On 6/21/05, Sean Barrett sean@epoptic.org wrote:
I am very much copyright-unparanoid, but in the absence of any credible indication that the entity calling itself CoolCat wrote the material, we must presume the opposite. If CoolCat disagrees with that presumption, the burden of proof is on she/he/it.
Whatever happened to "assume good faith"?
It was overruled by the DMCA.
To put it a little less tersely, what we have here is a user who is presuming too much on our good faith. CoolCat submitted material that is also published elsewhere. When questioned (politely, I assume), CoolCat made the important claim of being the copyright owner, yet refused to supply critical pieces of data to support that claim.
If I were to start uploading Encarta articles, and when challenged on their copyright status, claim to be the sole owner of their copyright, are you going to say "okay, I'm going to assume your claim is made in good faith," or are you going to ask for more information supporting my surprising claim, or are you going to copyvio the appropriate articles and ban me so I'll stop?
As Jimbo so wonderfully put it, this is a game of Calvinball, and the Wikipedia is Calvin. The "assume good faith" rule only applies until the Wikipedia starts losing. Then we realize that Friday the Thirteenth falls on Wednesday next month, which means that all unauthenticated claims of copyright ownership have to leave the playground.