[Wikipedia-l] Automatically checking for copyright violations

[Angela]

The message below was sent to the Board today. Would implementing some
sort of automatic copyvio checker be feasible?

The second part of the email suggests it is too difficult to contact
us about copyright violations. With the addition of the "contact us"
link in the sidebar, I thought this would stop being a problem. Is
there any other way of making it easier?

Angela.

---- Forwarded message ----

> In regards to the continuing copyright issues because some members do
> not 
> respect copyrights, I might recommend implementing something like what 
> http://copyscape.com uses.  From what I can tell, they use a Google API
> to do a 
> search of text found in one page to see what other pages have the same
> text.  
> Using a similar methodology, you could flag new pages that are
> substantially 
> like pages that exist on the Internet for further review.   While this
> wouldn't 
> tackle all of the copyright violations, it would go a long way towards
> making 
> it easier to weed out blatant violations like the one I reported.
> 
> The issue of some individuals having absolutely no respect for
> copyrights and 
> plagiarism is a serious problem that Wikipedia needs to address.  Some
> people 
> seem to think that Wikipedia is their personal means of bringing down
> copyright 
> laws and "freeing" content.  This is a shame because these individuals
> threaten 
> the long term possibilities for Wikipedia.
> 
> On a related note, it should be easier to report copyright violations on
> the 
> Wikipedia website.  The current set up is tremendously burdensome to
> figure how 
> to report copyright violations.   There needs to be a simple link from
> all 
> pages to a simple contact form that allows one to report a violation
> without 
> having any knowledge of how Wikipedia works.  Doing this would put
> members on 
> notice that Wikipedia isn't a rogue operation where anything goes and
> that it 
> takes copyright issues seriously.
>