Talk:Randall Dale Adams

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Motivation for Adam's prosecution

"Harris was an unsatisfactory suspect to police because he was 16-years-old and under Texas law could not be sentenced to death" Although this seems to be likely - probably the single most likely explanation for the decision to prosecute Adams, if indeed there is a single explanation - I don't see how it can be stated as fact. Shouldn't this statement be qualified as being speculative? Edjack 23:07, 11 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I qualified the statement. I think the possible police motivation needs to stated. However, it was too strong a statement as written. --Danras 17:40, 13 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Analysis of possible copyright violation

Based on my research, WP is the originating site and the conflicting text is under CC-BY-SA. I believe the copyvio edit should be reverted.

The conflicting text is the first part of the third paragraph under "The Case", and AFAICT only that. It was added to the WP article by Danras, probably aka dan@victimsofthestate.org, on 11 April 2007. The page at victimsofthestate.org linked in the problem report has no entries on archive.org. However, the home page of the site does have history there. The earliest entry is on 14 September 2007 and contains the text at issue. Both articles link to a far more extensive article at northwestern.edu, but that article contains no text resembling the text in common between the WP and victimsofthestate.org articles AFAICT.

Nothing was posted to the article discussion page, and no specific information was given other than the link to victimsofthestate.org, so I am forced to depend solely on my analysis to determine the details. If victimsofthestate.org has claimed precedence and copyright violation by WP, I have no way of being aware of it. The heading in the "Copyright problems" article mentions "CorenSearchBot reports", so this appears to be an automated report awaiting investigation.

I am also unable to find the text in question on any other web site, except for a single case where it is quoted in a posting on a forum.

I understand that Danras has been cited for copyright issues in the past and that his cross-posting between WP and victimsofthestate.org has been cited as not providing adequate permission.

In this case, however, it appears that the WP entry precedes the victimsofthestate.org entry, and thus WP is the original website, and the CC-BY-SA license was established here prior to the text being put on victimsofthestate.org.

If further information is available, I'm interested. I have no particular interest in the fate of the article; I only happened upon it because I watched The Thin Blue Line tonight and tried to track down the problem.

Paleolith (talk) 07:42, 13 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Unforunately, there is no positive proof that the Wikipedia article predates the victimsofthestate entry. The earliest archive.org record dated September 14, 2007, shows a vast and already fully populated website.

While everything seems to point to the fact that Danras is indeed the author of both texts, attempts to contact him back on this matter have not produced any results.

As we operate on a strict precautionary principle on copyright issues, the material has been rewritten. MLauba (talk) 12:59, 17 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Copyright problem removed

One or more portions of this article duplicated other source(s). The material was copied from: http://www.victimsofthestate.org/TX/indexDA.html. Infringing material has been rewritten or removed and must not be restored, unless it is duly released under a compatible license. (For more information, please see "using copyrighted works from others" if you are not the copyright holder of this material, or "donating copyrighted materials" if you are.) For legal reasons, we cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or published material; such additions will be deleted. Contributors may use copyrighted publications as a source of information, but not as a source of sentences or phrases. Accordingly, the material may be rewritten, but only if it does not infringe on the copyright of the original or plagiarize from that source. Please see our guideline on non-free text for how to properly implement limited quotations of copyrighted text. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously, and persistent violators will be blocked from editing. While we appreciate contributions, we must require all contributors to understand and comply with these policies. Thank you. MLauba (talk) 12:59, 17 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]