Gregory Maxwell wrote in gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.misc:
It would appear that we are breaking the law with respect to copyright at download.wikimedia.org.
this is not particular to downloads, but applies to any place that old revisions are available, including the web interface.
This is a result of our policy about the insertion of copyrighted material into articles:
[[Wikipedia:Copyright problems#Instructions]] "Pages where the most recent edit is a copyright violation, but the previous article was not, should not be deleted. They should be reverted. The violating text will remain in the page history for archival reasons unless the copyright holder asks the Wikimedia Foundation to remove it."
does this policy apply everywhere or only en.wp?
As a result our database contains large quantities of violating material.
my understand of the relevant US law is that we are not required to aggressively remove copyright violations until requested by the copyright holder.
kate.