[Wikipedia-l] "Copyright violation" question (just the opposite of what you think)

[Daniel Mayer]

I just had an interesting experience with an apparent copyright violation. 

The text in [[Marina Tsvetaeva]] is very similar and in many cases exactly 
the same as text in an external website. One user deleted the text in the 
article citing a copyright violation on our end. Even though I saw obvious 
similarities between our version and theirs I wasn't so sure /we/ were the 
ones who violated copyright because the article existed in pretty much the 
same form since before the move from the UseMod wikiware back in February. 

My suspicion that we in fact were not violating any copyright was confirmed 
when user:sjc claimed authorship and stated that the text had been in the 
public domain for 12 years. 

I am not sure if the external website used the public domain version by sjc 
or one of our earlier versions, but as Wikipedia grows we will increasingly 
find apparent copyright violations on our end that are in fact just the 
opposite: other websites taking our text and using it in a way that is not 
compatible with our license (there is also the issue of public domain text 
too.... Remember, cite your sources!). 

What should we do in such cases? Furthermore, should we make a rule that if a 
Wikipedia article "fails" the Google test AND is over a set number of weeks 
old, then we should give the original contributor the benefit of the doubt 
and /not/ delete the text? 

We almost lost a great article on Marina Tsvetaeva and I don't want to lose 
any others due to this type of mixup. 

--mav