Karl A. Krueger wrote:
On Thu, Jul 21, 2005 at 08:32:16AM -0700, Matt Brown wrote:
On 7/20/05, Geoff Burling llywrch@agora.rdrop.com wrote:
As I pointed out in another email, adding plagiarised content to Wikipedia can be understood as taking written material someone owns & releases it under the GFDL or Creative Commons without first consulting the author or owner.
I think you are confusing copyright infringement with plagiarism. We already have policies against copyright infringement, and enforce them fairly strictly. I think the rest of us were talking about the kind of plagiarism that did not involve copyright infringement.
This distinction is crucial. Plagiarism doesn't always involve copyright infringement, or any other legal offense. It's perfectly possible to plagiarize from the public domain: for instance, if I print up _Huckleberry Finn_ with my name on it instead of Mark Twain's, I'm not infringing copyright, but I'm certainly plagiarizing. Plagiarism is chiefly a matter of dishonesty or misrepresentation: purporting that something is one's own work when in fact it is not.
There's always 506 (c):
(c) Fraudulent Copyright Notice. - Any person who, with fraudulent intent, places on any article a notice of copyright or words of the same purport that such person knows to be false, or who, with fraudulent intent, publicly distributes or imports for public distribution any article bearing such notice or words that such person knows to be false, shall be fined not more than $2,500.
I don't know if there have been any cases under that section.
A case of copyright infringement doesn't become a non-infringing use when you cite your sources -- except in the edge case of certain copyright licenses which permit copying only if you cite the source. However, a case of plagiarism *almost always* becomes non-plagiarism if you cite your sources correctly: giving Mark Twain credit for his work.
Giving credit is a matter of moral rights, which in some cases extend longer than copyrights. Courts are not always well equipped to deal with infringements of moral rights except with the heavy hand of criminal law. Courts can more easily reduce offences into monetary terms. There is nobody around with the personal standing to uphold Shakespeare's moral rights in a civil court.
Ec