[Wikipedia-l] Concern related to copyright problem handling

[Andre Engels]

I disagree with this. Do you really intend to allow that if you add
something to an article that has later found to have a bit of text
that is copyrighted, your text should be removed because it 'could be
derived from the copyrighted work'? But what then with using a source?
That 'could be derived' too. Wikipedia is very pro-active when there
are copyright violations, and I think rightfully so. But to delete
non-violating pieces of texts because they appear in one article with
violating pieces is a level of destruction that even as a rather
strong deletionist I find abhorrent.

Now, if I were to *change* a paragraph that later appeared to be a
copyright violation, that's another issue. But adding something
separate or changing another part of the article are changes I don't
think should be undone. We might as well rollback the whole Wikipedia
(what if we consider Wikipedia as a single work, then it is derived
too, right?)

Andre Engels


On Thu, 17 Mar 2005 23:25:23 -0500, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> I am concerned that the current handling of copyright problems on
> wikipedia may be insufficient.  As it stands, after detection the
> offending text is completely removed.
> 
> Unfortunately, if there has been a long time span since the insertion
> of the infringing text there may have been a substantial number of
> valuable contributions to the article. With the way that  most content
> grows organically over time, it may be very difficult to say if the
> new text would have been created without the infringing text with any
> certainty.
> 
> In the United States the recent tendency in court appears to be to
> favor the most expansive definition of a derived work possible.
> Because of this, I suspect that it would be likely that at least some
> of the contributions made to an article after the insertion of
> infringing text would be found by a US court to be derived, thus
> placing their ownership in question.  This interpretation of derived
> isn't necessitated by current international treaty, and would likely
> be different (and possibly more sane) in other locations, but I
> suspect that US legality is a substantial concern.
> 
> Determining if a piece of text is derived from another, at least in
> the over broad sense favored by US courts, is an intractable problem,
> but the policy could do a better job of avoiding these concerns.
> Reverting to the point where a substantial amount of infringing text
> was added, and deleting *all* modifications after that point would be
> much more certain to avoid impinging on the intellectual property
> rights of others.
> 
> The cost of destroyed improvements might be mitigated by the benefit
> of creating a greater incentive for frequently contributors to quickly
> catch and remove violating text.
> 
> Of course, none of this is legal advice...
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