[Wikipedia-l] Re: Copyright violations at download.wikimedia.org

[Roger Luethi]

On Mon, 30 May 2005 09:02:12 +1000, David Gerard wrote:
> Our proactive approach, though, does stand us in good stead should we ever
> end up in a courtroom. Generally the copyvio page is *rabid* and that's
> good. Even if on many occasions the author of a given text has to point out
> they're the editor that added it to Wikipedia ;-)

Based on my experience in patrolling WP.en I think you are a tad
over-optimistic. What you see on WP:CP may only be the tip of the
iceberg.

I find plenty of copyvios that are several days old, and I've had to
undo the work of weeks or months because some people just copy and
paste stuff from other web sites (no, not WP mirrors) without being
caught. That is a very unpleasant experience for everyone involved,
especially if other editors kept working on the text in good faith.

The longer a copyvio remains unchallenged, the harder it becomes to
catch it after several copyedits changed bits and pieces of it. That
doesn't fix the copyvio, though. I had a case just yesterday where
my reverting a copyvio was reverted again, and editors started
"refactoring" the text to "mitigate" the problem.

<rant>
Some comments on [[m:Avoid Copyright Paranoia]] ain't exactly helping.
</rant>

Roger