[WikiEN-l] [lstruwe at hotmail.com: Wikipedia serious copyright infringement: Gentianaceae pages]

[Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales]

----- Forwarded message from Lena Struwe <lstruwe at hotmail.com> -----

From: "Lena Struwe" <lstruwe at hotmail.com>
Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2004 04:17:13 -0400
To: <jwales at bomis.com>
Subject: Wikipedia serious copyright infringement: Gentianaceae pages

Dear Mr. Wales,

I am the founder of the Gentian Research Network and its website, and today I suddenly found some of the text from the plant descriptions on my website used illegally on Wikipedia.  Someone has copied large portions of text without giving the source.  I request that all copied text be removed and be replaced with links to the pages it was copied from.  This concerns several pages, for example Adenolisianthus and Aripuana, and would probably be additional pages in the future since the Wikipedia author has started first in the alphabet of the genus list.  I think Wikipedia is a great idea, however, not when this happens. I am a contributor to Wikipedia too, and if this is not taken care of I will start to edit these pages and replace them with links to the sources.  Please notify the author of the affected Wikipedia pages that this is unacceptable and improper use of copyrighted material.

For example:
Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adenolisianthus

my page: http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~struwe/gentnet/genera/genAden.htm

Each page has a copyright at the bottom of each page - and the home page has an extensive copyright paragraph - see http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~struwe/gentnet/index.htm at the bottom.

Currently no source is given for the text in Wikipedia, but the link to the home page of Gentian Research Network is given.  This is not sufficient - and the text should not have been directly copied into Wikipedia.

I am a professor in Botany at Rutgers University and have published extensively in this subject area.  Please see my home page below and the Gentian Research Network site for corroboration of above claims.  We freely share data and images from the website, however, we DO NOT allow direct copying without prior permission and without giving the source.  

Thanks,


Dr. Lena Struwe
________________________________
Dr. Lena Struwe
Dept. of Ecology, Evolution, & Nat. Resources
Rutgers University - Cook College
237 Foran Hall, 59 Dudley Road
New Brunswick, NJ 08904
phone: (732) 932-9711 ext. 235, fax: (732) 932-9441 
e-mail: struwe at aesop.rutgers.edu or lstruwe at hotmail.com 
home page: http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~struwe 
GENTIAN RESEARCH NETWORK http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~struwe/gentnet



----- End forwarded message -----

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