On Fri, 06 Apr 2007 07:26:50 -0500, Rich Holton richholton@gmail.com wrote:
Here is where I see the crux of the issue in this thread: you are not interested in keeping the information in question. You do not value it. You are willing to eliminate it at request (which is all that their reply could possibly be seen as).
And you are wrong in your assertion. I am interested in the article subject, I just don't think we may or should include the list in its entirety.
Yes, I am prepared to eliminate it on request. I am prepared to eliminate *any* asserted copyright on request, and allow it back in only when it is established that it does not violate copyright. We get a steady trickle of complaints of copyright violation, and we generally *do* remove them.
Wikipedia/Wikimedia was established (and I hope continues to exist) to make information freely available. Caving in to unreasonable claims of copyright is not the way to do that.
You are, I think, confusing free-as-in-beer with free-as-in-speech. We are not allowed to include content that violates other people's copyright, and this is not in any way seen as incompatible with Wikipedia's mission. The subject of the Cool Wall can be discussed perfectly satisfactorily without including the list, just as we can discuss popular songs without including mp3s or lyrics of the songs.
In fact, that is probably a good example: a song is part of an album, as the Cool Wall is part of Top Gear; the song is published in the form of a performance; the lyrics are in some cases transcribed by fans; it is generally accepted that these lyrics are copyright. Not only do we not allow them to be included, we don't even allow links to them unless on the official site of the band.
Removing unfree content has never been incompatible with Wikipedia's mission to make information freely available. We do it all the time.
Note that I'm not saying that their claim would be unreasonable--I am not an expert in copyright law. But your position is that their mere request should result in our removing the information, when the question of whether this is a copyright violation is still very much in question.
Yes. The request of any rights owner should always be respected, even if that respect takes the form of removing the content, debating, proving that the claim to rights is invalid, and re-inserting. Someone is right now claiming that some material in [[KRISTI snowcat]] violates his copyright. After taking advice from Brad, I removed some and left other facts in with {{fact}} tags.
Guy (JzG)