Wikipedia: Copyrights & Copyleft

Earlier in class we discussed the question of whether Wikipedia copyrights texts and illustrations contained in the free encyclopedia. The short answer is that no, they do not literally file a copyright, although they grant free access under the principle of copyleft. This means that Wikipedia articles therefore will remain free, and content can be copied, modified, and redistributed as long as the new version grants the same freedom to others and acknowledges the source. Authors cannot retract material, and their words and illustrations are in the public domain. This essentially means that nobody can profit from repackaging, excerpting selected articles, publishing books from selected articles, etc. The Wikipedia encyclopedia also details that under the Berne Convention, articles are automatically copyrighted and licensed to the public under the GNU Free Distribution License. Earlier I blogged about free textbooks, accessible on the Internet. After some research, I learned that they also follow this GNU Free Distribution License (GFDL).