Ray Saintonge wrote:
I think I may
have edited some articles that *previously* contained
copyrighted material, and now I'm wondering if these edits actually need
to be deleted, which would be annoying...
I think we should be all right as long as the article history pages are
not available to search engines.
In some cases, as you outlined, this could be true. But in others, I
don't think so.
If someone were to cut and paste a new Tom Clancy novel into
wikipedia, we'd want to get it out completely, even out of the
history.
Under the DMCA, an ISP (me) has a certain "safe harbor" immunity if we
follow a "take down" procedure. In this example, if Tom Clancy or his
representatives sent a formal demand of the correct form, then I would
be required to "take down" the material in question. Until then, I
don't have to do anything, although we strive for a much higher level
of care, due to our interest in having the database be "copyright
clean" for potential licensees.
As a practical matter, I'm not very worried about copyright lawsuits.
If a copyright holder has a problem with anything we are doing, then
we'll gladly comply with their demands instantly to avoid a lawsuit.
We aren't copyright protestors in that sense.
--Jimbo