[WikiEN-l] Copyright violation

Sat Nov 15 22:42:05 UTC 2003

  Alex R. wrote:

>From: "Vicki Rosenzweig" <vr at redbird.org>
>
>At 08:47 AM 11/15/03 -0500, Alex756 wrote:
>
>>"Daniel Mayer" <maveric149 at yahoo.com> said:
>>Arvind Narayanan wrote:
>>
>>>The site http://www.chessandbeyond.com has
>>>copied several articles from Wikipedia. There's
>>>nothing about wikipedia on those pages, and at
>>>the bottom there is the statement
>>>
>>>  Copyright © 2003 Chess And Beyond
>>>  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
>>>
>They
>
>>not only failed to credit the Wikipedia article as the source but then they
>>try to pretend that they own the copyright! This is legally and morally
>>wrong.
>>
>>Since you are actually one of the authors you are on very good footing to
>>complain.
>>
>>Good plan to start but wouldn't it be appropriate to send their ISP a DCMA
>>art 512 takedown request in a few days?
>>
>NO.
>
>>Two reasons. First, we should give them a reasonable time to answer us,
>>rather than assuming the worst. Two,  the DCMA is designed to prevent the
>>spread and sharing of material, and is antithetical to what we're doing. We
>>should use it only as a last resort, not by reflex.
>>
>A reasonable time is being interpreted as 24 hours on the internet.
>
7 days seems more reasonable.  If they are a business (and they do offer 
goods for sale) they might not even be there to receive the message on a 
weekend.

> If Wikipedia authors do not assert their rights they will lose them. I do not think it is
>antithetical to the purposes of Wikipedia because if Wikipedia wanted to give it
>away it would all be put into the public domain. It is not in the public domain,
> it is under a complex license that needs to be followed.
>
>If it is not followed people should not be allowed to ignore the license.
>Then  Wikipedia may be nothing more than a free for all, anyone can
>copy anything and use it anyway they want without any fear of the copyright
>laws that are their to protect the authors who are making their valuable
>contributions and have an expectation that those contributions will be
>linked back to Wikipedia.  If the takedown notice is followed the copyright
>infringer still has the right to follow the GFDL policy and then they will
>obviously have the right to use the material.  I do not see how using the
>OCILLA provisions are against Wikipedia. Actually they make the GFDL
>stronger in my "nonlegal" opinion.
>
You're not going to get any argument from Wikipedians against the 
philosophical and theoretical basis of what you just said.  It was at 
least a year ago that I commented that the violation of Wikipedia 
copyrights will be a much bigger problem than violations by Wikipedians. 
 It is relatively easy to develop policies to deal with the latter 
circumstances, and I think that what we have done is fairly 
conservative, meaning that we could probably have given ourselves a much 
greater benefit of the doubt.

The present problem will become more difficult as the years go on.  To 
start with the violations will become harder to find, and will likely 
only be discovered as a matter of sheer luck.  When we do discover them 
we need a strategy that will work.  There is more to that strategy than 
trying to decipher legal texts.  Assuming naïveté on the part of the 
violator is a good first start.  A friendly letter of explanation 
suggesting possible solutions is a good first start, providing we at 
least give them enough time to respond.  The amount of time should vary. 
 If the violator has a site with many of our pages, it may suffice to 
see a steady progress in making the needed change.

A legal take-down notice is a logical second step, and the timing here 
will often depend on time limits provided in the law.

Beyond that, if the violator refuses, what strategies are available? 
 Beginning a legal action may not be the best next step.  The choice of 
legal jurisdiction would only be a part of the problem.  Legal actions 
can be costly, especially if we want them to be effective.  Who would be 
responsible for those costs?  If there were someone with deep enough 
 pockets to foot that kind of bill, we could only drool at the kind of 
computer hardware that that could buy.  It would be immoral to expect 
Jimbo alon to be responsible for the costs of an action that could have 
far reaching implications about attempted claims of copyright on 
material that is in one way or another already freely available to the 
general community for its re-use.  

Protecting the public interest is a public sector function.  To some 
extent that comes into conflict with sincerely held Libertarian ideals 
which depend very much on the freedom and sense of responsibility of the 
individual.  Of course, there are too many big-buck vested interests 
involved with government for them to be a dependable ally.  If push 
comes to shove, strategic alliances may be required.  

Choosing the right opponent to go after will be important; a US based 
violator will at least avoid the problems that come with international 
law.  Are there other strategies available before it gets to the courts?

>Once again this discussion should be on the Wikilegal discussion list that
>is what it was created for.
>
Some of us would prefer not to subscribe to yet another list. :-)   This 
is too important to be relegated to a low traffic list.
Ec