On the English Wikipedia we play by the "better safe than sorry" rule: if an article appears to be a copyright violation, we remove it. Then, we say why the article was removed on a Talk page, and ask the contributer to clarify whetheror not the article was a violation of copyright. Usually an email to Larry will serve as "proof" that a copyright holder is releasing his materialfor use on Wikipedia.
- Stephen Gilbert
PS - Actually, I think your English is rather good. :)
On 16 Nov 01, at 7:46, wikipedia-l-request@nupedia.com wrote:
Message: 12 From: "Kurt Jansson" jansson@gmx.net To: wikipedia-l@nupedia.com Date: Fri, 16 Nov 2001 16:36:57 +0100 Subject: [Wikipedia-l] another copyright issue Reply-To: wikipedia-l@nupedia.com
Hello wikipeople!
How can we ever be sure, that those people who (often anonymously) write new articles for wikipedia didn't just copy'n'paste it from another site?
I think we can't.
Take for example http://de.wikipedia.com/wiki.cgi?Gopher http://www.uni-stuttgart.de/rus/42/internet/gopher.html and chapter 2.6 here: http://www.fitug.de/bildung/allgem/inetein2.html
Is it all from the same author? Or is the wikipedia article just a ('stolen') copy? Or the copy of a revised (but 'stolen') copy? Or is the source under the GNU Free Documentation License?
How can we be sure about that?
I think nobody wants that just authors with prooved identities (who are responsible for their writing) are allowed to contribute to wikipedia.
But are we on the save side if we just close our eyes and wait for people to come and force us to delete articles that many people have put much work in, but that are based on their text?
Sorry for my bad English, I'm German. If you don't understand what I'm talking about I'll try my best to make it clearer.
Bye, Kurt