Talk:Acts of the claimant

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• This article clearly takes portions of its text from existing sources. If these sources are public domain you should state that somewhere. If this is an original text from a law or something, it probably belongs on WikiSource instead. You should at least cite your quoted sources. Wickethewok 17:43, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

OK let us take this one step at a time. Wiki is not supposed to be original work so, of course, you will find elements of the text elsewhere. That is as Wiki is intended to work. The element you have highlighted is a case reference and a portion of the judgment made by Lord Reid. Every single case description made in Wiki will take words from the judgments of cases, That is how the system of judicial precedent works. This case citation and the thousands of other cases I have cited on Wiki, acknowledges Crown copyright in the judgments and, by implication, acknowledges the copyright held by the law reporters. In this instance, you have googled that the Examining Board also takes word for word from the judgment and acknowledges it just as I have done. What do you want me to do? I cannot help it if an examinaing board sets an examination question based on the same words used in a judgment. To avoid your unhappiness, I will reparaphrase the words of the judgment but I invite you to research the methodology of writing law articles before you jump in with allegations of copyright violation again. David91 18:13, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

I have now rewritten the description of the judgment you seem to think was a violation and restored the balance of the text to the /temp page where I can carry on expanding the article later today. However, I emphasise that every single law article everywhere endlessly recycles the same terms of art and words from judgments so you had better get used to the idea of seeing hundreds of hits on every search engine for some of the more obvious phrases. David91 18:31, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

• As long as you are taking care of it. Wickethewok 18:32, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

I am sorry. What does that mean. I took the words from a published judgment and I made a proper citation. Please state clearly what I needed to "take care of" so that I can avoid offending you again. David91 18:41, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Copyright tutorial

So that all authors may state the law from a case with certainty and predictability, we all identify the ratio decidendi and then either quote it or paraphrase it accurately without substantially changing any of the words used by the judge, i.e. we all go back to the original source and acknowledge that fact by the relevant in-line citation which is the full name of the case as it appears in the law report and the unique page reference number. It should therefore not surprise anyone when they find a ratio quoted successively in multiple sources. The more significant the case, the more often other authors will have cited it. But, let us assume that I had simply copied the words from the site Wickethewok identified. Having now examined the URL given, the probable overlap is about 70 words. Before I had identified the alleged infringement, I asked on Wickethewok's talk page: "As a matter of interest what word or words is it suggested are copied from the source you identify and what proportion of the whole do those words represent?" I have not received a reply.

There are 4621 words on the page identified. The possible overlap was actually some 68 of those words. To be an infringement under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, a "substantial" number of words must be copied. This is both quantitative (and 68 from 4621 is not substantial) and qualitative i.e. like a plot twist or slogan in an advertising campaign (and there is nothing to distinguish these few words from any other words used as the examination questions). Thus, even if Wickethewok had been correct that I had copied from that site (whereas we had both simply used the same original source), the amount copied would not have been an infringement.

The procedure suggested at Wikipedia:Copyright problems is first to check with the uploading editor (which Wickethewok failed to do); secondly, to rewrite or remove the offending words to the talk page pending clarification (which Wickethewok failed to do). What Wickethewok actually did was, without warning, to blank an entire page of 1080 words which might have had 70 or so offending words on it. To show good will, I actually changed from a reported speech version of the judgment to a full paraphrase even though it was unnecessary but even that did not move Wickethewok to any more detailed explanation of what he/she thought that I had done to breach copyright. Then Wickethewok failed to list the page on the Copyright problems page with an explanation of the alleged problem. So, at every possible point in the process, Wickethewok failed to follow the relevant Wiki rules. The Wiki rules say that I have to assume good faith on Wickethewok's part, but he/she stretches patience to the limit. David91 01:22, 7 April 2006 (UTC)