[Foundation-l] a day in a life of a board member... and thoughts

[Dan Rosenthal]

Give that Gendarme a barnstar of diligence. "For going the extra  
(several) miles..."

-Dan
On Jan 12, 2008, at 10:58 AM, Florence Devouard wrote:

> I read recently someone complaining that they were not informed of
> on-going legal complaints. Let me tell you about the latest one.
>
> Between Christmas and New Year Eve, I got a phone call from the local
> gendarmerie (gendarmerie is what plays the role of police in rural  
> areas
> in France). They had received a complaint, against me, for a problem  
> on
> Wikipedia, and needed to receive me to inform me of the details of the
> complaint. I indicated I was on holidays, travelling, but would be  
> back
> just before the 1st. They said "no problem, there is no urgency, let's
> pick up a meeting date in january sometimes. It is related to the
> Chateau de Luneville (a castle in the north east of France, near  
> Nancy)".
>
> Just in case, I had a look at the article, looking for defaming or
> similar bad thing. Nothing special.
>
> So, this saturday morning, I headed to the Gendarmerie, to meet one of
> the officer over there. He handed me out the document.
> The complain was over "lack of respect of the author rights of a
> publication". In short, copyvio. It referred to "Le Chateau de
> Luneville" but did not give the URL, nor indicated the "text being a
> copyvio". The person complaining is the equivalent of the head of the
> museum associated to the Castle. She gave the source of the presumable
> copyvio (a book produced by local services about castles...).
>
> The gendarm shrugged, and commented "why did they go to the police for
> this ? could not they have emailed you ?". No comment...
>
> So, the gendarme and I headed to his computer. First surprise, the
> computer ran on Linux. He opened a new doc to record my statement...
> open office. Then, he launched internet... firefox. Cool, right ?
>
> I said "the copyvio is probably on the article related to "le  
> chateau de
> Luneville", let me give you the exact url to type..."
> His answer was "i'll launch google rather, the link should be in the
> first few answers". Sure enough, wikipedia was ranked 4...
> Sounds like the guy knew the project pretty well...
>
> Went to the article. Long, juicy, lot's of history. No idea which part
> is the copyvio, but very likely the entire history section, so 90% of
> the article. I suggested that we could, good will, immediately blank
> most of the article, and ask for more details afterwards. The gendarme
> answer was "no, she should tell you first, no use removing content  
> which
> is NOT copyvio by mistake. She should have given more details, her
> problem". I suggested we could print the article, so that she could
> stabilo it... his answer "let her sweat a bit, she should provide the
> proofs of copyvio, not you".
>
> Allllllll right.
>
> Then, we headed to the complain itself, and I must say, we laughed.
>
> The complaint was filled up at the police in Nancy mid august 2007.
> She made some efforts to know who was "responsible", since she  
> directed
> the complaint at me namely.
>
> It apparently went through a first service, looking for me. I went in
> Nancy to give a presentation in my engineer school, and got two press
> papers first page, in the two local newspapers. So, the report  
> provided
> a copy of the press clip. "proof that I am in charge".
> Then, the report mentions a search about me, to discover my exact  
> address.
> Then, the report contained a print copy of the page on Wikipedia about
> copyright, explaining EXACTLY the procedure to follow to report a
> copyvio (indicate the URL, the exact text, send an email etc...). All
> 4-5 pages printed directly from Wikipedia, clearly using the "print"
> feature.
>
> Last, the report mentionned "the office does not have access to
> internet, so we can not write the email mentionned in Wikipedia
> procedure, best is to find Florence Devouard and have her go to the
> police to receive the complaint).
>
> I am still a bit perplex of how they could find and print the  
> copyright
> violation page on Wikipedia without internet... but eh...
>
> The request was made mid august. It left Nancy mid october. It was
> recorded in my nearest gendarmerie 30th of november (did the doc
> travelled by bike ?).
> I was contacted by the phone end of december.
> Mid january, we will send back a document to the complainer saying "we
> respect people copyright. Please provide exact URL and exact text
> claimed copyrighted. We'll delete it immediately upon receiving the
> information".
>
> Now, the big game is "how long will it take for the request to go back
> to Nancy ? How long for the person to provide the info ? How long to  
> go
> back to my city ? How long for me to go back to the gendarmerie ?"
>
> The whole story took already 5 months, and time/energy of several
> people, and we are still halfway fixing the copyvio issue.
> This is absolutely ridiculous. It could have been fixed mid august if
> she had made the effort to send a single email. Maybe we could add on
> this page that it REALLY is suggested to send an email before going to
> the police and lawyers...
>
> Now, the good news was at least to discover
> 1) that the gendarmerie nearby is "libre" (Linux, firefox,  
> openoffice...)
> 2) that the officer in charge is familiar with Wikipedia, and was more
> amused by the whole story than anything. At least, this time, it was  
> not
> necessary to do a 2 hours explanation on how the whole project is  
> working.
>
> Ant
>
>
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