[Wikimediaindia-l] Copyright Violations by (some) Students: Wikipedia India Education Program

[Bala Jeyaraman]

Hisham

Thank you for taking this seriously and for the prompt action . This had the
potential to become a serious PR disaster for India in general and
thankfully the actions taken seem to have stemmed the copyvio issues for
now.


On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 4:47 PM, Theo10011 <de10011 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Gautum
>
> On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 3:48 PM, Gautam John <gautam at prathambooks.org>wrote:
>
>> Hi Theo:
>>
>> > I beg to differ Gautum. Since, it was made part of the curriculum this
>> > almost constitutes as cheating. I am not sure about lofty first world
>> > standards but
>>
>> You seem to have missed this:
>>
>> "Yes, it is important to explain why copyvivos are important (and from
>> an academic, plagiarism point of view too) but the bigger issue if
>> intellectual honesty."
>>
>
> Copyright violations aren't only important from an
> academic plagiarism point of view but also legal and ethical, you seem to be
> only focusing on text based violation in Academia maybe. Commons users and
> admins spend the better part of their time educating themselves and dealing
> with these violations from different countries not because of some honesty
> issues but real legal ones.Violations more often than not, can lead to court
> cases, damages and expose the project to liability.
> I never really distinguished what Media I was referring to in regards of
> Copyright violation, in case of Video and Music, you might want to read
> different variation of DMCA, along with the take-down notices that WMF has
> already complied with located here[1]. For images, I can attest to spending
> several hundred hours talking on IRC and looking for copyright terms of
> different countries to comply with. It is something people I know take very
> seriously. I am not sure if "Intellectual honesty" means ethics in this
> context but I would disagree if that is what WMF and other Wikipedians would
> be concerned about, it's really the legal liability that they expose WMF and
> projects to. Maybe Hisham can clarify.
>
>
>> > Second, if we don't uphold the "WMF policies" (they are actually project
>> > policies, not the foundation's) in an officially sanctioned and financed
>> > program, then who will?
>>
>> Again, you are raising a straw-man here. I did not say do not respect
>> copyrights. I said that the current actions were overblown. We might
>> disagree on this but I do carry an activists perspective here and
>> respect your position and what the WMF has to do to limit liability
>> too.
>>
>
> As I saw it, you stated that copyright violations are no big deal,
> especially in India and the more important thing is being honest
> (Intellectually) when someone plagiarizes or something to that effect.
> Correct me if I based my assumptions wrong or if this straw-man is alive.
>
> If you read my comment again, I never allege that you said not to respect
> copyrights. I was referring to your perception of this issue being overblown
> and not as important. I also did say, these issues are more important when
> it is the WMF at the helm conducting these programs.
>
> I am well aware of your position as a open-source book publisher and a
> Creative commons hero along with someone I respect, that was why I found
> your position very surprising on this issue.
>
> Also, Hi Hisham, Nice to see you avoided replying to my comment alone. ;)
>
> Theo
>
> [1]http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Category:DMCA
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