Don't just delete the article. Keep it with the requested attribution until it can be rewritten. We don't want to destroy the evidence of the Wikipedia complying with such requests. It'll be useful for establishing a pattern of compliance in any future defence.
The history is not a great concern. It's not intended to be part of the publication. Only the current Wikipedia page has that intent and that will remain true so long as search engines don't index the history pages. Something which isn't intended for publication and is documenting compliance with a legal notice is unlikely to be copyright infringement.
The request has now been honored so it's time to reply to the author saying something along the lines of:
"Sorry about that. We've added the credit you requested.
Unfortunately, we will have to rewrite the article to remove your work. Our fundamental objective is to create an encyclopedia all or part of which can be used for any commercial or non-comercial purpose. Part of means that someone could edit out the credit to you. To do this we use the GFDL license (link to it).
If you feel that you are willing to license this part of your work under the GFDL, accepting the way it works, please let us know. If not, please once again accept our apologies for the inconvenience and check back in a week to ensure that the revised version doesn't infringe your rights in any way, assuming that someone removes the credit to you. If it does, please let us know what further changes are needed.
We have a page at http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_military_ranks which is an index to many descriptions of ranks. We'd appreciate it if you could review any of those which may infringe your rights and let us know if any do, so that we can carry out the same process on any of them which require it.
We keep records of past versions of our articles, which aren't part of the normal publication but are available to those who specifically request them. You can see the history of this article at http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Commodore_(rank)&action=hist... and one of the older versions at http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Commodore_(rank)&diff=0&... . While we prefer to keep those for our records, so we can demonstrate compliance with your request, please let us know if you would like us to make it impossible for those working on building the Wikipedia to see those working documents.
Finally, if you wish to revise the article to meet your requirements, you can do so yourself at any time by clicking on the edit link at the top of that or any other Wikipedia page which has an edit link. Please note that any revised version will be released under the GFDL, so take care not to include any material which you don't want released under that license. Anyone can do this at any time, not just you, so to assist others, please include a note inside <-- and --> saying that you're the original author, giving the source page and stating that you've removed it as a copyright violation. This will help us to know that it was a deliberate change rather than one of the occasional cases of someone exploiting our open process to vandalise a page. Yes, we really do let anyone change almost any page at any time."
That addresses his likely concerns, while giving the Wikipedia as much chance as possible of keeping all useful content. And he just might like the concept and decide to produce a few pages himself...
user_Jamesday wrote:
Don't just delete the article. Keep it with the requested attribution until it can be rewritten. We don't want to destroy the evidence of the Wikipedia complying with such requests. It'll be useful for establishing a pattern of compliance in any future defence.
The mailing list archives serve that purpose well enough. It's better to just delete it, because in the future someone might peruse the history and think "Oh, look, this article used to say thus-and-so, and now it doesn't, so I'll revive it."
On Sat, 4 Oct 2003 13:52:41 -0700, Jimmy Wales jwales@joey.bomis.com gave utterance to the following:
user_Jamesday wrote:
Don't just delete the article. Keep it with the requested attribution until it can be rewritten. We don't want to destroy the evidence of the Wikipedia complying with such requests. It'll be useful for establishing a pattern of compliance in any future defence.
The mailing list archives serve that purpose well enough. It's better to just delete it, because in the future someone might peruse the history and think "Oh, look, this article used to say thus-and-so, and now it doesn't, so I'll revive it."
Hopefully they won't if the history shows the comment "article removed at copyright owner's request"
From: "user_Jamesday" user_Jamesday@myrealbox.com ...
The history is not a great concern. It's not intended to be part of the publication. Only the current Wikipedia page has that intent and that will remain true so long as search engines don't index the history pages. Something which isn't intended for publication and is documenting compliance with a legal notice is unlikely to be copyright infringement.
Have you read the lively debate between Brian Vibber and myself regarding the above? I was arguing devil's advocate the above position (it came out of a discussion about the GFDL status of Wikilists, I think it was on the general Wikipedia-L discussion list) and I think Brian put up a very good fight for the position that all history pages are released under the GFDL and thus anyone has the right to use them even after they become "outdated" like legacy software releases. The mantra around here is once GFDL always GFDL. Perhaps that is true. If it is, probably better to delete, but even deletion does not matter because some downstream licensee/licensor has probably already adapted it. . Since we can't know for sure that rationale is:" probably" better to delete "potential" copyright infringements.
I say "probably" and "potential" because there is also the argument that could be used that the edit history pages are an archive that allows for infringement of sorts as fair use in an archive is usually honoured to a high degree and Title 17 USC sec. 108 allows archives to maintain copies of otherwise copyrighted material, and sec. 107 would also operate in such a situation. Is such material available under GFDL? Probably not, but once it gets into the archive (i.e. it is a page history URL not a live Wikipedia page url) then there are probably no damages or no infringement or both, page histories are rarely viewed and if they are relicensed under the GFDL it is such licensor/licensee who must deal with the problem, not Wikpedia, there is no Wikipedia warranty included with the license (in fact Wikipedia is not the author of any article on Wikipedia, it is a coauthorship copyright owned by all contributors to that page). I feel that these later statements are the best arguments to look at regarding history pages, not the GFDL or the copyright infringement out of publication arguments. So following this lastline of argumentation to its natural conclusion nothing needs to be done until someone comes to a different conclusion that is consensus.
Alex756
--- "Alex R." alex756@nyc.rr.com wrote:
I say "probably" and "potential" because there is also the argument that could be used that the edit history pages are an archive that allows for infringement of sorts as fair use in an archive is usually honoured to a high degree and Title 17 USC sec. 108 allows archives to maintain copies of otherwise copyrighted material, and sec. 107 would also operate in such a situation.
Got boilerplate?
~S~
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From: "Stevertigo" utilitymuffinresearch2@yahoo.com
I say "probably" and "potential" because there is also the argument that could be used that the edit history pages are an archive that allows for infringement of sorts as fair use in an archive is usually honoured to a high degree and Title 17 USC sec. 108 allows archives to maintain copies of otherwise copyrighted material, and sec. 107 would also operate in such a situation.
Got boilerplate?
Check the photocopy machine in any public library in the USA.
Here is one that is used by the U of Mass: http://www.lib.umassd.edu/SPpages/copy.html If need be it can be adapted to be posted on the page histories if consensus so decrees.
Alex756