Ray Saintonge wrote: Here is one method: Do nothing until the copyright owner presses charges. This way, we can all focus on writing new articles and avoid wasting time on playing police. Maybe this is too easy. Does it need to be more compliated? -- Lars Aronsson (lars(a)aronsson.se) Aronsson Datateknik Teknikringen 1e, SE-583 30 Linuxköping, Sweden tel +46-70-7891609 http://aronsson.se/ http://elektrosmog.nu/ http://susning.nu/

Jimmy Wales wrote: Of course, in the general case, waiting until someone presses charges is waiting too long to do anything, though there may still be anxious plaintiffs who try to by-pass earlier steps. Hopefully those cases would be thrown out of court for failing to give a proper notice to the ISP in the first place. It does seem to me that "proper written complaint" involves more than a complete stranger appearing out of nowhere and saying "That's mine!"; there has to be a modicum of evidence that he has the right to make that demand. Steve's "Tsvetaeva" article appears to present quite a different situation. I have no reason to doubt that he had the original copyright on the material, and that at some point he chose to abandon that copyright - all this over a twelve year period. We are really dealing with the situation where something which has gone into the public domain has ben used or incorporated into someone else's work, and a blanket copyright on that user's application has been alleged to apply on a part of that work that was no longer copyright. This is a risk of success. As Wikipedia develops a positive reputation for its content we can expect a lot more of this to happen. In practical terms there will always be a time lag while things unfold, if for no other reason than that it takes time for our unknown plagiarist to "research" and put his material together. Logs and other proof can be kept. Under U. S. copyright law what I write today goes into the public domain on Jan. 1, 2098. This letter is covered by GNU-FDL, but if my great-grandson chooses to dispute the fact in the year 2070, what evidence will remain? (assuming that I had not raised the subject in the letter) What confidence can we have that Jimmy will be able to argue the point at that time? Even if every Wikipedia article has GNU-FDL statement attached there is no practical way of enforcing it upon all users. At some point I read something from Lee where he had imbedded a watermark into a picture that he uploaded. It would probably be helpful to embed a watermark that claims coverage under GNU-FDL in every picture that is uploaded; something of the sort could probably also happen with material in other special media such as sound. Text material will remain a problem. It would also be an interesting experiment to put watermarked and undisputedly legal but very desirable illustrations into some of the most popular articles, and try to track what happens to them on the net. It is without regret that I predict that the copyright industry will eventually become the victim of its own recent successes. Disney's mouse has been eating cheese for 75 years, but wholesome family values have inhibited any suggestion that in all that time he ever had to relieve himself in the can. A mouse that is so full of shit will just have to blow up sooner or later. Eclecticology

Hmm. Well, in a way I think we should be much more proactive in checking copyright. It will also help to highlight deficient articles (the Tsvetaeva one which was considered initially problematic was a stinker). I have done a major refactoring of the Tsvetaeva article today; it will be interesting to see whether this one gets "borrowed" at any point. There were a number of factual inaccuracies in the original article, + a lot of hearsay evidence and these have now been corrected. It is also an altogether more balanced and encyclopaedic piece, concentrating on the specifics rather than my own take on things. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Lars Aronsson" <lars(a)aronsson.se> To: <wikipedia-l(a)nupedia.com> Sent: Wednesday, July 31, 2002 2:31 PM Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] "Copyright violation" question (just the opposite of what you think) Ray Saintonge wrote: Here is one method: Do nothing until the copyright owner presses charges. This way, we can all focus on writing new articles and avoid wasting time on playing police. Maybe this is too easy. Does it need to be more compliated? -- Lars Aronsson (lars(a)aronsson.se) Aronsson Datateknik Teknikringen 1e, SE-583 30 Linuxköping, Sweden tel +46-70-7891609 http://aronsson.se/ http://elektrosmog.nu/ http://susning.nu/ [Wikipedia-l] To manage your subscription to this list, please go here: http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l