[Wikipedia-l] Re: Copyright violations at download.wikimedia.org

[David Gerard]

Kate Turner (keturner at livejournal.com) [050530 08:37]:
> Gregory Maxwell wrote in gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.misc:
 
> > As a result our database contains large quantities of violating
> > material. 
 
> my understand of the relevant US law is that we are not required to
> aggressively remove copyright violations until requested by the copyright
> holder.


If someone ever codes the facility to zap old revisions easily, we could
deal with such without great pain. The main barrier at present is that
zapping old revs entails deleting the article then restoring all revs
except the offender. On a heavily-trafficked page this present obvious
logistical problems.

Our proactive approach, though, does stand us in good stead should we ever
end up in a courtroom. Generally the copyvio page is *rabid* and that's
good. Even if on many occasions the author of a given text has to point out
they're the editor that added it to Wikipedia ;-)


- d.