Regarding the legal risk of violating GFDL (and thereby someone's copyright)
on en. Wikipedia:
American Wikipedians are reasonably safe, I suppose. I am not sure about
non-American en. Wikipedians, since that may entail implications on
international jurisdiction and choice of law.
Whenever we speak of legal risks associated with GFDL, we have to face the
issue that at least in English Wikipedia, there seems to be no official,
agreeed-upon interpretation of the GFDL (what is "work"? who are the
copyright holders? are images under GFDL? is Page history the history as in
GFDL? etc.)
But that aside, here are the defenses that I find quite significant:
1) We only need substantial, reasonable compliance rather than a strict,
literal compliance.
(http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikilegal-l/2003-November/000084.html
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User:Michael_Snow/Candidate_stat…)
2) One has to register his copyright work. Unless otherwise, he may not be
able to sue the violator in a Federal Court.
(http://meta.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Do_fair_use_images_violate_the…
* and
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikilegal-l/2004-February/000261.html)
* A sidenote - Although Alex's remark there is a bit agressive, the matter
is now solved between the involved parties, as I understand.
3) Coauthors of a work cannot sue each other regarding copyright violation.
(http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikilegal-l/2004-February/000261.html)
4) The moral rights are not protected under the U.S. copyright law much, so
that even if a lawsuit is brought up, there won't be much of a damage to be
found.
(http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2004-February/014275.html)
5) In addition, if Terms of Use becomes effective sometime in the future, as
proposed in the expanded version, it may prevent any lawsuit between two
Wikipedians. See the arbitration clause in the following page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Terms_of_use_(proposal)
All combined, it seems that current practice is reasonably safe for American
Wikipedians. Yet it seems quite possible, for example, a troll registers a
work and tries to sue someone who strip attribution from his contribution by
moving it to meta or a talk page from village pump.
Also, some features of the U.S. courts are said to be riskier or a bit
unpredictable in comparison to Japanese courts. (See:
http://article.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.legal/263)
And last, but not the least, I am not sure if it is okay to just say that we
should keep violating GFDL just because it cannot be held accountable in
court.
So again, it is better to have something like the PD license in palce even
from at this point, I am inclined to think.
(Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. And the citations I provided above are not
legal opinions, either.)
Best,
Tomos
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On the Internet, one must be constantly aware that discussions that
"feel" as if they are taking place in a club-like atmosphere of a few
dozen people are, actually, completely open to the public. (The
Pentagon does not need to log my USENET posts in any Total Information
Awareness program; Google News, and Deja News before it have already
done that!).
In Votes for Deletion, conversations are sometimes conducted as if they
were taking place behind a contributor's back, with the sillier items
being openly sneered at and ridiculed. A lot of these remarks are
actually witty, e.g. "Delete this before his vanity develops an event
horizon" or "Delete. Delete fast. Delete ruthlessly. (this has nothing
to do with the [actual content], but I can't stand it when people use
'principal' when they mean 'principle')"
Unlike a closed-door executive session, these frank discussions are not
only taking place in public, but the contributor has been
all-but-invited to them by the placement of the VfD notice. Moreover,
the contributor may not arrive until a number of remarks have
accumulated or may not choose to announce his presence immediately.
In the case of the "event horizon" remark, there was actually a nice
symmetry, because the subject of the article had a weblog, _linked from
the article,_ in which _he_ was making rude remarks about the people
who were trying to get his article deleted.
Although the edit submission page warns that contributions be "edited
mercilessly," I do not believe that it is clear to a newcomer that the
seemingly wide-open opportunity to add a page is coupled with the
possibility that the page will be deleted. (This has recently been
addressed by a paragraph on "notability" on the
Wikipedia:Tutorial_(Keep_in_mind) page). I am sure that there are many
people who semi-innocently think that an encyclopedia page with a
friend's bio is a pleasant and amusing gift—rather like having
the International Star Registry name a star for them, only it's free.
And I am sure there are many pushy self-promoters actively looking for
fresh walls on which to paste their posters who do not see any "Post No
Bills" notice. Trickiest of all, as with USENET, I sometimes see
submissions that give me the impression being of well-meaning efforts
from people whose social and/or communications skills are marginal.
In reality, discussions on VfD _need_ to be frank and often critical,
and having a page undergo the VfD process must be enormously
ego-bruising, and there is probably not a lot that can be done to
soften the process.
But, particularly in VfD, discussants should maintain an awareness that
the contributors whose items are being discussed are quite likely to be
newbies, and are quite likely to be _present_.
--
Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith(a)verizon.net alternate:
dpbsmith(a)alum.mit.edu
"Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print!
Sample chapter at http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html
Buy it at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/
Geoff Burling wrote (in reply to "Jim Kork"):
>Also, you made 3 reversions to the [[Kemal Atatuerk]] article within 24
hours,
>which -- even if you had an account -- would result in having your account
>blocked.
This is not true. Please take a look at [[Wikipedia:Wikipedia:How to revert
a page to an earlier version#Revert wars considered harmful (the three
revert guideline)]]. Basically, it's *more* than three times, not three
times, and the guideline is not enforced by a block (some people might like
it to be, but as things stand it isn't, and quite a few people are against
the idea). It used to be that reverting more than thrice could result in a
quickpoll to block, but this is rather controversial (see
[[Talk:Quickpolls]]), and hasn't been done in practice for over a month.
That's not to take away from the rest of your post, nor to legitimize Mr
Kork's actions in any way (I agree that blocking him in this case was
fine). I just wanted to comment on this one point because there's a lot of
misinformation about this "rule" floating about.
Regards
Lee (Camembert)
I agree; I shouldn't have said that, and I'll watch
myself in the future.
Meelar
> In Votes for Deletion, conversations are sometimes
> conducted as if they
> were taking place behind a contributor's back, with
> the sillier items
> being openly sneered at and ridiculed. A lot of
> these remarks are
> actually witty, e.g. "Delete this before his vanity
> develops an event
> horizon" or "Delete. Delete fast. Delete ruthlessly.
> (this has nothing
> to do with the [actual content], but I can't stand
> it when people use
> 'principal' when they mean 'principle')"
>
=====
"The difference between extra-marital sex and extra marital sex is not to be sneezed at."
--George Will, on hyphen use
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Angela wrote
"You have been blanking articles without explanation (Serdar Argic),"
No, I gave a reason, please check it out.
" removing facts from articles (Armenian Genocide) "
Nobody agrees on that subject, the facts are your own facts, and I didn't
remove it, I was trying to make it more unbiased, because that article is as
it is right now extremely biased political article with full of weird
attacks on the Turk side.
"and writing rude statements on other people's user pages
(User:PMelvilleAustin)"
Can you please tell me what it is, I didn't write any rude statement to
anybody.
"I'm not terribly surprised you were blocked."
I am not terribly suprised either, if you accuse me of removing "facts",
then I would assume you don't want me here either.
"If you are willing to contribute, I strongly advise you to read the
following policies first:"
I have already read them, and I am sad to see that you are using
disagreement as a vandalism excuse to block people from contributing.
">It would also be easier to people to communicate with
>you if you created an account"
Maybe, but that shouldn't be an excuse to block my ip.
"When controversy erupts, it is
>necessary to discuss it, and it is near
>impossible to do that with an IP. Either make an
>account or let it go."
This I don't get much, what matters is that what we write, not our names,
our user names and such. The discussion takes place in the discussion pages,
oh by the way, the person who blocked me accused me of being Serdar Argic
long before blocking me. Clearly we disagree on certain things, but I didn't
know that wikipedia admins can use this difference as an excuse to block
people whenever they like.
It is also interesting that, you only welcome anonymous users for
non-controversial stuff. For controversial articles, their voices do not
count? Please, it is what we write, not who we are.
Thanks
_________________________________________________________________
Learn to simplify your finances and your life in Streamline Your Life from
MSN Money. http://special.msn.com/money/0405streamline.armx
I've added a request to [[Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration]]. Is there
any step I'm supposed to take to bring it to the AC's attention further
than posting it there?
- d.
Hi,
my ip address has been blocked by user RickK. The reason was given as
"repeated vandalism".
I read your blocking policy carefully and it seems to me that this user is
either overreacting, or misusing his power assuming that I wouldn't
complain. If WikiPedia is truly a place for everybody to discuss and edit
pages responsibly I expect someone higher to correct this user's
irresponsible use of his power.
I will not post my ip address here, but it looks like the issue is related
with my edit on Ataturk's page and Serdar Argic's page so I believe you can
figure out my ip address from there. I tried to discuss the issue in both
cases, but people who are editing these pages simply do not want to discuss
with anonymous users!
Thanks
_________________________________________________________________
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Hello!
The German-language Wikipedia is more and more facing the same problems
as the English one. We seldom used to have more than one troll at a
time, but times they are changing, and we are a bit concerned about the
future. At the moment we have to deal with a very persistent troll and
another user who has been banned and keeps coming back. In addition to
that we have a few long enduring edit-wars. I think we have to create
new policies and develop processes to handle theses problems.
The English Wikipedia has much more experience in these things, good and
bad, and we would very much like to profit from that. It would be very
helpful if some of you could write a few paragraphs about your
experience with trolls, how you handle them, how you enforce a user ban,
and what your experience with the mediation and arbitration committees
is. We could adopt mechanisms that work and avoid mistakes you might
have already made.
I think the best thing would be to put you reports on meta, but I can't
make up a good name for the page at the moment. Of course you don't have
to write in German, most of us have no problem reading English, but
writing is a different matter. Thanks for your effort!
Kurt
P.S.: Any advice is welcome, but personally I'd be especially interested
in the opinion of Cunc and Ray about these issues.
--
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http://wikipedia.de -- Arbeite mit bei der freien Enzyklopädie!
Kurt Jansson, Wiener Str. 7, 10999 Berlin, http://jansson.de
> A) A ban of one month lasts ...
> B) a ban of ...
> C) Evading a ban is itself ...
To make it as clear as I can, since a couple of people have asked, A, B, and C are
different *possibilities* - different schools of thought - on what might be an appropriate
response. So yes, they are contradictory - which is why we have to choose A *or* B *or*
C. Cf [[wikipedia talk:banning policy]].
So no, we're not going to apply A, B, and C all at once. Just B, as far as I can tell,
unless anyone cares sufficiently to propose a change. Ok?
hth
-Martin
> In case you haven't noticed by now (and I don't see
> any replies here
> yet) it's all done now. The most visible new feature
> is the new
> MonoBook skin, though categorizations and revamped
> templates are also
> of note. Someone will post a URL with the details
> before long, I
> assume...
>
I just wanted to send out a huge thanks to everyone
who put time and effort into this. The new servers
are humming along, the place looks great, and I'm
already drooling over the uses I can think of for
categories. Thanks, all. It was even worth the
cold-turkey approach to locking the database.
Meelar
=====
"The difference between extra-marital sex and extra marital sex is not to be sneezed at."
--George Will, on hyphen use
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