[Wikipedia-l] Re: another copyright issue

Fri Nov 16 15:56:45 UTC 2001

On the English Wikipedia we play by the "better safe than sorry" 
rule: if an article appears to be a copyright violation, we remove it. 
Then, we say why the article was removed on a Talk page, and ask 
the contributer to clarify whetheror not the article was a violation of 
copyright. Usually an email to Larry will serve as "proof" that a 
copyright holder is releasing his materialfor use on Wikipedia.

- Stephen Gilbert

PS - Actually, I think your English is rather good. :)

On 16 Nov 01, at 7:46, wikipedia-l-request at nupedia.com wrote:

> Message: 12
> From: "Kurt Jansson" <jansson at gmx.net>
> To: <wikipedia-l at nupedia.com>
> Date: Fri, 16 Nov 2001 16:36:57 +0100
> Subject: [Wikipedia-l] another copyright issue
> Reply-To: wikipedia-l at nupedia.com
> 
> Hello wikipeople!
> 
> How can we ever be sure, that those people who (often anonymously) write
> new articles for wikipedia didn't just copy'n'paste it from another
> site?
> 
> I think we can't.
> 
> Take for example
> http://de.wikipedia.com/wiki.cgi?Gopher
> http://www.uni-stuttgart.de/rus/42/internet/gopher.html
> and chapter 2.6 here:
> http://www.fitug.de/bildung/allgem/inetein2.html
> 
> Is it all from the same author? Or is the wikipedia article just a
> ('stolen') copy? Or the copy of a revised (but 'stolen') copy? Or is the
> source under the GNU Free Documentation License?
> 
> How can we be sure about that?
> 
> I think nobody wants that just authors with prooved identities (who are
> responsible for their writing) are allowed to contribute to wikipedia.
> 
> But are we on the save side if we just close our eyes and wait for
> people to come and force us to delete articles that many people have put
> much work in, but that are based on their text?
> 
> Sorry for my bad English, I'm German. If you don't understand what I'm
> talking about I'll try my best to make it clearer.
> 
> Bye,
> Kurt