Wikipedia & Tor & ... moderators?

[Matthew Seth Flaschen]

Anthony DiPierro wrote:
> On 12/25/05, Matthew Seth Flaschen <superm40 at comcast.net> wrote:
> 
>>One important issue is copyright.  It
>>is necessary to ensure that you comply with the terms of the GFDL and
>>avoid copyright infringement.  The easiest way to do so is to clearly
>>inform users of the "Wikipedia-proxy" service that contributions are
>>released into the public domain.  This means you are free to post them
>>to Wikipedia (or anywhere else...).
> 
> 
> It should be noted that many countries do not allow their citizens to
> release copyrighted works into the public domain.  And, in fact, most
> of these same countries don't allow their citizens to waive their
> right to attribution.
> 
> So if you're going to do this, you're better off attributing the
> content to the people who wrote it.
> 
> Anthony
> 
> 

As I said, I'm not going to do this.  But for anyone that does: You're 
right that some countries don't technically allow PD release (US 
included).  However, if someone saw a notice that they were doing so, it 
would be very difficult to sue the service later.  Just in case, the 
notice could add that if public domain release is impossible, you 
"irrevocably grant all your rights to it, including the rights of 
reproduction, distribution, transmission, use, and modification." (based 
on the text Wikipedia uses for this purpose). However, the lawsuit would 
be especially difficult considering the plantiff would have to prove 
they were the anonymous user who wrote it, which is theoretically very 
difficult if they're using Tor.  Similarly, they should be attributed 
simply as an anonymous Tor user, which is all the service operator knows 
anyway.

-Matt