On Sun, 20 Mar 2005 19:04:42 +0100, Jean-Baptiste Soufron jbsoufron@free.fr wrote:
But when do we say someone can claim that? When they are next to each other? When they are in the same article? When they are both in Wikipedia? When they are both on the Internet?
Don't troll.
Someone can claim for the copyright when they are in the same article. That's enough for us to worry and to define a precise policy.
Right. We're not worrying about some ignorant policy compiler in the sky.... The concern is convincing a court of law (i.e. a human or a few humans) in a climate where increasingly copyright is being regarded as a very expansive, and infectious, natural right.
You couldn't convince a court that the entirety of wikipedia was derived from some text in a Nintendo article, but given a substantial enough copyvio contribution you could easily argue that most of the after-the-fact edits were derived and thus the article is tainted. The space of possibilities where it might be decided either way is huge, so the decision would be difficult to make with a programmatic policy.
So we have two choices, wait for injunction or the criminal charges (copyright violation is now a criminal matter :( ) and make the argument in court, arguing fine points that have never been tested before (how many generations of changes and replacements are needed to untaint derived text, is any number sufficient), in a court which is likely unfavorable due to the political climate, and potential lose years of contributions if we lose the battle. Basically taking a huge bet that wikipedia will be large enough to generate a large enough public out-cry on the matter to influence the political situation...
or..
We revert to the post copyvio state in any nontrivial state, lose a little work, and as a side result encourage more people to be diligent about finding copyvios sooner rather than later. Indirectly reminding everyone of the costs of our current copyright environment, which will hopefully drive lobbying for an improvement.
Both of these are valid options, but I think we should understand which one the project is taking so that we are prepared for the repercussions.
The copyright climate today is a huge burden on our increasingly information drive society, we can pay the price every edit, or we can roll the dice and pay it all at once, but it will be paid unless the laws are changed.
If everyone takes the bet that the laws will change, there will be little direct incentive for anyone to go and change them.