STlombardi wrote:I am saying that US copyright law is cited as the basis for Wikipedia policy yet censorship is what actually occurred as evidenced by you not finding the original text.
Well, that's a coin with two sides. I was involved in a very extensive Contributor Copyright Investigation case (not against me) a year or two ago and have pretty much learned how the WRITTEN WORD copyright people think. Their interpretation of the law is this: if a copyright violation is made, the best practice is for that material not only to be removed from the version of the article showing to the public, but also retroactively from all previous versions, to prevent either its accidental or intentional reinsertion or to prevent a possible case from being made that the infraction of the law is not really "deleted" unless it is completely and totally annihilated from public view, even in past versions.
Now, is this best practice always followed? No. But what took place in the situation of this one particular article is not "censorship"; it is, rather, the interpretation of a copyright investigation volunteer of how best ethically to proceed against what they felt to be an unambiguous copyright violation.
You say it was no such thing. That could be, I have no way to see the text and offer my opinion. That is the drawback of copyright people wiping this sort of material off the map — only administrators can see the removed material, not "common" editors.
This is the entire fact that caused me to run for election as an administrator in conjunction with the aforementioned CCI case (an attempt which failed, incidentally) — so that I could read deleted material associated with the case in which I had become an interested advocate.
There is no perfect answer to the situation — but that is what is going on in this particular case.
Correct citations were provided, WP: Consent was also provided [which does allow for fair use]. If WP: Consent is no longer applicable then that choice needs to be removed from the policies.
Again, I can't see what was removed and can't offer an opinion here. I hear ya, but apparently the copyright investigation person was not convinced of this.
Also, a reasonable standard of care under US law, the cited basis for policy, allows for correction as both Greg Bard and I agreed to do. If US law is not the basis, if censorship and punishment are the true modus operendi . . . then that needs to be made clear by removing references to US law as well as removing the 5th pillar from Wikipedia standards . . . both US law and Wikipedia standards were violated in my case and I strongly suspect in Greg's case as well.
Again, the expansive limits of American copyright law is not what guides Wikipedia copyright volunteers, it is the more narrow copyright restrictions of the site. It's very possible that somebody missed the fact that the material was there by permission. It is more likely that they regarded this material as "fair use" content rather than "free use" content and wiped it out on that basis.
I agree that the happy, smiley "Anybody Can Contribute" slogan is a poor reflection of reality. You seem to have run afoul of poorly documented Standard Operating Procedure.
Again, the topic here is why Neutral editors leave . . . what better cases than the cases of User: stmullin and User:Gregbard to illustrate why some editors would be unwilling to subject them selves to further abuse.
On this we agree — slavish adherence to rules, poor communication, and quick use of blocking mechanisms drives away useful contributors. It's a problem that needs to be fixed.
tim
