basicmusic.net noncompliance

Sascha wrote:
>http://basicmusic.net/MusicianDisplay.php/musn/11
>
>is an exact copy (except for the deletion of a comma) 
>of the wikipedia John Cage article from 14 April 2003:
>
>http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=John_Cage&oldid=939939
>
>But notice how sneaky! They simply added their own first paragraph.
>....

Yep. That is blatant and needs to be either taken down or fixed. However it is 
my understanding that unless you are a significant contributor to any of 
those articles you do not have the authority to send a takedown notice to an 
ISP (anybody can send compliance reminders though). And even if you were a 
significant author of one or more of the articles, your authority would only 
extend to those articles you significantly contributed to (but that may be a 
moot point; the ISP would probably pull the plug on the whole website since 
that would be the easiest - and most prudent - thing for them to do).  

Thus I think there is a need for Wikimedia to obtain a registered collection 
copyright on the set of articles copied. Then an official Wikimedia 
representative can send out the take-down letter.

So I do agree that this has progressed to the ISP take-down letter stage, 
however I'm pretty sure no one person can legally do that yet (at least for 
all the copied content). In the meantime you may want to find the major 
contributors to many of those articles and 1) tell them about the copyright 
violation and 2) ask them to let you contact the ISP on their behalf. But 
that still may need copyright registration (or is that only needed before 
bringing something before a court?)

IANAL so I would like to hear what a lawyer has to say (even off the record). 

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)