[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia Takedown Notice was Copyright violation

Sun Nov 16 16:27:24 UTC 2003

From: "Arvind Narayanan" <arvindn at meenakshi.cs.iitm.ernet.in>

<..snip..> 

> Another thing I noticed is that many (most?) of the sites violating
> GFDL don't know about it until we tell them about it. This is easily
> preventable and shouldn't be happening! I want to suggest a couple of
> things to ensure this:
> 
> * that we change the "From wikipedia, the free encyclopedia" line.  As we
> know very well when people see "free" they think gratis, not libre.
> I suggest we make it "From wikipedia, the open-content encyclopedia"
> with the word open-content linking to the copyrights page.
> 
> * at the bottom of each article we should remind people about their
> _obligations_ in copying it. Something along the lines of "if you wish
> to redistribute this article you must link back to this page and release
> it under the GFDL. See <here> for details" or something like that.

These are both good suggestions, it is more accurate to say "open
content" than free (implying PD) and the link back is giving someone
an easy way to comply with the GFDL, and very specific directions
on how to do it.

> IMHO we should also be more vigorous in pursuing violators. Why are
> people saying this is antithetical to sharing? We are preventing them
> from *putting restrictions* on our free articles. Writing a legal notice
> is costly, that's a valid point. But we'll have to do it sometime,
> haven't we? Otherwise we lose credibility. And since we (presumably)
> have to write a template letter only once, the cost is amortized. I hope
> we never actually need to go to court. IANAL, of course.

Actually the notice does not have be drafted by a lawyer and it can
be sent by email. It just has to be done by someone who can certify
that the content is protected by copyright. You basically just have
to follow the requirements of the law. It is not that complicated,
most corporations do it through lawyers but individuals can do
it too without legal help.

Here is a database of these C&D takedown notices:
http://www.chillingeffects.org/notice.cgi

Of course the question of sending out these notices needs to be
vetted by Wikimedia as it would involve some "corporate" action
as it would be invoking the name of Wikimedia.

Alex756