a) Copy and attribution of my original proposals by a supposed “guru”, not exactly “copvio”.

b) Use and promotion of those “original” proposals of the guru by him and two friends (administrators) in the Extremaduran Wikipedia – instead of using or promoting third party, “general knowledge” works -, taking it as a basis for the building of the whole encyclopedia, and obvious lack of sources or proper citations for that works used and referred to. Not uncommon in the Net, no legal violation, no “copvio”, but obviously not a legitimate use either.

c) Wikipedia trademark (implied) support to such (mis)uses: which is the real striking problem here, as Wikipedia and all the projects backed by Wikimedia supposedly represent a completely different concept of copyright, copyleft, knowledge redistribution, etc.

Is it really worth it for Wikimedia to support the content of the Extremaduran Wikipedia with its trademark, and to stand by the side of those three friends who work on it, without controlling them at all, just to get higher numbers in terms of Wikipedia languages and articles? I don’t think so.

pls make sure then when you say “It was written down in a Wiki” you can show the wiki.

Sorry for the long post you had to read, but the link to the Wiki – and the “history” tab in it, for september 2006 – was and still is in the post.

In case of a court trial you still have to demonstarte (…)

“In case of a court trial”, I could perfectly copy the whole Wikipedia content and any other content from Wikimedia projects, copyright it, attribute it to me as original work and publish it in books in almost any country, and you would have a very tough time “demonstrating” that I made something illegal, that what I copied was actually copyrighted and not just “general knowledge”, etc… I think the concept involved here – and generally in the web when talking about “legal” matters – is not strictly legality, but legitimacy. Their use is illegitimate, and they use the Wikipedia (and Wikimedia) trademarks to support and promote it.

Thank you anyway for your time. I didn’t even expect Wikimedia to answer an external complaint, not to talk about carefully examining the facts – and important questions regarding small Wikipedias – involved.

The wiki had a license… they all have one. And if you published it there before it got to the current PDF…

Get me right, I’m not trying to be negative, just trying to explain how sometimes things go with copyrights.

Dictionary definitions are NOT copyrighteable, AFAIK. The collection of couples (expressions + definition) is. You cannot copyright the word “dog”, and/or even its explanation. They both existed before you did. Even the idea that a peculiar definition could be copyrighted will be hard to defend (but youy definitely want to hear a patent lawyer about how things are in your country, this *may* be variable).

You surely can copyright the full collection. That is, if I take EXACTLY THE WHOLE of your work and your work is licensed, then I have to apply the license. Even if the single pairs cannot be copyrighted.

You can surely copyright a script, although I cannot imagine anyone using a script that would force him/her to add a “used by kind permission of ‘author’s_name_here’” at the bottom of each phrase he/she types on skype using that script. It’s simply not practical.

Anyway, I quite doubt that you can consider it as “copyrighted” just because you published on a PDF and added a license to it. In case of a court trial you still have to demonstarte that you DID invent it yourself (and therefore have the right to license it).

I will not enter into the emotional matters that obviously stand behind the subject at personal level from all sides. This is your language, so you guys should know better.

Anyway, if after checking with a lawyer you find that a copvio is really there you should apply for deletion. If the local admins won’t hear you, you should go to meta and ask the stewards.