[BC] WOWO

[RichardBJohnson at comcast.net]

Wikipedia has people from all over the world who “interpret” US Copyright Laws in strange ways. At one time, I wrote Wikipedia entries for every named waterbody in the five major river systems in Massachusetts. I would do several each weekend and took pictures, etc. Since one of my hobbies was hydrology, I used the correct verbiage for the start of a river (head) and the end of a river (mouth). Others would use the river “rises” at Foo Pond, and empties into Bar River, not the correct terms at all. Naturally, I provided the correct US government produced references. Here is an example of my work that hasn't been hacked too much by others. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wachusett_Reservoir

Every one of the articles that I wrote using the correct verbiage were deleted for “copyright violations,” because, it was so claimed, I used the same words as in the cited references. Remember that, now, if you write a technical article and cite technical references, you cannot use technical words!  The solution was to delete all the references so that a so-called administrator, and self-appointed legal expert, could not find the information I “copied!” It was too late for about 50 articles, but I saved the rest.

Photographs cannot be used unless the photographer assigns them to the GPL License, using the Wikipedia-provided Web entry form. Photographs assigned to the “public domain” are not accepted because somebody claims that there is no such thing in some countries. For instance, some countries claim that anything not owned by a person, is owned by the state. Therefore, the person cannot give it away because the state does not want unsolicited gifts. It is all quite complicated when one deals worldwide with some strange interpretations of some strange laws.

Cheers,
Richard B. Johnson
Book: http://www.AbominableFirebug.com/

----- Original Message -----
From: "Tom Bosscher" <tom at bosscher.org>

So someone made a Wikipedia page 
of a radio station here in Michigan, and they used my picture, giving me 
credit. Proper, and I'm happied up. But Wikipedia threw a fit, saying 
that the picture could not be used. I emailed the folks at Wikipedia and 
told them that the author had my express approval to use the pictures, 
but Wiki said no. That site and how it is controlled gets stranger by 
the day.