[Wikipedia-l] Re: What would Richard Stallman say?

[Ray Saintonge]

Daniel Mayer wrote:

>Exactly! We have WAY too many images that don't have this type of information.
>IMO, we should stop all uploads and launch a tagging effort. Once that is fully
>underway a form should be added to the upload page that would force uploaders
>to enter text into author, source, and license fields. I consider the current
>situation to be untenable and dangerous to the long term viability to the
>project. 
>
My early observations at Wikisource is that most contributors haven't 
got a clue or a care about copyright.  Whatever position we may take in 
this family of threads, by being here we have given the matter some 
attention.  At Wikisource we are dealing with whole texts, so fair use 
will usually not be relevant.  

Much of the contributed material seems very much in the public domain, 
and is probably perfectly acceptable, but it would be nice if people 
would provide enough information to enable the copyright to be verified. 
 Translations are a bigger problem.  The works of Plato are well into 
the public domain, but people tend to ignore that last year's new 
translation is very much copyright.

I don't like doing other people's homework, especially not for anonymous 
users to who I can't send a polite query.  I like even less having to 
play the heavy when no substantiation  comes up.

Ec