The message below was sent to the Board today. Would implementing some
sort of automatic copyvio checker be feasible?
The second part of the email suggests it is too difficult to contact
us about copyright violations. With the addition of the "contact us"
link in the sidebar, I thought this would stop being a problem. Is
there any other way of making it easier?
Angela.
---- Forwarded message ----
In regards to the continuing copyright issues because
some members do
not
respect copyrights, I might recommend implementing something like what
http://copyscape.com uses. From what I can tell, they use a Google API
to do a
search of text found in one page to see what other pages have the same
text.
Using a similar methodology, you could flag new pages that are
substantially
like pages that exist on the Internet for further review. While this
wouldn't
tackle all of the copyright violations, it would go a long way towards
making
it easier to weed out blatant violations like the one I reported.
The issue of some individuals having absolutely no respect for
copyrights and
plagiarism is a serious problem that Wikipedia needs to address. Some
people
seem to think that Wikipedia is their personal means of bringing down
copyright
laws and "freeing" content. This is a shame because these individuals
threaten
the long term possibilities for Wikipedia.
On a related note, it should be easier to report copyright violations on
the
Wikipedia website. The current set up is tremendously burdensome to
figure how
to report copyright violations. There needs to be a simple link from
all
pages to a simple contact form that allows one to report a violation
without
having any knowledge of how Wikipedia works. Doing this would put
members on
notice that Wikipedia isn't a rogue operation where anything goes and
that it
takes copyright issues seriously.