[Wiktionary-l] Copyright Violation

Wed Dec 22 07:02:58 UTC 2004

Now that Wiktionary 1.4 is settling in, thought I would bring up an
issue thats been on the en:Beer parlor for a while, which may benefit
from some ideas from other wikt's. Plus it would take a sysop,
{{sofixit}} isn't an option ;)

Here it is:

Its fairly common that we find copyright infringing articles. I
hypothesize this is not someone trying to poison Wiktionary, but is
due to ignorance. If you are like me, you've read it once and then
forget that it says the following at the buttom of every edit page:

    You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied
it from a public domain or similar free resource. DO NOT SUBMIT
COPYRIGHTED WORK WITHOUT PERMISSION!

Really I think this assumes the reader understands copyright as well
as understands what folks in the Free Software movement consider to be
'free'. I mean, dictionary.com is free as in beer, but it isn't
'similar free' which is kind of expecting a bit from Joe User. The
paragraph previous to that already gets the legal crap over with by
stating you are releasing under the GFDL, I don't think we need to
cover every case. It should talk to the anonymous junior high student
who sees noctilucent doesn't have a definition. I'm not claiming to be
a great wordsmith, but here is a try:

    All definitions must be written by yourself or borrowed from a
public domain resource. Do not use content from copyrighted resources
such as dictionary.com.

I think dictionary.com is the biggest culprit, so naming it
specifically will be helpful. Also its a good example of what a
copyrighted resource is. We could also throw on something nice to it,
like 'we want to know what you think' or 'we apperciate your input'.
I'm not sure how to put it. Just to be nice and to reiterate the
'your'.
---
There wasn't any further discussion of it, though Eclecticology stated
his belief in their being legal gray area around copyrights on
dictionaries.

Any ideas?