User:Carrite/History of copyright enforcement at Wikipedia


 * The following historical essay has been written in conjunction with the Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) case before ArbCom in February and March 2013. It is intended to provide information about the evolution of Wikipedia site policy so that specific violations considered in that investigation may be judged more accurately by their historical context.

Introduction
At its inception Wikipedia was a dual entity — both a pioneering project walking untrodden ground while merely the latest permutation of centuries of encyclopedia-writing. The massive body of copyright law, ethical standards, and publishing best practices which had been developed over generations briefly collided with an emerging technology (the Wiki markup system) and the revolutionary new idea attached to it (mass co-authorship of an online encyclopedia).

For a short interval of time Wikipedia's formal site rules and commonly accepted editing practices clearly lagged behind accepted norms of ethics and best practices of the professional publishing world. The problem was first formally identified by the initial drafter of the document which became Wikipedia's Plagiarism guideline, the late Franamax, who wrote in June 2008 that

"Large portions of articles have been directly copied from PD sources in the past. For instance, Encyclopaedia Britannica 1911 was used as a source to build many articles in 2002. These articles were noted by use of the { {1911} } template.

"At a certain point in the development of Wikipedia, we welcomed new content no matter what the source. This is no longer the case. As a mature encyclopedia, we now insist that all contributions are properly attributed. (shaky ground here, just putting it out there)

"It is quite likely that many other articles consist of text directly copied from other sources. If you find examples of this and they are not attributed to the source, do something - either attribute the text, change it or flag it with the xxx-template so others can deal with it."

Much residual writing on Wikipedia dating from this early period remains problematic if carefully examined through the prism of ethical propriety or professional standards for attribution of words and ideas.

Moreover, beyond such ethical improprieties lies the law. Wikipedia is not a sovereign entity independent of the national copyright law and the international copyright conventions to which its host country, the United States of America, is a party. No matter how deficient were its own formal standards and practices regarding copyright and plagiarism at any moment in the site's infancy, Wikipedia has never been above the law. Legal standards rather than changing site policy and guidelines are the key component in determining the acceptable limits of site content.

That said, a historical overview of the evolution of copyright and plagiarism rules at Wikipedia can offer important insights as to whether this or that edit from early in site history was made in good faith. This essay attempts to review the evolution of site institutions, policies, and guidelines with respect to plagiarism and to provide a tool to determine edits made at any particular date conformed with accepted site practice at the time — larger issues of legality aside.

"Sangerpedia"
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