A media organisation has copied some of my Wikipedia contributions outside the terms of the CC BY-SA 3.0 License -- no attribution, no share-alike, and they have even added their own copyright statement with a "no unauthorised copying" notice.

I have written to them, giving them some time to come into compliance, but with threats of a compensation claim if they fail to do so. I very much hope that they will choose the compliance route, so that they learn how to make proper use of Wikipedia material in future. The Wikipedia project consciously chose a licence which allows commercial use (even though licences with a "non-commercial" restriction are available), and it is great if companies avail themselves of it. However, the terms are very clear -- there is even a "human-readable" summary -- and they need to be complied with. It is not rocket science.

I could add {{Backwards copy}} on the relevant talk page, but I will spare them that. Anyone encountering the material in question can easily verify the direction of copying by comparing the date of the external media article with the date of my contributions.


(Please note -- the above notice is entirely outside the scope of the No legal threats policy, which seeks to avoid threats that disrupt the Wikipedia editing process by creating a chilling effect on other editors. There is no reason to believe that the media organisation in question is connected with editing Wikipedia.)