On Sat, 19 Mar 2005 17:40:27 -0700, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
I don't believe we're referring to existing articles to which copyrighted text is added, but rather articles that were 100% copyvio but which are edited and thus become "derived works".
Well that was the issue that I brought up, existing articles where a substantial amount of copyvio text is added.
Consider an entirely new section, all copyvio. I think it's unlikely that additions, even fairly substantial ones in that section could be considered anything but derived works.
It becomes difficult to judge which edits are derived works, ultimately you can't tell without a court opinion ... and since we'd rather not go there, I contend that the only sure course of action would be destroy all updates to an article past the point in time a copyvio was added.
That might not be the best thing to do, but I think it's important to discuss the risks of doing anything less.
Just like those running the big content distribution houses are attempting to stop the all use of p2p applications because even completely legal p2p use puts their business model at risk, wikipedia will likely find itself threatened by content hoarders whom we are outcompeating.