[Wikien-l] Looking at the real world

Sat Sep 3 17:01:20 UTC 2005

MAURICE FRANK wrote:

>Ah, but there is one circumstance in which such
>accessing of Wikipedia is not an illegal act. That is
>when its purpose is to stop Wikipedia committing an
>illegal act upon you. Wikipedia is committing an
>illegal act upon me by trying to ignore my citation,
>made by email to Jimmy Wales as well as on this list,
>for it to the remove every word I have ever
>contributed to Wikipedia, on grounds of copyright
>violation and ides theft, and ensure they stay removed
>despite the public editability of pages. Unless you
>can demonstrate that the second requirement is
>technically possible, then the continued existence of
>Wikipedia has been proved entirely illegal.  
>
This sounds like the work of someone who got a law degree from reading 
comic books.

No-one has any legal obligation to pay attention to you.  Unless you 
were infringing someone else's copyrights when you first added the 
material, the continued presence of your material that you yourself put 
into Wikipedia is not an infringement of copyright. 

If you contribute material you agree to the GFDL at the time that you 
add the material.  There is no provision to withdraw that material.

As to "idea theft", please remember that ideas themselves are not 
copyrightable; copyrights apply only to the way they are presented.

Of course, if someone *else* has added material to which you have the 
legal copyright.there exist formal legal procedures whereby you can 
demand its removal.

Ec