Requests for comment/Resolve massive copyright infringement on Wiktionary in Esperanto
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Robin van der Vliet reported in a discussion in the Kompetuko channel on Telegram that the Esperanto version of Wiktionary is full of material illegally imported from the Plena Ilustrita Vortaro de Esperanto (PIV) and Reta Vortaro (ReVo).
Here is the original statement (in Esperanto):
Sed mi persone ne tre rekomendas, la kvalito de tiu projekto estas vere malbona, kaj en ĝi nun ankaŭ troviĝas multaj artikoloj kontraŭleĝe kopiitaj de PIV/ReVo. Mi mem jam plene rezignis pri ĝi, mi pensas, ke estas pli bone fokusiĝi je la plibonigado de ReVo
Additional information were also povided that confirm that they are issues of regular unlawful contributions.
Some action need to be performed, like:
- removing corresponding material
- evaluate possibility to regularize the situation through a demand to license the original works into a compatible license and update involved pages to bring proper credits
In any case, first steps can be:
- list affected material of suspected infringement
- involve the Esperanto Wikitionary community to
- see what can be done together
- asses the actual state of situation,
- see what we should do if any action indeed need to be done
Indeed, so far this issue only goes by the suspected copyright infringement given the input of Robin. But it should also be taken into account that there are some material that ReVo used in it's initial release (1997) which is explicitely taken from Plena Vortaro (PV), which was already in public domain by then. ReVo itself is under GPL.
PIV also derives from PV, with a first release in 1970. It's released under full raw copyright for now.
Following is a list of of some examples of copyright infringements (at time of report), as opposed to something that was legally taken from PV and also appears in PIV and ReVo because they have this common ancestor. Thanks to Taylor who reported these examples, and already took care of many other of similar issues.
- https://eo.wiktionary.org/wiki/nobela https://vortaro.net/#nobelo_kd (can be found in PIV, cannot be found in PV)
- https://eo.wiktionary.org/wiki/teknologio https://vortaro.net/#teknologio_kd (can be found in PIV, cannot be found in PV)
That said, even if there was no copyright infringment and that all copied material came from the public domain PV, the work should be properly credited on each page using it. Not only to comply with law, as PV was edited in France where the droit d'auteur includes attribution without duration limit even for public domain works. But a will to give credit to authors and ability to trace information sources for our audience should be enough of a reason to make that happen, as it all comes to respect of human dignity which is hopefully still a core value of our community.