On Nov 13, 2007 12:03 PM, Oldak Quill oldakquill@gmail.com wrote:
On 13/11/2007, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
Up on slashdot: http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/11/13/0356203
Referencing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ydorb/khobar-copyvio
On first glance, the claim appears valid; User Ydorb wrote the material
in
question before the book came out, there's a clear copying of the
material,
etc.
Ydorb says he's public-domained most of his contributions, but rightly points out that other WP contributors were involved in the apparently plagarized version, and that the WP GFDL sharing license would require attribution anyways.
A users contributions may be PD, but the article is GFDL and the passage is GFDL (based on the fact that other users edited it prior to the copy who didn't release their contributions into the PD).
I'm not sure the legality of the copy is the main issue. Did the writer at least reference the Wikipedia article or it's editors?
-- Oldak Quill (oldakquill@gmail.com)
There's no sign that I can find, but that's with searching the Amazon online exerpts.
I don't have the full book to doublecheck what its references listing was.