[WikiEN-l] Slashdot: Book plagarized Wikipedia

[Thomas Dalton]

On 14/11/2007, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Thomas Dalton wrote:
> >> Plagiarism isn't affected by the licence or the law. It's an academic sin,
> >> not a legal one.
> >>
> > If the licence requires attribution, then not attributing is copyright
> > violation. Whether you call it "plagiarism" or not is irrelevant.
> It's not a copyright violation; it's a breach of contract.

You can't breach a contract you never agreed to. If you say you're
using it under the license and do so incorrectly, then yes, it's
breach of contract, but if you just use it without reference to the
license (which is what we're talking about here, as far as I know),
then the license doesn't apply and it's copyright violation.