFDL) and is presenting it on its site. The > wikipedia pages are presented with the footer "Copyright 2004 walla! All > rights reserved" in addition to the GFDL.
Legally that's fine. Walla indeed has the copyright for some elements of the page (e.g., the formatting markup); and they do distribute it under the GFDL. However, at the bottom of the page they also have a link to "תנאי השימוש באתר" (http://friends.walla.co.il/ts.cgi?tsscript=disclaimer), which are not GFDL-compliant. That's a clear GFDL violation. They are also in violation of Section 3 ("Copying in Quantity") since they do not provide the transparent version (editable Wiki source) of the articles. If anyone arranges a legal approach, you may count me in as a (currently pseudonymous) copyright holder. > wallapedia does not present author credits, which is in violation of the GFDL. That part is far from clear, alas. Under Section 4 of the GFDL (Modification) they must list the original authors, and also preserve the warranty disclaimers; they do neither. But Walla can claim to have used the Document under Section 2 (Verbatim Copying), and if "Document" is taken to be just the article text per se then they would be in compliance this section. [1] The problem is that the GFDL and Wikipedia don't define the scope of the "Document". Is it each paragraph by itself, or the article text, or the full article page, or the article page and its associated History and Talk pages, or maybe the whole site? The definition of "Document" in the GFDL ("any [...] manual or work [that] contains a notice placed by the copyright holder saying it can be distributed under the terms of this License") sheds little light on this question. [2] The omission of a useful definition of "Document" and "Modified work" is a serious issue and greatly weakens the ability to enforce the GFDL on Wikipedia material. It may not have been much of an issue for regular books (for which, clearly, the GFDL was designed), but it's surprising to see such gaping holes in a license drafted just 3 years ago. In the unlikely case that this wasn't discussed before, maybe it should be brought up in the relevant Wikipedia cabals. BTW, does this have anything to do with Hamakor? Eran [1] Actually under Israeli law Walla may still have to provide author information due to the "moral right" requirements, but this is weakened by permission for verbatim copying of a "Document" that itself contains no authorship information; it's also country-specific. [2] You can claim that the smallest Wikipedia unit which literally "contains a notice" is the full article page, including its formatting and footer. This may be technically correct, but far from being sufficiently clear and obvious to guarantee successful enforcement. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
