Tue, 13 Dec 2005 02:52:34 -0500
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Twain's "Battle Hymn" online at Wikipedia.org is an example of two
problems the organization has because of its open and unrestricted
editorial model. They have the title wrong -- it was not "Updated" but
"(Brought Down to Date)" -- and although written in 1901, the piece was
not published until 1958 and, so far as I know, is still covered by
copyright. I'd guess that there are many more pages like that in
Wikipedia and that the case the New York Times covered is only the tip
of the iceberg of potentially criminal acts by Wikipedia contributors.
I had an experience with copyright violation there a few months ago.
Someone copied one of my articles about an anti-imperialist writer into
Wikipedia and, as an afterthought, sent me the URL of the article at
Wikipedia and asked if it was OK to leave it there. I told him to remove
it, and he did, but that made me wonder how many other contributors to
Wikipedia are actually contributing other people's writings.
Jim Zwick
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