Talk:Stephan Kinsella/Archive 1

Some material in this article has been copied from. Notwithstanding the copyright notice at, the copyright owner, Stephan Kinsella, has removed a "possible copyright violation" notice and edited the material. By doing so, he has released the information under the GFDL. Please do not remove this note. -Willmcw 04:00, Apr 10, 2005 (UTC)

Is this article a copyright violation of ? The copyright page on that site specifically bans editing the material, which would not conform to Wikipedia requirements. . Cheers, -Willmcw 22:34, Mar 28, 2005 (UTC)

Copyright Permission
I am the subject of this entry and the copyright owner. Wikipedia has my permission to post material from my site in this entry. There is no copyright problem. Stephan Kinsella


 * Thanks for amending your copyright notice and giving permission. The necessary GFDL license for all material copied into Wikipedia is here:, and a general discussion can be found here: . In general, all material in Wikipedia must be available for all commercial and non-commecial use, without further notification. The amended copyright notice seems to limit that ability. Please clarify. Also, if you are the user:DickClarkMises please be aware that there are apparent copyright violations in several images that you uploaded. Finally, please do not revert any copyright violation notices until the matters have been resolved. The notice includes detailed instructions. Thanks -Willmcw 20:02, Apr 8, 2005 (UTC)

THis is ridiculous
Willow, who are you? Are you an official of Wikipedia? If not, stop messing with this. This is ridiculous. There is no copyright problem here. Why are you meddling?


 * Hi. Copyright issues are not ridiculous. As a patent lawyer undoubtedly versed in (so-called) intellectual property issues I am sure you understand. Wikipedia is perhaps a unique attempt at creating an encyclopedia whose contents are freely copyable. I am an editor like yourself. If you'd like to engage in a discussion of copyright issues as they apply to Wikipedia, please follow the links I've provided above. I should also mention that Wikipedia is not meant as a venue for self-promotion, so please keep your materials NPOV. Finally, please sign your talk page posts by adding four tildes (~) at the end. Thanks, -Willmcw 21:19, Apr 8, 2005 (UTC)


 * Further, please do not remove the copyvio notice until the matter has been resolved. Wikipedia is relatively free-form, but we do have our normal procedures. Please respect them. Cheers, -Willmcw 21:23, Apr 8, 2005 (UTC)

idiot
I didn't post the original entry. Someone else did. When I found out about it, I edited it to correct some things. It is neutral and not self-promotional.

I am the copyright owner. I have granted consent, not that any was needed. Moreover my website now has a GNU license. This is absolutely reidiculously. Leave the entry alone please. Stop meddling and mind your own business.


 * Thank you for clarifying the origins of this article. I had (incorrectly) presumed that you were user:DickClarkMises, who originally posted the material with this note:
 * '' (dump of auto-bio from stephankinsella.com)
 * At the time, the website had a copyright notice which was clearly not compatible with GFDL. The current copright statement still appears to be incompatible:
 * Permission is hereby granted to copy, download, display, post or transmit the documents, articles, and other information on this web site authored by Stephan Kinsella, for personal, informational, non-commercial use only, provided that: (1) you do not modify the materials; (2) you retain all copyright and other proprietary notices contained in the materials; and (3) you include a proper citation to the material (where available) and, where feasible, reference the URL for this site, www.StephanKinsella.com. Notwithstanding the foregoing, unpublished or draft articles or material (i.e., those appearing without publication information or otherwise designated as being in draft or unpublished form) may not be published in any publication without obtaining my written consent (email me (Stephan -at- KinsellaLaw.com) for any such requests). Notwithstanding the foregoing, Wikipedia has permission to use information from this site authored by N. Stephan Kinsella in Wikipedia entries.
 * For wikipedia purposes, the text must be fully modifiable, that no special coopyright info needs to be attached, and that the originating website need not be referenced. Can you clarify, please? It would help if you obtained a username of your own and signed your entries in talk pages. Once again, please do not remove the copyviolation notice until this matter has been resolved. And finally, Wikipedia has a firm policy against personal attacks. no personal attacks. Thanks for your contributions to Wikipedia. -Willmcw 22:15, Apr 8, 2005 (UTC)

signature
happy now? 216.216.209.2 22:05, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Wiki nerd
Willow, you moron. If Wiki has a policy against personal attacks it must also have a policy against idiots like you meddling in a stupid way with others' entries. So I would be happy to have Wiki look into this and ban me from commenting on the stupid discussion page if they would also put an end to your ridiculous meddling.

I have taken down the bio page and the copyright page. It seems if I had never had them up, you would have not had anything to whine about. I am the owner of my site and the material on it. I am the copyright holder. I am an IP attorney. The material that is posted on Wiki from my site does not violate copyright for several reasons. First, the material is just factual. Second, it would clearly qualify for fair use. Third, I have given my consent. Fourth, I had permission posted on my site sufficient to show grant a license, not that one was needed. You are just a bumbling idiot trying to force people to join in this stupid GNU thing. Mind your own business, you Wiki Nerd. Nskinsella 19:47, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * Please refrain from personal attacks. Regarding your points: first, factual data can be copyrighted. Second, fair use is a grey area. Third and fourth, thanks for your permission, but does that permoission allow for unlimited editing and copying? I'm sorry if you don't like the Gnu license that we use here, but it is what we use here. I saw on your website a license which prevented editing and required further permission for any use. All articles on Wikipedia need to be freely edited and copied. Finally, once again, please do not remove the copyright violation notice until the the administrators can resolve the issue. They usually do so within two weeks. In the meantime, you can help write the replacement article at Stephan Kinsella/Temp. You might first want to read our guidelines on autobiography. I see that your birthyear is missing, which fact would help complete the article. Since you are not user:DickClarkMises, let me ask you if he got your permission to put your photograph into the public domain? See Image:Stephankinsella.jpg. Cheers, -Willmcw 23:29, Apr 9, 2005 (UTC)

"This page is now listed on Wikipedia:Copyright problems. Please do not edit this page for the moment. If there was permission to use this material under the terms of our license or if you are the copyright holder of the text that was submitted, please indicate so on this page's talk page and under the article's listing on Wikipedia:Copyright problems."

"It should be noted that the posting of copyrighted material that does not have the express permission from the copyright holder is possibly in violation of applicable law and of our policy. Those with a history of violations may be temporarily suspended from editing pages. Regardless, even if this is in fact an infringement of copyright, we still welcome any original contributions."

I AM THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER. WIKIPEDIA HAS PERMISSION TO PUBLISH MY PIECE AND TO USE IT ANY WAY THEY SEE FIT. THERE IS NO COPYRIGHT VIOLATION AT ALL. YOU HAVE THE EXPRESS PERMISSION OF THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER, NAMELY ME.

Willow
Willow:

You are very annoying and maddening. Your meddlesomeness is contrary to the spirit of this project. Let's make something clear.

1. If DickClarkMises had simply posted what he did, without linking to my site, you never would have had the excuse to make a stink. So you are essentially trying to penalize me for having a copyright notice on my site--which has nothing to do with Wikipedia--that you don't like.

2. Wikipedia's terms don't permit printing copyrighted material if it is without the owner's consent. I have clearly given consent.

3. Moreover, to cater to your annoying requests, I did indeed modify my copyright page to reprint verbatim the GNU license you pointed me at, but then you ignored it and kept repeating what my previous page had said. You could have simply pasted the exact language that would have satisfied you that I could have put on my copyright page, but no, you had to point me to some stupid discussion list. This is getting ridiculous. Wikipedia is not designed to for people to run around acting like annoying little gadflies. So I have now taken down both my bio and copyright page, on my site, since that is what seemed to give you an excuse to meddle. Now, pretend my website bio and copyright pages do not exist, since they don't.

4. You ask if Dick whoever got my permission to put my image in the public domain. You are using "public domain" in a layman's way. My image was and is on my website, so it is already public. Are you saying Wiki is "more" "public" (domain?) than my site? They are both on the web.

5. In short, your actions are completely unjustified and meddlesome. You appear to be trying to interfere in something that is none of your business whatsoever, and to use your ability to keep rewriting this entry to blackmail me into changing my private website's copyright policy to some GNU license. This is outrageous and unjustified.

6. Please butt out and mind your own business. Please stop abusing your naked power to revise this entry to act a the gadfly and GNU vigilante advocate.

7. Finally, my past pages are STILL PUBLICLY AVAILABLE ON WIKIPEDIA. All one has to do is click on the history tab. It is absurd to claim that a given entry has a copyright problem, and then to leave it up on the history page. If it is truly a copyright infringement, Wiki ought to take it down even from the history pages--the history pages are just as published as the main entry page is. So please stop these games OR CLEARLY and COHERENTLY state your problem.

Nskinsella 03:55, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your patience. I discussed this with another member of the community and the feeling is that by removing the copyright notice and editing the article you released the information under the GFDL, regardless of the license on your website, and that the photo is also included in that release. Now that the matter has been resolved it is safe to leave the copyright violation notice off the page and to go back to editing it. Cheers, -Willmcw 04:00, Apr 10, 2005 (UTC)

Apology? No.
Someone on Wiki (?) wrote me:


 * Hi Ns, you were abusive to User:Willmcw, he was just trying to look out for your copyrighted page, considering that User:DickClarkMises's edits were a copyright violation. And you're identity wasn't clear, editing under two different anonymous ip's (24.175.17.57 and 216.216.209.2). Remember, not all of us are lawyers. You should apologise.


 * Also, you broke the Wikipedia:Three-revert rule, for which you can be banned for 24 hours. Please don't do this again or I will block you.--Duk 04:45, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I was not abusive, and Willow was not just trying to look out for my copyrighted page; and DickClarkMises's edits were NOT a copyright violation. I will not apologize. I think Willow is a meddling gadfly. If this gets me banned: so be it. I will say this: I admit it is possible that Willow is indeed well-intentioned but utterly confused, but that is not the impression I get. I ge the impression he is a persnickety gadfly who is trying his best to leverage his ability to mess with entries to force people to revise their own private web sites' copyright page to employ GNU.

Willow called the bio a vanity bio. It is not. I did not post it. Someone else did. I only modified it to make corrections after I was made aware of it.

Claiming the post was a copright violation just because my own website had a comment RESTATING FEDERAL LAW means that ANY material taken from ANY site, in the US at least, is in the same position as is my own material. Moreover, after I explicitly stated, as the copyright owner, that there was no problem, it is ridiculous to claim any remaining basis for this.

I do not blame you people for not being attorneys. I blame you for thinking that you know enough about copyright law to take action based on the assumption that you do.

As for the alleged Three-revert rule: "Don't revert any page more than three times within a period of 24 hours. (This doesn't apply to self-reverts or correction of simple vandalism.)"

Well, first, Willow was guilty of reverting as many times as I did. Moroever, I do view what he did as vandalism.

This has been my first experience with Wikipedia and it has been a terrible one, primarily because of Willow's outrageous behavior and the rules that allow it.


 * It appears that user:Duk may have been wrong about the number of reverts which occured within a 24-hour period, the fourth reverts by both of us appear to have been done at least a few minutes beyond that time. I called your autobiography a "vanity bio" because it appeared likely that you had posted it yourself. It remains an autobiography, but given time and the involvement of other editors it will grow into a regular biography. Regarding the presence of copyrighted material in the history log of an article, one of the reasons why there is a process for clearing copyright violations is to allow the history logs to be purged. Your interpretation of the meaning of "public domain" is rather different than what we use here (rightly or wrongly). We do not assume that all photographs on websites are in the public domain, unless they are more than 80 years old or produced by the federal government. And we'd assume that taking an entire webpage of material, factual or not, appears to go beyond common interpretations of "fair use". I am not at all interested in having you change your personal copyright statement - my interest is in making sure that Wikipedia is not liable for any copyright violations. As you have edited the copyright problems page, you can see that the open editing process unfortunately encourages editors to "steal" material often, resulting in the need to patrol new entries, especially when an editor plainly states that he is copying it from another website. Finally, while I do not expect an apology, this is a collaborative process that depends on its editors acting in a civil fashion. no personal attacks is a policy, not just a guideline. Cheers, -Willmcw 03:52, Apr 11, 2005 (UTC) (AKA "Willow")

No clue

 * I called your autobiography a "vanity bio" because it appeared likely that you had posted it yourself.

You were wrong, and this was insulting.


 * It remains an autobiography, but given time and the involvement of other editors it will grow into a regular biography.

Okay.


 * Regarding the presence of copyrighted material in the history log of an article, one of the reasons why there is a process for clearing copyright violations is to allow the history logs to be purged. Your interpretation of the meaning of "public domain" is rather different than what we use here (rightly or wrongly). We do not assume that all photographs on websites are in the public domain, unless they are more than 80 years old or produced by the federal government. And we'd assume that taking an entire webpage of material, factual or not, appears to go beyond common interpretations of "fair use". I am not at all interested in having you change your personal copyright statement - my interest is in making sure that Wikipedia is not liable for any copyright violations.

Yes, you insisted several times that I change my copyright page. On my own site. Notice that if I simply HAD NO COPYRIGHT PAGE you would have had no grounds for raising a fuss. So you were penalizing me for having a non-GNU copyright page.

Nonetheless, once I posted myself and ratified this and gave explicit permission, it totally obviated your concern. Yet you continued to harass me and stubbornly kept putting up your silly copyright concerns, even when it was manifestly clear there was no basis for this. I don't regard that as civil.

However, to the extent you have fought off nutball Larouchies, I guess you're a good guy, in that respect at least.

I don't know who this alleged "duk" character is, or you, but you act as if you are officials of Wikipedia or something, and have refused to clarify whether or not you are officials of Wikipedia. I therefore assume you are NOT. Thus, you have no more standing to threaten or ban me than I, you.


 * I don't know why you find it insulting that I should have assumed that you were the one who posted your autobiography. It appears that it was a colleague of yours, without your permission or knowledge, if I understand you correctly. Given the circumstances, it appeared likely that he was you. Now that you have appeared and declared a separate identity, I freely admit that I was wrong. If you care, please re-read what I wrote above, and you will see that I never insisted that you change your page. You were asserting that the license on your page allowed for copying and editing of your material, and I was disagreeing. Fixing a copyright violation is not harassment, it is part of editing. If you'd only had a copyright symbol on the bottom of your page (instead of a special copyright notice) then the issue would have been simpler, but the same concern would have been present. Regarding our status here, several messages ago I stated "I am an editor like yourself," which I intended to clarify my status. Yes, you have just as much standing to threaten or ban me as vice versa. Cheers, -Willmcw 19:03, Apr 11, 2005 (UTC)

Clueless about Copyright
Willow had posted this on the page, which I have deleted: "(NB: Although Kinsella concludes in this paper that "[Intellectual property], at least in the form of patent and copyright, cannot be justified," the paper itself is copyrighted by its publisher.."

Presumably Willow means to show some kind of hypocrisy here. Even if it was, it is out of place in the entry. And even if his comment was accurate, it does not show hypocrisy--simply because one argues that copyright law is unjust does not imply one should not use the system so long as it exists. I might call for roads to be privatized yet still drive on them. To do otherwise would be to commit suicide. Saying that an advocate of road privatization is hypocritical for using roads would be tantamount to the position that once a system is in place that many people are forced to use in order to survive, no one may ever criticize it. This would be a terrible blow to freedom of expression. Moreover: the paper is not "copyrighted" by its publisher. This is yet again further know-nothing legal commentary from a layman. In fact, one cannot "copyright" something; it is not a verb. Whether or not one registers a copyright in a work, or marks it with the copyright notice, original authored works do have a copyright in them automatically by virtue of federal law. Whether or not someone marks "copyright" on a published paper does not change the fact that the author does have a copyright in it. Just like you have the "right" under federal law to obtain, say, Medicaid under certain circumstances, whether or not you want this right, whether or not you agree to it, whether or not you use it, whether or not you promote the fact that you do indeed have this legal right. Therefore, by stamping an article "copyright" all this is, is a statement of pre-existing fact, a fact about a state of affairs that the author or publisher did nothing to cause.


 * Yes, the federal law has been changed so that the copyrighting occurs automatically. And the use of copyrights marks re-inforces that copyright. However, copyright holders may release their work into the public domain, or under broad licenses, such as GFDL, as we are doing by contributing to this project. So maintaining the copyright is a choice. If you genuinely believe that copyrights cannot be justified, there are easy mechanisms available to you to release your writing out of that unjustified system, mechanisms that have not been used. So, getting back to the point at hand, how can we re-word it for better accuracy? "(NB: Although Kinsella concludes in this paper that "[Intellectual property], at least in the form of patent and copyright, cannot be justified," the paper itself is under copyright.)" That's true, right? Cheers, -Willmcw 20:25, Apr 20, 2005 (UTC)


 * Willow, you are showing yourself to be biased by your continual obsessing over this. Who the hell are you and what the eff is it your business whether I "genuinely" believe anything, and what does it have to do with a wiki entry? You GNU monomaniacs have no principles--are you pro-IP? anti-IP? pro-property? anti-property? all you know is you want info to be free. Yet your entire little GNU project rests on copyright. The GNU dudes don't "uncopyright" their works at all; they retain their copyright and use it to force others to accept certain terms. And you permit, and don't permit, certain uses, just like any other copyright holder.


 * Had my article failed to have the copyright notice, would you still be whining that my work is "copyrighted"? Do I have some moral duty to figure out how to force publishers of my work to adopt my own pet views about IP law? To "re-word" it for accuracy, I suppose you could say, "It is interesting to note that this author opposes copyright yet he lives under a tyrannical state which has laws he did not choose that give him a copyright in his own work, and there is not clear evidence showing he has taken the heroic step needed to release his copyright into the public domain." That would be more accurate, but boring and irrelevant.


 * Posting a copyright notice is like posting a "no trespassing" notice. To assert that private property does not exist, or is unjustified, and then to post a "no trespassing" sign is contradictory. True, the property would still be private without the sign, but posting the sign reinforces the claim of ownership and the implicit determination to prosecute violators. How's this: "It is interesting to note that this author opposes copyright yet does not release his copyright into the public domain." That seems succinct and acurate. -Willmcw 21:25, Apr 20, 2005 (UTC)