To Whom It May Concern:
My name is Brian McNeil, I am a bureaucrat and accredited reporter on
Wikipedia's sister project, Wikinews (
http://en.wikinews.org
<http://en.wikinews.org/> ). I am investigating allegations that have been
raised on Wikipedia that material has been copied from Wikipedia in your
publication.
The allegations center around the obituary for author James Crumley, the
online version of this is at
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/3062745/James-Crumley.html. The
current version of the Wikipedia article is located at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Crumley. This has undergone some revision
since Crumley's death, but some word-for-word identical sections remain.
While I wait on those who have made the allegations providing further
information I would greatly appreciate knowing who was responsible for the
Telegraph obituary, and what the paper's stance on such issues is.
While the term plagiarism has been bandied about in the discussion on
Wikipedia, it is more technically accurate - if true - to describe this as
an infringement of the license under which Wikipedia content is provided.
The license is the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL - linked to from the
foot of every Wikipedia page). The terms of this license are relatively
liberal in what reuse is permitted, but there is a "viral" clause to ensure
that those who profit from the material share their works. The upshot of
this would be that and work substantially derived from a GFDL article must
also be made available under such a license.
I look forward to your response on this matter, as I hope you appreciate
this is relatively urgent to maintain the timeliness of the news.
Regards,
Brian McNeil
Wikinews Bureaucrat & Accredited Reporter
Email: Brian.McNeil(a)wikinewsie.org