[WikiEN-l] expunging copyright violations (Was: Re: Admin burnout)

[John Vandenberg]

On 2/13/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> John Vandenberg wrote:
>
> >However, the issue of access to copyvios increases with the number of
> >admins.  In my opinion this isnt solved with less admins, but by
> >expunging copyvios completely or further restricting access to them.
> >In this, I am more thinking about copies of articles from other
> >encyclopedias, as opposed to the snippets taken from a website.  These
> >copyvios are of limited usefulness to admins after a few days and
> >should be inaccessible, both in the article history and the deletion
> >log; instead a boilerplate page should alert the reader that the
> >version they have requested is a copyvio and provide the details, such
> >as source, contributors name, etc.  All access to these copyright
> >violations after it has been removed should be restricted to case by
> >case needs.
> >
> Some broad access to these copyvios may still be needed for admns.
> Putting "COPYVIO" in big letters across its face could make it unusable
> except for checking out possible copyvios.

I'm not a lawyer, but I'd be surprised if an overprint was sufficient
to bypass the copyright laws.  Also, some copyright holders explicitly
state that overprinting is not permitted.

> Some popular pictures may
> very well keep being uploaded by other users who are unaware of the
> previous determination.

I'm not familiar with how image copyvios are tackled.  For repeated
attempts to upload the same image, wouldn't the URL of the source
image be sufficient, maybe with some keywords to assist searching?

With regard to WP:OVER and WP:RFO, it already does cover copyright,
but only on the advice of the lawyers, and all very hush-hush (for
good reason in the cases of personal and libellous information).  I'm
guessing that amounts to requests under OCILLA (and similar) only.
Are copyvios that are found by volunteers also being expunged?

--
John