Roger Luethi wrote:
On Mon, 30 May 2005 09:02:12 +1000, David Gerard wrote:
Our proactive approach, though, does stand us in good stead should we ever end up in a courtroom. Generally the copyvio page is *rabid* and that's good. Even if on many occasions the author of a given text has to point out they're the editor that added it to Wikipedia ;-)
Based on my experience in patrolling WP.en I think you are a tad over-optimistic. What you see on WP:CP may only be the tip of the iceberg.
I find plenty of copyvios that are several days old, and I've had to undo the work of weeks or months because some people just copy and paste stuff from other web sites (no, not WP mirrors) without being caught. That is a very unpleasant experience for everyone involved, especially if other editors kept working on the text in good faith.
The longer a copyvio remains unchallenged, the harder it becomes to catch it after several copyedits changed bits and pieces of it. That doesn't fix the copyvio, though. I had a case just yesterday where my reverting a copyvio was reverted again, and editors started "refactoring" the text to "mitigate" the problem.
Refactoring may completely remove the problem, not just mitigate it. Copyright applies to the way something is expressed, and not to what is expressed. So what's the difference between a copyvio text that has been refactored, and the same refactored text being added from the bbeginning?
Some comments on [[m:Avoid Copyright Paranoia]] ain't exactly helping.
But the fundamental idea there is still an excellent rule of thumb.
Ec