Delirium wrote: [...]
At this time they may inform us of the copyright violation, and ask us to remove the offending material. Doing so from the website is trivial, but it would also force us to stop distributing Wikipedia 1.0 until a modified version without the copyright violation has been prepared. This could be disastrous for attempts to produce a paper or CD-ROM version, as any inventory copies have to be destroyed and a new print run prepared. If we got, say, three copyright violation notices spaced a month or so apart, it would effectively make it impossible to distribute Wikipedia in such a form, since the costs of starting a new print run each time would become prohibitive.
Every new computer today has a CD-burner, and when 1.0 is ready for distribution every computer will have a DVD-burner. We just have to produce some ISO-images and a handbook in PDF ready for print (and some nice artwork with a "handicraft work guide" (?) for those people who want "paperboard boxes" (?)).
People can make as many copies for their friends as they like. We can distribute the process of sending copies to universities or libraries (like theopencd.org did) among Wikipedians, especially in developing countries. No need to order huge amounts from the "press shop" (?).
BTW, I find all this talk about a paper Wikipedia completely useless (sorry if someone feels offended). It's (much!) too much work, too risky and I don't see a necessity for it. Can't we talk about this again in five or ten years when the DVD-version has stabilised and we are sure that our 50.000 most important articles (and pictures!) have no copyright violation in them? Book-on-demand production might also be a bit cheaper than today.
Just my two WikiCent. Kurt
P.S.: Sorry if I choose some strange word constructions :-)