swa66 - 9:51 pm on Sep 26, 2007 (gmt 0)

One thing that happens disturbingly often on Wikipedia is that contributors regard it as totally okay to steal material as long as it's rephrased.

Copyright law protects the words, the images, the expression, the "art", not the ideas, not the information itself, not the research. The information, the facts, etc are free to be copied.

E.g. painting of an apple is copyrighted, but you can still make your own painting of an apple, no problem. You however cannot copy the other painting on a photocopy machine and start selling those copies.

Generally it's considered good practice to mention sources, but the law is silent on such things as far as I know.

Patents protect ideas, but e.g. software patents are next to nonexistent outside the US.