Talk:Sample image copyright case

commercial exploitation of Wikipedia

I agree that it can be infuriating to create something and have the desire to freely share it and then have to watch someone else take what you have created and sell it for profit. I think part of the source of this problem is that the word "free" in "GNU Free Documentation License"(GFDL) has two distinct but related meanings. The way "free" is used in the GFDL is clearly spelled out right at the start (PREAMBLE):

"free" in the sense of freedom: to assure everyone the effective freedom to copy and redistribute it, with or without modifying it, either commercially or noncommercially.

Thus, while contributors to Wikipedia get no payment for the effort involved in their contributions to the project, ANYONE can take that contribution and sell it. However, there are some serious restrictions on how the contents of the Wikipedia can be commercially distributed. These restrictions are also spelled out in the GFDL.

Of particular relevance is that anyone selling material that came from Wikipedia MUST show the origin of that material. That means that anyone who buys it can notice, "Gee, there is a Free Internet Encyclopedia called Wikipedia that was the original source of what I paid for.....I'm going to check that out." The customer of the commercialized Wikipedia derivative then explores Wikipedia and through the wonders of Google search soon finds the part of Wikipedia that was the source of the material that they spent money on in order to purchase. The customer compares what they bought to what is available directly from Wikipedia. The customer decides if they got a good deal in the marketplace.

The original contributor of material to Wikipedia can limit the commercial use of their work by making the contents of Wikipedia so GREAT that everyone in the world will know that Wikipedia exists AND that it is a waste of time to PAY SOMEONE for what can be had at low cost directly from Wikipedia. JWSurf 13:56, 12 Apr 2004 (UTC)

What's the meaning of this page?

I can not understand what is the point advocated in this page.

I can understand that the author wants to point out that licenseing a document under GFDL do not prevent other people to aggregate it with other documents that are not free-licensed so that the whole result is not free-licensed. But it is not so much clear if this is a bug or a feature.

But what I can not understand is what the author is suggesting here. To put it in public domain? If the document were been put in public domain the exactly same "nasty" thing could be happened to the documents. Or what the author want to say is just that GFDL do not give any more protection than public domain or BSD-style licence?

If it is true that, in the example described, Bob/Charlie/Daniel/Ethan can not use the whole document by Mallory it is true that they can use the Alice document.

Now consider, compared to the original scenario, any of the following alternative scenarios, beside the existence of the document by Alice in GFDL: a) Mallory does not exist at all - or there are not any people wanting to improve the Alice document. b) Mallory want to write a document about frog and does that without using the Alice's document and giving it a commercial license. c) Mallory is forced (by any ways not considered here) to only two option, not to write anything or to write a GFDL only document, and choose not to write anything. In all this scenarios the Alice's document is the only usable document by Bob/Charlie/Daniel/Ethan, but his is true also in the original scenario. Anyone who is able to get the Alice's document is able to use it and this is still true both in the original scenario and in scenario described above.

In any of these scenarios and in the original scenario the four freedom cited are still in existence on the Alice's document.

Moreover in the original scenario the Alice's document is also freely available under the GFDL licence by extracting from the Mallory aggregation of documents (if this is possible).

Now is possible to do what I have said in the previous sentence? It was written

text is still free... well, Mallory has a text to image converter, so rest assured that if he adds any text to Alice's guide, you won't be able to use that either. Have a nice day.

Well first of all it should be clear if this would be possible and permitted by GFDL. Then, if that is allowed, we should know if doing in this way Mallory can still claim that it is just an aggregation. And a crucial point. The Alice's document is just incorporate so it is still under GFDL, so the people who distribute it (I am considering the distribution by Mallory only here) are required (except in some cases) a machine readable source of the text.

-- AnyFile 09:47, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Facebook Community Pages

It would seem this scenario is highly applicable to the new Facebook "community' Pages. Wwwhatsup 06:21, 25 June 2010 (UTC)