[WikiEN-l] disclaimer at the bottom of pages

Tue Jul 12 13:09:42 UTC 2005

Hi,

Essentially, this is psuedo-legal gibberish. Many people who do not understand copyright and Fair Use have been taking relatively legitimate disclaimer statements from various websites and then rewriting them into this form. It is a sort of populist faux law. There are actually scholars who study the creation of fake legal writing.  It is especially popular in the U.S. right-wing militia and Patriot movements, but some on the left have picked it up.

-Chip Berlet

________________________________

From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org on behalf of Anthere
Sent: Tue 7/12/2005 9:08 AM
To: wikien-l at wikimedia.org
Subject: [WikiEN-l] disclaimer at the bottom of pages

Hi

While I was reading a protected article, I discovered at the bottom of the page the following disclaimer

This work may be protected by copyright. Please see 17 USC 108.
This version of the article has been subsequently revised.
Besides normal editing, the reason for revision may have been that this version contains
factual inaccuracies, vandalism, or material not compatible with the GFDL.

----------------

I am *very* perplex. There are MANY reasons why an article can be protected on Wikipedia, and I would dare saying that having part of its content under copyright is probably the least probable reason for it to be restricted in edition. Protection is most of the time against vandalism or to cool down spirits. On the contrary, if an article contains factual inaccuracies or copyrighted material, it should be OPEN to editing so that it can be fixed as quickly as possible.

I perceive this disclaimer as possibly be meant to protect ourselves... but also as giving a very inacurate reason why we protect articles...

Second, WHY this reference to the US law code here?

Anthere

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