I just read about this on the New Scientist web site. The copyleft is the strange cousin of a copyright and it sort of a movement supporting the complete sharing of thoughts and writings. It certainly puts plagiarism in a different light.
http://www.newscientist.com/hottopics/copyleft/

The article mentions the Wikipedia (http://www.wikipedia.com), which is basically an online encylopedia to which anyone can contribute. If you see an article that's missing, or needs correcting, you can go ahead and change it. It's fairly new, but growing fast and the creators are hoping that it will turn into a huge, respectable resource.

But who checks to make sure what is being altered is right. Just take the evolution of man for example. Different scientists have different views as to where exactly we stem from.

After a display I saw the other day which was so disgusting I won't even try to describe it, I'd say that it had been fairly conclusively proven that we come direct from primordial slime without having either passed "Go" or collected 200 [name your currency unit] ...

[sigh] a familiar theme.

But who checks to make sure what is being altered is right.

Well, I guess everyone and no one. It's grasping the anarchy that is the internet and taking it to a new level by trying to make something for the public good. Being an encyclopedia they would want to incorportate all views on something, I think, but the veracity of certain facts is based on letting people who know provide the right answer. It all rides on courtesy really, so if it doesn't work, I guess it tells us something about ourselves. It's a study in sociology, somehow similar to this place.