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Copyrighted Article- Samuel Hui

I believe that the article was copied from http://en.allexperts.com/e/s/sa/samuel_hui.htm

Hi, thanks for checking out copyright violation. In this case it is not a copyright violation. experts.com mirrors wikipedia articles like in this case. See the link to Wikipedia on the bottom of the all.experts.com page. Garion96 (talk) 22:43, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
Oh,ok. I'll be more careful next time. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Frozen Mists (talk • contribs) 17:21, 29 April 2007 (UTC).

Image:Location of the BOTs.PNG versus Image:Location of the BOTs.png

Image:Location of the BOTs.png was created and tagged {{PD-self}} by Signsolid, but it is clearly based on Image:Location of the BOTs.PNG, which is GFDLed. Not sure what is the correct procedure here. Can the newer image be simply re-tagged, or should it be deleted?

I left a message at the user's talk page but there has been no response. Possible WP:SPA. —Kelvinc 10:25, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Any derivative work is necessary GFDL, even if the person did not about it (because otherwise they would have no rights to do anything with it at all, so it does not need to be deleted. That said, it's not a very good image. —Centrx→talk • 18:22, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Image:Paul_Keating.jpg

In an effort to avoid fair use images Paul Keating, somebody provided a photo of an artist's impression of the man. I'm not sure that it counts as a free image. Wouldn't the copyright belong to the artist behind the painting? We're essentially reproducing somebody else's art and claiming it as our own. --58.104.7.193 16:16, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Dar Williams

An editor identifying himself/herself as managment for singer Dar Williams has repeatedly been replacing a free image (Image:Dar-Williams-2004-07-18.jpg) with a copyrighted one (Image:DarW368BSheehan.jpg) indicating that this is being done at William's request. The editor appears to hold licence to the copyrighted photo. I have tried to encourage discussion here and have reverted the other editor a couple of times, but my edits have been reversed with out a direct response. I would like a third party, more familiar with these issues to take a look. Thanks. -MrFizyx 17:14, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm not going to act as a mediator between the two of you, but I noticed nobody actually bothered to explain to the editor/s what is going on. I've taken the liberty of doing that.--Pushsense 17:58, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
OK, I'm not sure that mediation is needed so much as some guidance. Anyway, thanks for your input so far. I've removed all images temporarily after some further consideration.[1] -MrFizyx 19:16, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Images uploaded by ParthianShot.

I have made report on ANI about the images uploaded by User:ParthianShot who may be committing copyvios. Regulars from here can take a look at the ANI report here and comment on the images. - Aksi_great (talk) 09:17, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

Derivative Works

I am currently working through the Australian novels category and have found quite a number of articles which are solely plot summaries. Apart from this being a problem in terms of original research does this constitute a copyright violation as a derivative work? For example, the article Obernewtyn Chronicles. If so, what is this best way to handle this problem, preferably without offending too many people? Should I start by posting the Unencyclopedic template, or should I list it as a possible copyright violation? baby_ifritah 05:29, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Consider the {{Plot}} tag. This presumes the plot is retold. If it is copied from promotional materials (check an online bookstore), it should be immediately removed. Notinasnaid 09:06, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

College World Series pages

It appears that a large number of our articles about the College World Series have been copied without attribution from the BR Bullpen, a site that permits copying of its contents, but only with attribution. I'm not sure whether the licenses can be made to be compatible, or whether they need to all be deleted, so I thought I'd bring it here in the hope that someone else can sort it out. The initial report about the problem, with links to an example page and the source page, can be seen here at Wikiproject:Baseball. -Hit bull, win steak(Moo!) 15:44, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Personal photo of merchandise of copyrighted figure?

Sorry if this is a stupid question, but...

I'd like to add artwork for the Wikipedia page on The Winslow (a character in Phil Foglio comics). Right now there's no depiction of the Winslow on that page.

I own a ceramic figurine of the Winslow, sold by Phil Foglio's company (Studio Foglio). If I just take a picture of that figurine, can I put that photo on the Winslow WP page? If so, just what copyright text should it have? I'm happy to surrender my copyright to the photo itself, but it's a photo of a representation of a copyrighted character. That sort of thing makes my head spin...

Thanks much for the help! -- Narsil 00:50, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Your photo is a derivative work of the copyrighted figurine. You could only use it under a "fair use" claim. Or you could contact the copyright holder and ask them for permission to license your image under a free license. When commercial interests are involved, copyright holders typically will not agree to release an image to the public domain or under the CC licenses, but the GFDL might work. The point with the GFDL is that while it is technically a free license, its requirements in practice severely restrict the commercial stand-alone use of pictures. (Because the whole text of the GFDL must be published together with the image. That de facto rules out for instance creating postcards from your GFDL-licensed image and selling those postcards.) It worked for me with Image:Babe Ruth statue.jpg. It might also be worth pointing out to Studio Foglio that their trademark-related rights on the figurine remain untouched by such a GFDL-licensing of the image. If you do contact them and do get their permission to license your image as GFDL, forward the whole e-mail exchange to permissions AT wikimedia DOT org. Be prepared, though, that the whole process of getting their permission might take months. (It did take five months for the Babe Ruth statue.) And it might fail altogether: they might not give their permission. HTH, Lupo 08:17, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
Thanks much! I'll try that. Phil Foglio is, by all accounts, pretty cool--he may just give permission to use an actual drawing of the Winslow from one of his comics. Regardless, I'll CC permissions when I contact them. -- Narsil 19:24, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Second opinion please

Image:Colaairport.jpg, this is an airport logo and as such should it not be under a fair use licence? Image:Columbiametroairport.jpg and Image:Colaterminal1997.jpg do not look like photos but more like an artists impression. The user has an ongoing problem with correct licences for images, see User talk:Florencebballer. Thanks. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 13:11, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Using public domain material as a starting point

Is there a policy on using public domain material to start an article? For instance, Peter the Hermit has a notice at the bottom, "This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.". Similarly a number of articles on books of the Bible (such as Second Epistle to the Corinthians) have a notice at the bottom "This entry incorporates text from the public domain Easton's Bible Dictionary, originally published in 1897." And I've seen quite a few other examples too.

The problem I have is that Wikipedia editors begin adding details here and there, and what we get is an article which is partly by the editor of the old document (Britannica or Easton's Bible Dictionary), and partly by Wikipedia editors. It looks like one of those student essays which is partly plagiarised.

My question is: is it Wikipedia policy to allow (or not allow) articles to be done like this? Personally I don't like it, because what we are left with is bunch of quotes from the old document, not properly cited. The notice at the bottom is insufficient (both for readers and editors) because it doesn't say which text is from the old document and which isn't. (If I submitted an academic paper saying "parts of this paper incorporates text from X", without properly identifying the parts, I'm sure I'd get a fail, and deservedly so).

I'd rather have a cut+paste quote from the old document (properly cited), separate from the text done by Wikipedia editors. But before I try pulling out the old document text (which is tedious work), I'd like to know what the policy is, if any. Peter Ballard 01:30, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

An academic paper is (usually) supposed to be all your own work, so you are expected to conspicuously identify any portion that are the work of others. By contrast, Wikipedia articles are supposed to be the works of many people identified inconspicuously through the article history. With public domain works, think of it as adding one more contributor who just happens to be long dead. Or put another way, I see no problem with building off of the public domain, which is what it is there for. Though personally, I think those in article tags should be used less and most attribution should be kept in the article history. Dragons flight 02:00, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
There's a another problem I've thought of: citations and verifiability. Take a look at the Peter the Hermit article: there's not a single citation. Because that's not how the Britannica writer wrote the article: instead all the references were (presumably) at the end. Plus the author was presumably an authority who we can trust. But now, the article is a mix of text from the Britannica author and text from anonymous Wikipedia authors. With this mix, all the details in the article are basically uncheckable. (Except by finding the 1911 Britannica article and reading that instead, but than why bother with Wikipedia text at all, why not just have a link to Britannica?) Far better is a cited article, so that the reader can see which facts come from 1911 Britannica, and which facts come from other sources.
Anyway, that returns me to my question: is there a policy discouraging this sort of "blanket citation"? (Which really says: "Parts of this article are from source X, but we don't know which parts".) I think there should be. Peter Ballard 02:22, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
Significant facts should be referenced, to Brittanica if necessary, to more fundemental sources if possible. Most encyclopedias rarely cite their sources, but such citations are a requirement for us, so adding specific citations should be an expected step in adapting such material for Wikipedia. Dragons flight 03:02, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
It is perfectly fine to start articles like this. The problem of having information that is not specifically cited line-by-line is a general problem any time references are put at the bottom of an article. Also, this is not a copyright issue. —Centrx→talk • 02:40, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

To include the text exactly as written, sans quotation marks, is plagiarism by any definition, regardless of whether the information is otherwise cited in any manner. It does not matter whether the text is copyrighted, public domain, or in Martian. I don't think the practice of using public domain encyclopedia articles as fodder should be encouraged for reasons of currency either.

Who can remove the {{copyvio}} tag?

Can anyone remove it? Or does the sentence Do not edit this page until an administrator has resolved this issue in the tag mean that only admins can decide whether it can be removed? - TwoOars (T | C) 09:21, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Also, could someone please check if what I did at the Ananthapura Lake Temple article is correct? Does the article in the present condition avoid copyright infringement? And do the earlier copyrighted versions have to be deleted? - TwoOars (T | C) 09:32, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Image:Grave Richard Sorge Memorial.jpg claims to be PD (with an incorrect PD-self tag, incidentally). The justification is "Source: Deutscher Militärverlag, after the end of the GDR all rights went to the public domain". Is this true? If so, what is the scope of this provision? jnestorius(talk) 01:01, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

The History of Ranching (Winn)

The article The History of Ranching (Winn) contains a very long copyrighted text, introduced with the notion "The following is Dr. Schmidt's account of her recovery of the Buck Winn mural. Please note though, Dr. Schmidt's account is copyrighted, but it is used here with her approval." I removed it with the reason "Removed copyrighted part (used with permission isn't good enough, it has to be released under the GFDL license or in the public domain)", but the original editor reintroduced it because he feels it is allowed. I'm no copyright specialist, so I thought it best to ask it here so people with more experience can decide if it is acceptable or not. I'll warn the other editor of this so he or she can reply as well. Fram 19:19, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

I removed it from the article and left a message on the discussion page there. Garion96 (talk) 19:33, 13 May 2007 (UTC)
I put up a response on the article's talk page. Basically it states that I'll contact Dr. Schmidt this week to get her to release the story as GFDL. Once that's done, I'll fix the article to readd the text and make sure that the story is somehow properly marked. --Brownings 18:16, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Living Person

I am wondering what people think about the stringent living person requirements on wikipedia. Basically this sometimes means that no photo is available on wikipedia for years because of a hypothetical, ie it might be possible to take a photo in the future. It might be, be we will have to wait a long time. US fair use law still applies. The extreme position that living person images are no good is more stringent than US law. There are a lot of encyclopedic pictures that do not compete with the primary source and are used in articles that get deleted unnecessarily (from a legal point of view). As this case point out [2] for scholarly purposes there really is a lot of leeway. I propose that the living person policy be modified so that once someone has made reasonable inquires and not found a PD photo it be allowed (providing of course it meets the other criteria). Custodiet ipsos custodes talk 19:57, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Since our goal is to create a free content encyclopedia, I agree with this requirement. Exceptions are possible of course, see J. D. Salinger. This is the wrong place to discuss that though. It's better to do that at Wikipedia talk:Non-free content, but it doesn't seem likely that this requirement will change. Garion96 (talk) 20:08, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
If you follow the line of your reasoning then why allow dead people or other fair use under more leneiant conditions. This contradicts the 'goal is to create a free content encyclopedia'Custodiet ipsos custodes talk 20:34, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Much of the hubbub over images of living people comes from copyright paranoia, in my opinion. Ultimately the question is: will our fair use claim hold up in court if someone decides to claim damages, when it is possible to obtain a free photo of the subject? Realistically, yes it likely would. But why risk it? Does a biographical article really need a photograph? Some say yes, some say no. Fair use is being strengthened throughout the US (someone recently posted some links that included a court cases that strengthened fair use to an RFA) but weakened here on Wikipedia, mostly because there is a loose consensus, at least among the editors who care enough to debate the issue, that its not worth the hassle to risk a copyright lawsuit to get an image into a biography. --Spike Wilbury 03:53, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

It's not copyright paranoia, it's a principle. We are supposed to create and collect free content, fair use is only allowed as an exception when an illustration is nessesary and no free licensed material can be produced to serve the purpose. We could legaly pretty much allow everyting and just take down images if and when we recieved a properly formed DMCA takedown notice, but that's just not what this project was created to do. --Sherool (talk) 12:24, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

(Falsely) claimed free licenses on coats of arms

I stumbled upon several images of coats of arms, where the uploaders claimed {{PD-Self}}, {{GFDL}} or perhaps {{PD-SerbiaGov}}; see [3], [4], [5], [6],... heck, a good part of the Category:Serbian coat of arms images. Are those deletable on sight? If so, under which WP:CSD criteria? If not, should they go to WP:IFD? Duja► 08:43, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Related question: if I intend to fix the problem by replacing free-license tags with an appropriate free use ({{Non-free symbol}} + rationale}}, are we anal on identifying the exact source? (I guess we are, but...): the nature of insignia and logos is such that the design is copyrighted, not any visual rendering thereof—identifying the exact source of the digital image is spurious, as the copyright still lies on the design, not on any digital copy of it, wherever it comes from. Duja► 08:43, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

I think we should be quite harsh (maybe not anal, but harsh) on non-identification of sources. Some coats of arms are legitimately presented on WP, some aren't. Some coats of arms are PD, others have to be treated as logos. We should ask uploaders to give us (and our reusers) the information necessary to distinguish between the different cases. Physchim62 (talk) 11:19, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Temp article and GFDL

Is it compliant with the GFDL to clean up an article through a temporary page? Since this way it look all the edits come from (usually) one editor, while the other original edits are deleted. Which still are in the hisory for admins of course but not for readers and mirrors. One example is Histiocytosis, and many other examples since this is the usual way of cleaning up copyvio's. Garion96 (talk) 10:16, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

I guess no one is going to weigh in on this.. but my understanding is that in cases of copyright violation, copyright law trumps the GFDL. So our responsibility to remove the violation from the article and its history is more important than maintaining the article history itself. --Spike Wilbury 03:47, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
If the text of the cleaned-up article is directly derived from the copyvio, then the "cleaned-up article" is not in fact purged of the copyvio and is still a copyvio. The question is how closely linked the text of the resulting article is with the text of the copyvio. —Centrx→talk • 06:10, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

multiple copyright images in an article

Hi - I only vaguely understand fair use so I stand away from images - I'm a bit concerned that this article makes use of multiple copyrighted images in a decorative fashion. I have been in conflict with this editor before - so any contact from me about the matter would be regarded with hostility. --Fredrick day 18:00, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Advised at Talk:Black Library gaming (Warhammer 40,000). —Centrx→talk • 06:26, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Edits made on a temporary page and the GFDL

I see someone else asked a related question above and got no response, hopefully this will be clearer. Circle Sanctuary was deleted on May 10th; it was restored today after conversation with the person who performed the deletion. Inbetweentimes, a temporary article was being drafted at User:Kim dent brown/Circle Sanctuary which had two contributors. The primary contributor has since started to merge those temp edits into the newly restored article; for GFDL compliance should I merge the two page histories to retain credit? -- nae'blis 16:00, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

In this particular case it makes no difference because the other person's edits are not substantial, i.e. they are not sufficiently original as to be copyrightable. In general, it is considered sufficient on Wikipedia to reference in the edit summary the page from which the text was merged. —Centrx→talk • 06:03, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

False license

I run into this a lot. People upload non-free images, and presume for some reason that they are free for use, maybe because they come from a press kit or promo package. While there may be room to accept that, they also often declare GFDL on those images. Which is clearly not the case. What's the proscribed action? - Keith D. Tyler (AMA) 06:44, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Tag with {{imagevio}}, or if it is clear enough tag it with {{db|some explanation}} for speedy deletion. —Centrx→talk • 06:47, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Are these images free?

I believe they are not, and that they are derivative works of copyrighted images. PrinceGloria disagrees with me. This issue is important since the images are used in templates, so fair use is not good enough. I would appreciate an outside opinion. nadav (talk) 13:22, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

John Niederhauser

I know nothing about these things, but I came across John Niederhauser and saw absolutely no sources, so I did a google search on some of the sentences. I came up with this from the worldfoodprize.org site[7]. The Niederhauser page appears to be a direct copy of that page with a few sentences moved around. I don't see any copyright notices on the world food prize page, but I don't know enough about these things to know if this is a problem. Can someone check into this for me (I'm normally just a lurker!) Thanks! --SGT Tex 19:29, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Yes, it is a copyvio. Copyright exists on Web pages even if not stated. I deleted the article. Good catch! --Spike Wilbury 20:10, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for your help! --SGT Tex 20:24, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Northern Naked-tailed Armadillo

All content on the above article since this revision seems to have been taken from http://www.msu.edu/~nixonjos/armadillo/cabassous.html. On the other hand, it's not verbatim (most sentences are mixed around), and there wouldn't really be many other sources for something this obscure; could someone more experienced in copyvio matters advise? Thanks -- simxp (talk) 21:04, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

That's copyright violation by virtue of being a derivative work. The revision you cite above is not; there's so little in it it's basically not possible for it to infringe since single sentences are not usually copyrightable, nor are hard facts and those few words are different to their equivalents on the webpage you mention. Interesting, the webpage is in fact available under a 'free' license. However, this happens to be cc-by-nc-sa, which is incompatible with being released under the GFDL (sa: share-alike) and is incompatible with Wikipedia's total free-use requirement since nc is 'non-commmercial'. I have reverted to before the infringing edit. Splash - tk 22:59, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

Question

I know it's common sense, but I'd like to have a technical answer. Why quotations are not copyright violations? When quoting, aren't you copying content? Or does it fall under "fair use"? If I quote Wikipedia's content, my work is not forced to be licensed under GFDL... Why? It's strange, because a small quotation mark seem to be able to "break" licenses! Thanks! --Neigel von Teighen 07:37, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Yes, it falls under fair use. A small amount of material may be used as long as it doesn't affect potential uses of the article as a whole. See GFDL#Commercial redistribution. nadav (talk) 08:16, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Interesting. It was a question I had for a long time and didn't know where to ask. Thanks! --Neigel von Teighen 08:21, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Zara Sheikh

Could I get a second opinion on this article. The first two paragraphs are taken from here but it's unclear if the celebforyou is a copy of Wikipedia (and the IMDB) or the other way round. THe third paragraph is copied from the INDB but again which was first. The last two paragraphs are from here. However, it appears that this is the same site that hosts Iman Ali which copied material from Wikipida. While the material is rather fannish I don't want to delete it if the other sites have copied Wikipeida. THanks. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 14:26, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

TV screenshot resolution

Over the past few days, I've seen a number of TV screenshots get axed for having too high a resolution. I want to avoid this happening in the future, but I can't seem to find the actual limits anywhere. So then, the question would be, what is the maximum allowable resolution for television screenshots?--Fyre2387 (talk • contribs) 19:21, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

I don't think there are any well-defined guidelines, but "as small as possible while still being able to read/understand it" would be a good rule. —Centrx→talk • 20:36, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

What if someone copies FROM Wikipedia, then adds THEIR copyright?

rediff.com has posted an article that includes substantial verbatim copy from a wikipedia page. Compare http://inhome.rediff.com/cms/print.jsp?docpath=//money/2007/jun/07tall.htm ("This will be world's tallest building") and Burj Dubai. The date on the Rediff article, and some of the copied text was posted on Wikipedia last month. I wrote some of it myself, some of my language is copied into the Rediff article, and today is the first time I've seen the Rediff article. This wouldn't be a problem, except the bottom of their article reads:

"(c) 2003 rediff.com India Limited. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed."

which sounds like a violation of GFDL.

I've searched Wikipedia and found scores of pages on what to do when a Wikipedia page violates someone else's copyright, but nothing on what to do when the reverse happens. Fredwerner 19:42, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Standard GFDL violation letter. --Spike Wilbury 20:48, 9 June 2007 (UTC)
I expect that the copyright is automatically added to anything on their site. I have a contact at Rediff and I'll ask him to insert a Wikipedia credit into the article. RussNelson 16:00, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

See here. Maybe, the copyright notice should read like this:

Copyright (c) 2003 rediff.com India Limited (this Modified Version)
Copyright (c) YEAR Wikipedia Contributors (Original Version [link])
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled "GNU Free Documentation License".

Note that I'm following GFDL section 4 instead of Wikipedia's recommendations. --Neigel von Teighen 07:49, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

Also, to figure it out who copied whom, looking at the page history of the Wikipedia page is useful. If the text was added all at once on some edit, it is more likely that it was copied from elsewhere onto Wikipedia, whereas if it was added a few sentences at a time, and then revised, etc., i.e. it was organically built up on-wiki, then it would be copied from Wikipedia to somewhere else. Also, you can use The Internet Archive to see old versions of other websites' pages, but a lack of results there does not mean that Wikipedia did not copy it. —Centrx→talk • 20:39, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

copyvio removal

Hi, what to do if someone (who is obviously not an administrator) removes a copyvio tag and reverts to the copyright-violating version ?

it happened on SSH Communications Security and i would like to know what to do 132.227.81.61 17:25, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

In this case, only one paragraph was from a copyright source, so I've removed it without affecting the rest of the article. However, users shouldn't remove copyvio tags without a clear explanation. You can address such issues here or at the Administrator noticeboard. Mindmatrix 18:46, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

Dual-licensing or similar

Once in a while editors contribute text that they have already published on other websites (I am talking about the real cases here, not the more common copy-paste edits). How does English WP handle such cases? I am mostly active at Swedish WP where the topic arises now and then, but I have never seen a very good solution to it. The most common idea seems to be to re-license the original website (or publication) under the GFDL. Thanks for any input. /SvNH 15:29, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

If you're the copyright holder, you can publish in all places you want with different licenses. There's no need to relicense everything to GFDL, the only necessary thing is that you actually want to have it in Wikipedia. Look here: "you retain copyright to your materials. You can later republish and relicense them in any way you like. However, you can never retract the GFDL license for the copies of materials that you place here; these copies will remain under GFDL forever." Hope it helps! --Neigel von Teighen 14:03, 9 June 2007 (UTC)
Thank you, that made things a bit more clear. In the case where the material has already appeared elsewhere, I suppose the editor would somehow have to prove that she/he is the copyright holder. Is there any standard procedure for this? /SvNH 01:27, 10 June 2007 (UTC)
There you caught me... For books and printed media, there are legal procedures to register your automatic copyright... I suppose that if a GFDL-ed webpage (for example, a WP article) has been copied/modified accordingly to the license, then you have followed GFDL section 4 and preserved all copyright notices, so it would be easy to know who made the original. --Neigel von Teighen 07:59, 11 June 2007 (UTC)
Ah, and something else: the History section should also help you to know who is the copyright holder! --Neigel von Teighen 08:03, 11 June 2007 (UTC)
Hmm, perhaps I should make myself a bit more clear :-) What I meant was the following
  1. I write a text and publish it on my website, (c) My real name.
  2. Later, I would like to include the same text in a Wikipedia article.
Then I would somehow have to prove that user:SvNH is the same person as the original copyright holder - otherwise the material would be deleted as copyvio (given that someone found my website). How do you do that? In case of images, something similar is done by sending an e-mail to certain Wikimedia adresses, but for text? /SvNH 08:38, 11 June 2007 (UTC)
It seems that you can place a notice on the article's talk page explaining that you are yourself but with another name :-) Maybe the answer you need are here: Wikipedia:Donating copyrighted materials#Granting us permission to copy material already on line and [copyrighted materials#Copying your own material from another source into Wikipedia]. --Neigel von Teighen 13:03, 11 June 2007 (UTC)
That is exactly what I was looking for. Thank you! /SvNH 20:01, 11 June 2007 (UTC)
Cheers! --Neigel von Teighen 11:01, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

How to mark content entered in line with the GFDL

After a discussion on its talk page, the article The Wide, Wide World contains now content from a project which has been designated there (at the bottom) as released under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. If this is OK,as I assume (but I wouldn't mind someone confirming), what is then the best way to mark this in the article itself. Thanks --Tikiwont 19:22, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

What evidence is there that it was released? The effective solution is to put a GFDL notice on the website or for the author to send permission to the Wikimedia Foundation. —Centrx→talk • 20:41, 11 June 2007 (UTC)
The notice is there - see the bottom of the content in question (not of the web site). --Spike Wilbury 20:52, 11 June 2007 (UTC)
Ah, okay. I would put a notice at the header of the talk page about it, basically saying "the text was copied from this website, which had a notice at the bottom of the page releasing it under the GFDL". —Centrx→talk • 06:24, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Well, its the firts time that I encounter someone actually adding such a notice on demand. So the question is, what should be onde inside wikipedia to make this clear. Is there a template to add to the talk page or should it be mentioned in the article itself? --Tikiwont 09:49, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

I think I found what you are looking for. Check out Wikipedia:Template messages/Sources of articles. Scroll down toward the bottom of the "General Sources" heading and there are a few examples for text you can place on the article Talk page when you copy material from a GFDL source. Hope this helps! --Spike Wilbury 13:21, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
Thanks, that is in any case an interesting page. The mentioned examples, however, are for specific sources and I also gather that listing on the talk page is not encouraged. So for the moment , I'll hope that the section on the talk page is clear enough. --Tikiwont 14:55, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Image copyrights and evidence of infringement?

Question for the audience, a situation I've seen a couple of now:

  • Contributor uploads an image under GFDL or another "good" license
  • Another user notices the same image on another website, and lists it as a copyright problem.

To taste, compound the issue with things like:

  • The other site has a (c) statement, but nothing specific about policies
  • The other site is a photo-sharing site, with a generic (c) statement for the whole site
  • The other site is a photo-sharing site, but does offer users the ability to set (c) statements per picture
  • The other site is an amateurish-looking website, with an admin name that resembles the Wikipedia user name

My understanding of (US) copyright law is that I have copyrights in the pictures I take, and that I can choose to license copies of them under any license I want to. The licensing actions are independent, and I have no obligation to inform anyone that the picture I just gave them as "(c) me, all rights restricted" is also handed out in another context as "(c) me, licensed under GFDL". Thus, my tendency would be to leave images that claim GFDL until there's a specific claim of copyright from some other source - "trust the user until proved untrustworthy".

What do others think? --Alvestrand 15:40, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

My position is that unless there is evidence that the two users are not the same person, the images should be assumed valid here under GFDL if that person specifies GFDL when they upload it here. If there is evidence that the two are not the same person, then the image should be treated as any other copyrighted image and require a fair use rationale, etc. --Spike Wilbury 17:50, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
Such situations should be resolved by asking the person the send an email to [email protected] confirming that they hold the copyright.Geni 18:50, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
I'm afraid I don't see "sending out an email" as *resolving* the situation. Sure, it helps (btw, you mean [email protected], right?) - but in the case of no answer, what do we do? --Alvestrand 15:31, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Lee-Hom Wang

I hope this is the right place to post this concern (I'm new - sorry!). Look at the history for the article Lee-Hom Wang and you'll see I reverted some stuff on June 11 (3 times) which was an edit replacing some existing article text with stuff copied directly from http://www.wangleehom.com/about/synopsis.htm (which is under copyright, as it says at the bottom of that page). I warned both the original IP and logged in user of the problem and why I had reverted it. Since then the text has reappeared again, and I don't want to just revert it carelessly because it's been somewhat edited since then.

I need some additional input on this, on whether it's had enough editing in the last few days to dissipate any possible copyright violation or not. I'm also concerned about the style and tone of the replaced text. It seems a bit biased (well it would be if it's based on something from the subject's own website).

So, just to be sure, I'm raising awareness of the article here. Anakin 21:40, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Wow, kind of messy. I would do the following:
  1. Remove text (again) that is verbatim or "close" to the source you cited.
  2. Issue a second warning to MindyMindy (talk · contribs) about copyrighted material - you don't have to use the template again, maybe just a note that you noticed the re-addition of the material and had to remove it again, and mention the possibility of a block if she continues.
It looks like there are a number of different IP addresses from the same area editing the article, so it will be hard to keep track of them. But, if you see the same one adding copyrighted material again, warn again. Also, the style and tone do need quite an overhaul, but that is really a different matter. I will keep the article on my watchlist as to back up any further issues. If another warning doesn't do the trick, I will block. --Spike Wilbury 21:59, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

I have put the {{copyvio}} template on the page, which aside from putting the article in a category (and if you follow the instructions listing it on this copyright problems page for later disposition) so that administrators are notified, it also is effective at deterring people from repeatedly replacing the copyrighted text. Legally, text that is sufficiently derivative from the copyrighted text is still under that copyright, so it takes more than you might think for a copyright violation to be "dissipated". Another problem with text copied from what appears to be the subject's own website is that it may be biased or written in a promotional manner. When was the copied text originally added and how different is the current text from that addition? I.e. Need More Info. —Centrx→talk • 06:36, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

State of California

Their web pages [8] carry the notice "In general, information presented on this web site, unless otherwise indicated, is considered in the public domain. However, the State does make use of copyrighted data (e.g., photographs) which may require additional permissions prior to your use." [& an exception for official seals, etc. " This makes most text & some photos suitable for WP, but how do we notify people about this so they a/know they can use the material and b/don't try to delete such use as copyvio when not justified (and similarly other states,etc, with similar policies) DGG 00:22, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

See #How to mark content entered in line with the GFDL and [9]. You have to be careful though to make sure that it is in fact in the public domain. —Centrx→talk • 06:26, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Suspect false claim of PD


These look like they are probably not public domain, but have been tagged as such. For the second one, [10] may be the source. What is the proper way to tag/list these for discussion? —Gaff ταλκ 19:18, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Ohio State Route 718 says "1938 - certified; no significant changes since certification." [11] says "Certified in 1938. No significant changes since certification." --NE2 22:59, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

I am not sure that one sentence copied from a multipage website is copyvio, but it would be easier to change the wording altogether than to ask the question: ""1938 - certified; no subsequent important changes "
A lot of articles are like that; it's not just a single article copying two sentences. I removed the ones that were exactly copied, but should ones that are minimally reworded like that be changed or deleted? --NE2 00:42, 16 June 2007 (UTC)
This is really an editing question specific to this series of articles, where the source for the similar data is the same in each case. As the source is worded consistently, the WP articles should also be worded consistently but differently. You are right that it matters more when its a whole series--but just pick a different style than the source's and stick to it. That's what the various people have been doing with articles on scientific journals, where a good deal of the information must necessarily use the same words the publisher uses. We have informally fallen into a more or less standard arrangement, that is different and emphasizes different things. But for this it isn't just copyright--we also don't want to look like advertising. It comes out sufficiently different -- so far no publisher has copied us. :)DGG 08:51, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

What is the copyright position on a low-quality image, captured from a copyrighted documentary on DVD (itself a compiliation of old newsreels from the 1950s), which is then graphically enhanced (sharper, more contrast, different background etc)? Is this still covered by the copyright on the DVD? Any ideas? Thanks. TraceyR 09:56, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

Are the old newsreels copyrighted? --NE2 00:45, 16 June 2007 (UTC)
That I don't know. They are from the UK (some from Movietone News) and cover the period 1949 to 1959. --TraceyR 08:36, 16 June 2007 (UTC)
Yes, they are. Movietone want 100 Gbp per image, but they didn't answer my basic question re the copyright on very enhanced screenshots. I imagine that they do fall under copyright, but that it would be difficult to detect and enforce! --TraceyR 14:02, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

I'm writing an article about transformation playing cards (playing cards where the pips are incorporated into a larger piece of artwork). I'd like to include images of several cards to illustrate the subject. Now, I have a small collection of these. If I combined several cards (say of the same rank) into a sort of collage, would that be sufficient for me to release the image under the GFDL, or would the original copyrights still hold?

If the original copyrights still hold, would this use be acceptable under fair use?

Alternatively, and probably preferably, there are many examples of these kinds of cards from the early 1800s. I'm reasonably certain that these images would now be public domain. Is there an easy way for me to determine this?

Thanks for your help. -Chunky Rice 05:04, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Anything published prior to 1923 is in the public domain; that is a bright line (some things after might be in the public domain), so definitely use those if you can. Your collage would have to be pretty darn original, so I don't recommend that. Depending on the situation, the use of some of the still-copyrighted could be fair use, but see Wikipedia:Non-free content. I recommend you just use the public domain cards. —Centrx→talk • 05:22, 21 June 2007 (UTC)
Sounds good. I assumed as much, but it's a shame because some of the more modern cards are really stunning. -Chunky Rice 05:28, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Possible infringement

List of deaths in The Sopranos series, in my opinion, is nothing but a derivative work of the series, created without permission. I didn't want to go through the "proper" procedure as I don't think it's as clear cut as plagarism or something. My opinion is based on the idea that the entire page, not only written in basically "in-universe" tone, is nothing but a list of plot events from the entire series. Not only is it indiscriminate in its list, listing the deaths of extras, but it holds no encyclopedic value to justify its use. If it was simply "John killed Bob in episode 'Blah'", then I wouldn't think it was a derivative work, but it lists details on how the characters die in each episode. I'm under the opinion that HBO (or whoever) own the rights to those events, and unless there is critical commentary accompanying their publishment, they are nothing but little plots. If someone can be successfully sued for publishing famous quotes from Seinfeld, I would think that detailed plot events, with no encyclopedic commentary to accompany, wouldn't be that far from the same thing. Plots are non-free material, and I don't think that simply detailing 1 scene, instead of the entire episode, negates that fact. What does everyone else think? Bignole 19:26, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Copyright does not extend to events, or to plots, or to facts about events or plots. Copyright is specifically about the form of expression, in this case the text—the words and sentences used, and textual derivations thereof. Unless the descriptions were themselves copied from elsewhere (or the entire formatting and organization of the table, i.e. the presentation were copied), then there is no copyright infringement. It may be a bad article, and the descriptions may very well be copied from elsewhere, but there is no copyright infringement if the issue is simply describing plots and events. —Centrx→talk • 04:39, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
But one cannot simply publish the plot of a copyrighted show. This happened with Seinfeld, where some guy published popular catchphrases and quotes. He was successfully sued over that. Bignole 11:05, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
"Catchphrases" and "quotes" are not the plot of the show, they are verbatim reproductions of the exact speech used in the show. If he had published a description of the plot, in his own words, that would not be copyright infringement. —Centrx→talk • 18:46, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

But the content is not original. The words may be, but the storyline itself is not. Otherwise, we could detail an entire movie without a problem. My problem with it is that there isn't anything other than the original storylines from the creators. I don't understand how CR doesn't extend to such things when such things would actually hinder the sale of said products. If I published a book that contained nothing but detailed plots of films, that's a potential hinder to the sale of those films, because people can easily read the book and not both watching the film that I was describing. Films, or novels, that are adapted from either's source (novels for films, films for novels) have to have the express permission of the copyright holders to publish such a work. I couldn't adapt Halloween III into a novelization without the permission of that film's copyright holders, because I would be creating a derivative work of that subject. Bignole 18:49, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

Bignole, you are discussing the wrong article. The article you are talking about gives the merest summary of the plot, just enough to put the item discussed into focus. It is possible to write about copyrighted material, and the description of what the characters are and what they do is not copyright. I assume you really mean to discuss the multiple articles on individual episodes of this and other shows? They might be much more realistically considered as a potential problem. Here the question is the extent to which the summary given substitutes for the purchase of the video or for purchase of a possible novelization, and so on. This is a matter of degree, and of interpretation. Centrx, could we perhaps move the discussion to this issue? DGG 02:31, 21 June 2007 (UTC)
That is another problem (and please, it seems both of you are assuming I am talking about another topic, I'm not. This is what I'm referring to currently), but I don't see how it cannot be considered some type of infringement when someone publishes a list of events that detail a copyrighted product. I can't republish a baseball game. I can say who won the game, but if I start listing individual plays of that game, that has to create some sort of CR problem when I'm not providing any new information to accompany it. I could understand if there was some sort of new information on that article, one which discussed in some sort of real world capacity the reaction, purpose, etc of these events. But this list (and many others) do not do that. They are simply a compilation of fictional events from a copyrighted show. It makes me think that I could theoretically publish a book that contained nothing but major events from the Star Wars films, nothing other than things like "Han Solo, after being tortured is volunteer for an experimental procedure and frozen in carbonite" for the entire book, and George Lucas couldn't do a single thing about it. DGG, you said "the article you are talking about gives the merest summary of the plot, just enough to put the item discussed into focus". The "merest" would be to say "John kill Jack". There isn't a summary of the plot needed to put it anything as simple as death into focus. If someone kills someone then the other person is obviously dead. Why is there a necessity for an encyclopedia to detail how exactly they killed that individual? Death is death, murder is murder. There is not confusion about it, so I don't see how there is an encyclopedic purpose that could justify the summary of said plot elements. Which is why I see it as an infringement on the rights of HBO, because there is not justification for including such detail into a list, which serves as nothing more than a substitution that reduces potential sale of said product.  BIGNOLE  (Contact me) 02:41, 21 June 2007 (UTC)
"Content", what you mean by that here, does not need to be original. It is perfectly legal to watch a television program and describe its plot, or state facts about events or characters or sets in the program. Copyright does not extend to ideas or facts or "content" in general. A reproduced dramatization, as in a theatre production, of the program would be a derivative work, an entire book--a fictionalization--based on the program would be a derivative, but one- or two-line descriptive statements are certainly not. Copyright is an exchange of a government monopoly in order to encourage creative work, but does not circumvent free speech; this is the case in the U.S. Code and in the relevant court decisions: facts and ideas are not covered by copyright. Do note that if you were to publish a Star Wars book you would run afoul of trademark protections, but if you simply produce a rather unoriginal book that has a lot of the same plot elements it is not a copyright infringement. —Centrx→talk • 05:18, 21 June 2007 (UTC)
Yes, but when you look at it as a whole, it's more than just "one or two lines". You're talking about something for the entire series. I'd only run afoul the trademark protections if I titled the book "Star Wars". But again, you're saying I could publish a book of plot elements and there's nothing anyone could do about that. I highly doubt that when you look at the cummulative work that it couldn't be considered a derivative work. That when you look at how it's doing this for an entire series, and not just for some random episode, that it's completely different. I would love to see someone publish that type of book without permission. It's more than "a lot of the same plot elements", it's the exact same plot element, with the exact same copyrighted characters. It isn't like it's being passed off as something else, which just happens to carry similarities. This is a page that is proudly exclaiming that it is a giant compilation of storys from a television show, and nothing more. When you are clearly stating that you are providing a list of stories from a copyrighted source, how does that not infringe on that show's copyrights? You aren't hiding what you are doing and trying to pass it off as something else. It isn't "a lot of the same", it's ALL the same. That means that everything they have is taken directly from that show, and they are publishing it as their own work. It boggles me that something like that isn't as clear cut, and mark my words, someone will get pissed that we are creating these types of pages as a why of getting around writing expanded plots and there will be a lawsuit that tests that "line" of how much you can actually have before you are doing nothing more than stealing information. Because this isn't about taken a couple lines of story, it's about taking a lot of them. DGG, discussion can now turn to television episodes.  BIGNOLE  (Contact me) 11:20, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Moved from project page

I performed a search in the Image: namespace for "for non-commercial use". The vast majority of the results are images where the uploader writes that the image is to be used only for non-commercial use, but then goes on to use a contradictory or improper image licence tag (usually {{GFDL}} or {{pd-self}}). We must err on the side of caution and assume that the licence terms the user typed himself override the template licence, which he may not have taken the time to read. I am therefore tagging these images with {{db-noncom}} or {{Non-commercial from license selector}}. However, since there are hundreds of these images, I can't do it all myself. Please help! Editors may also wish to try searching for similar strings. —Psychonaut 12:25, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

I've been working on these as well. – Quadell (talk) (random) 16:33, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Song Lyrics

What's the deal with song lyrics being used on Wikipedia? I guess a quote from a song is one thing, but listing them verbatim is something else? Any experts on the subject might be able to solve an edit war on Red Dwarf where there are differences of opinion as to whether the theme tune lyrics are fair game/fair use. Likewise with the other photos on there. Thanks in advance. Andymarczak 06:52, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

Art in the public domain?

I'm not an image expert at all, but I have the feeling that this image, claimed to be in the public domain, is in fact still copyrighted. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Picasso-LeReve.jpg is a painting from 1932, and the author (Picasso) only died in 1973. Can anyone confirm this? Fram 10:42, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

I have run into several articles which appear to have been dissertations that were simply uploaded to the encyclopaedia. Unfortunately, I cannot find evidence of such information available elsewhere via Google.

For example, the following snippet is in the Yagua article:

"...For the purposes of this dissertation, then, we will assume that..."

How is this sort of copy-paste job handled? --Aarktica 15:38, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Usually copy-paste jobs at the least make for bad articles, as they are usually unsourced, not neutral, not encyclopedic tone, etc., so I will delete it as such with the likely copyvio to boot. —Centrx→talk • 23:35, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Can someone help me with this case?

Hello.
I'm sorry if this is already explained, but I tend to miss details (especially if they're RIGHT in front of me, for some reason).
An image was recently added to the Nintendo DS Browser article, and it's listed as public-domain. The image is here. I didn't want to add a copyvio tag to it because I honestly don't know if it's a copyright violation or not.
On the one hand, the editor who uploaded it clearly created the picture himself. On the other hand, the image most prominently displays a copyrighted (copywritten?) program. (I realize the image is originally hosted on the commons, but I don't have a commons account, and I figured I should be able to ask here just as easily for an explanation of the rules on the subject)
So, what do you think? Bladestorm 17:17, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

There are copyright issues with both the program and the globe. It is a derivate of copywritten work and thus a copyvio.Geni 18:22, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
So... what do we do about it? Does this have to be handled on the commons, or both the commons and wikipedia itself? And, uh... how would one go about doing that? (I know. Me dumb. I don't suppose anyone wants to do it for me... ... *crickets chirping*...)
btw, thanks for the help. :) Bladestorm 18:28, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
I'm not so sure. The globe is definitely attributed (the whole point is that it's Wikipedia), so it should be legal reuse under the GFDL. I can't really support calling this a copyright violation. --Alvestrand 19:12, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
Well, the globe itself is an easy problem to fix. Since it's licensed under GNU, the image could also simply licensed under GNU, right? The bigger concern is the prominent display of the DS Browser software. It's arguably the featured content of the image. Bladestorm 19:17, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
The globe is not licsenced under the GFDL or the GPL or anything else. it is copyright the foundation and not under a free licsense.Geni 21:46, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
Frig... seriously?!? Is there a reason for that? (Seems kinda odd that a screenshot of 'the free encyclopedia' can't be used freely, even with attribution...) Bladestorm 21:56, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
basicaly the foundation wishing to keep control of it's logos.Geni 23:44, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

(outdent) Well, seems counter-intuitive to me, but I guess it doesn't really matter... Makes me wonder if Image:Wiki-en.png is a problem then? :) Bladestorm 00:02, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Apparently, it was. --Butseriouslyfolks 04:38, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Copy and Paste job from a Goverment site

The article for Romita seems to be a copy and paste job from the website listed at the bottom of the article. It comes from a goverment page. Is it kosher to be on Wikipedia? -LoserTalent 21:06, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

could you point to the specific URL it is a copy from? I don't know if the Mexican municipal government has the same policies as the US Federal Government - most US states are more restrictive than the feds. Unless there's a label somewhere on the site saying "public domain" (or equivalent in Spanish), my reaction would be "not kosher". --Alvestrand 21:20, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
Sorry. click under "Historia" and "Mas Datos"
I just found a second goverment page with the same info and a copyright notice at the bottom. What to do? :| -LoserTalent 21:42, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
I just took care of it. Take a look at the article to see what I've done. Thanks for finding that! --Butseriouslyfolks 04:33, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
Thank You! -LoserTalent 07:05, 27 June 2007 (UTC) 07:04, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Regarding {{PD-NigerianGov}}

Would like a second opinion on this, someone added an "accuracy disputed" tag to it aparently, but I can't find any previous discussion. Section k of the Second Schedule of the Nigerian copyright law reads[12]:

To me it just sounds like works by the government (and other secected institutions) can be used if they are in the public interest asuming no profit is beeing made. To me that does not equal "Nigerian government works are public domain" though, sounds more like a fair use-ish deal. Anyone here a bit more fluent in "legalese" care to take a second look and see if we should remove the disputed tag or maybe just delete this? --Sherool (talk) 15:46, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

This is clearly a noncommercial licence. Conscious 15:50, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
Thus, it is not compatible with GFDL. --Neigel von Teighen 10:04, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
Yes, this is not public domain. The person who made the template may have misunderstood it to mean that "The right...does not include the right to control...a work [made] by or under the direction or control of the Government". —Centrx→talk • 19:58, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Material released to the PD

I'm looking for information. The article Egyptian Association of Canterbury, Inc. (EAC) was recently blanked for a suspected copyright infringement. I have contacted the organization myself about it, and they emailed both me and the Foundation stating that all the material in the article is in the Public Domain, as well as leaving a statement to that effect here. Is this sufficient for me to revert the article to its pervious version? — Zerida 21:14, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

There needs to be some evidence on the website or elsewhere that it is public domain, rather than an anonymous username. Either that, or the EAC can send a statement to that effect to the Wikimedia Foundation. However, it doesn't matter: a page copied from the organization's website is not an encyclopedia article at all and should be deleted regardless of whether it the website is in the public domain. WP:NPOV, WP:V, and WP:COI are relevant here. —Centrx→talk • 00:37, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
So if I rewrite the article using other articles on organizations as a guide, that should work? — Zerida 01:25, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
Yes, but you do need published third-party sources. —Centrx→talk • 01:31, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Paragraph excerpts: verbatim, or derivative works?

Do pages containing excerpts of paragraphs from Wikipedia articles count as verbatim reuse or as derivative works?

As a concrete example, I am thinking of a website that defines terms by using paragraphs from the relevant Wikipedia article. Would the entire page be considered a derivative work (and thus licensed under the GFDL) or would only the excerpt?

Thanks in advance to anyone who can provide an answer on this! - Chris Wood 19:32, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Most likely it is fair use, so the terms of the GFDL would not be implicated and the resulting page would not be a derivative work. If it be not fair use, then the entire page would be considered a derivative work unless the excerpts were kept strictly separate from the original parts. —Centrx→talk • 19:51, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the info - much appreciated. - Chris Wood 13:51, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Image:Women_In_The_Shadows_Cover_1959.jpg

The uploader of this book cover, User:Moni3, included a copy of the book's back cover blurb on the Image page. I reverted this as a copyright violation. I have no problem with the use of the book cover as a fair use image for an article about the book. Moni3 claims that the company which published the book is out of business, and therefore the copyrights are expired. She also told me on her Talk page that she had an email from the author of the book that the quote can be used. Could someone please advise? See This discussion. Corvus cornix 16:21, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

You were correct to be cautious but there is a high probability that the work has fallen out of copyright. Works published in the United States in 1923 through 1963 with a copyright notice are now in the public domain unless the copyright was renewed (which is about 7% of the time for books). My source for this information is here. I would default to allowing the material unless there is a complaint. --Spike Wilbury ♫ talk 16:33, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
OK. I apologize to User:Moni3, then. Corvus cornix 16:36, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Talk:Alan Feduccia

Alan Feduccia is copied from EvoWiki, which uses Attribution, Non-Commercial, Share-Alike. Is that compatible with GFDL? Corvus cornix 17:20, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

It's incompatible, commercial use must be allowed. Conscious 17:58, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
Thanks, I've listed it for speedy deletion and let the editor know. He/she thought that might be the case. Corvus cornix 18:09, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

First International Conference on Neoplatonism and Gnosticism

User:LoveMonkey has posted long excerpts from a copyrighted text on First International Conference on Neoplatonism and Gnosticism. These were originally added as one extended quotation. After this was removed for the second time, it has not been added back in full, but large sections of it are now quoted in notes 4-11, amounting to c. 1000 words total or two pages in my browser. The user posting the material argues that this is justified as fair use. Similar long quotations were posted on the article's talk page; I removed these and they have not been restored. I'd appreciate it if someone could verify whether the article as it stands complies with copyright law. EALacey 16:51, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Quite apart from the legal questions of how much we can quote (on which I have no expertise to give you; I hope somebody else does), I note that the footnotes you mention are not explicitly indicated to be quotations. This is a patent failure to give intellectual credit where due; any quoted text should be in quotation marks or italicized and explicitly credited. Doops | talk 19:01, 7 July 2007 (UTC)
there is no fixed standard. There's a convention among scholarly presses that under 300 words or so is a safe harbor. This is more than that, and it serves no purpose in the article that would not be served by a much more selective quotation. I think it might still technically meet the 4-point general test, but it is at best dubious.DGG (talk) 03:20, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Copying and linking to review websites

In Birtles Shorrock Goble, the article creator has copied into the article the full text of album reviews from other websites: [13], [14], [15]. He justifies this by saying that the review URLs are linked in the footnotes. My understanding is that it's still copyright violation, even if the links are provided (fair use would be okay if snippets were quoted, but not the full text). Is this correct? -- Hongooi 00:57, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

You are altogether correct; normally the simplest course of action would be simply to reduce the quotes to a snippet: a few words are enough to give the key judgment. But in this case I also wonder if the review source is considered reliable for the purpose. "We aim, wherever possible, to allocate review DVDs to reviewers who actually like (or think they will like) the content, or have other versions of the DVD to compare with. We feel that the majority of readers who are reading one of our DVD reviews do in fact themselves like the DVD's content, and so are more interested in reading about the technical aspects of the DVD rather than reading about the merits of the content itself." [16] DGG (talk) 03:09, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
As the article creator, thanks for your advice. Your comments and changes are noted and accepted. Having spent considerable time writing and referencing the article, I was probably too close to it and needed a neutral perspective. Re the MichaelDVD reviewers' policy, I think it is fairly common across the critics industry to allocate reviews to someone with an interest in the subject matter. Regards, WWGB 04:57, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Aeromarine West Indies Airways

This article has been copied from History of "Aeromarine"... and was deleted twice as a copyvio. However the editor in question has left this comment on my talk page. Could someone review this and comment. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 21:07, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

What to do if I don't have an URL?

The user uploaded 5 images and released them under PD as his own work. I found sources of 3 images and tagged them. It is quite obvious that the remaining 2 photos are stolen, but I can't find the source. What do I to? --78.0.68.194 08:52, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Report them to WP:PUI. Explain your situation — it's not uncommon at all. Let me know on my talk page if you need any help. Thanks for keeping an eye out on this. — Rebelguys2 talk 09:07, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Logos

Image:London bridge house estates bridgemark.gif is a "fair use/used with permission" logo --- but the thing is nearly 300 years old. It's actually public domain (though possibly trademarked?) at this point, right? WilyD 18:26, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

What's 300 years old, the GIF? :) That's what we have to consider. In this case, someone created that logo, so it is copyrighted. They cannot give permission just to use it on Wikipedia. Hence, it can be deleted under Criteria for Speedy Deletion, I3. --Spike Wilbury ♫ talk 19:07, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
The GIF isn't, but the logo is. The guy who created the logo died in 1716 - even if he drew it rather than photoshopped it ... the logo's fair use anyhow, with rationale, so there's no applicability of speedy-ing. But faithfully copying a logo doesn't renew an otherwise invalid copyright, right? Or do I have to produce an (identical) image for it to be copyright free? This seems bizarre to me. WilyD 19:18, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
The logo doesn't matter. What matters is that someone recreated it, and that recreation is copyrighted. We can use it if they release it under a free license. There is no valid fair use rationale because since the logo itself is in the public domain, someone could always take a picture of the logo or recreate it under a free license. --Spike Wilbury ♫ talk 19:21, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

This is an interesting case. Obviously the underlying design isn't copyrighted. Is the GIF? It depends on whether the creator of the GIF added any new "creative content" to the image, or merely copied it. If the GIF had a red image on a gradient blue background, there would certainly be new creative content. But if I convert a PD GIF into a JPG, I can't claim copyright on the JPG, because there's no new creative content. Similarly, if I scan the text from a PD paper document, I can't claim copyright on the scan. But if I convert it, somehow, adding my own creativity, then I can claim copyright.

So is this a case where the GIF's creator mere transfered the PD design from one medium to another? Or where the design holds new copyrightable content? I am reasonably sure that any well-informed judge would rule that the image does not have enough creative content to qualify for copyright protection. But just to be on the safe side, it would be better to recreate this logo yourself and upload that. It doesn't look like it would be too difficult. – Quadell (talk) (random) 20:59, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for weighing in. WilyD 21:13, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Reproducing poems

I've started copy editing this page: Oktay Rifat, but would appreciate some guidance before I go on. This bloke's a poet, and the page reproduces three of his poems. Is this a potential copyvio problem? (It's probably fine, coz they've been there for ages and not been taken down, but I'm new and cautious so thought I'd better check.) QuietWikipedian 20:31, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Potential problem, yes. I don't have any information on Turkish copyright law, nor do we know when the poems were published. I would default to leaving them out of the article unless you want to use shorter excerpts for critical commentary. That would be the only possible fair use assuming they are under copyright. --Spike Wilbury ♫ talk 19:19, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
According to Wikipedia:Copyright situations by country, Turkey protects copyright for 70 years after the death of the author. Rifat died in 1988, so these poems won't enter the public domain until January 1, 2059. It's definitely a copyvio to reprint even one entire poem on Wikipedia, much less three. – Quadell (talk) (random) 21:02, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
Thanks very much for your help, Spike and Quadell. I'll remove the poems. QuietWikipedian 21:28, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
But in general it is considered OK to reproduce one stanza of a long poem, or a few lines of a short one--and I would suggest doing so , in order for readers to have some idea what the subject has actually written.DGG (talk) 04:25, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

I've come across this issue before while working on the Dead End Pages, and I can't find how to handle it.

This article has long passages that are lifted from newspaper articles and reviews. At the very least they need quotes around them, but is there a template I can use to flag the article as needing a copyvio review? It's not a clear-cut enough case in my mind to let me simply delete the section, the whole article is not a copyvio issue, but I don't want to leave it unchecked. --Fabrictramp 19:01, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Actually, the whole article is a copyvio from http://www.edward-alderton.ukf.net/History.html. I will delete it. --Spike Wilbury ♫ talk 19:41, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
Good catch -- thanks! Still, for future info, is there a process for getting a second opinion when needed? --Fabrictramp 22:07, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
Never mind, I found it at Wikipedia:Fair use review. --Fabrictramp 22:11, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
Well, that's for reviewing cases where people are using copyrighted images on Wikipedia under "fair use". For articles, you want the project page for this Talk page, Wikipedia:Copyright problems. There are instructions for placing a template on an article that is a "possible" copyvio for an admin to review. There are a few of us regularly working that page. If something is blatant, you can tag it for speedy deletion with {{db-copyvio}}. --Spike Wilbury ♫ talk 22:15, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
I got fooled by seeing a section titled "articles" there. *grin*. Thanks again for the help! --Fabrictramp 23:03, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Image:Blue horseshoe.svg

Image:Blue horseshoe.svg is a Commons image listed as having been created by a Wikipedia user. But it is an exact copy of the Indianapolis Colts logo (Image:IndianapolisColts 1001.png, being used quite properly only in the Colts article) and is being used all over the place in Userboxes to indicate that Users are Colts fans. This is surely an egregious copyright violation? Corvus cornix 22:44, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

It doesn't appear to be an exact copy. In fact, I can see a remarkable difference between the two images. The author of the work, User:Howcheng, has the following under source: "using the horseshoe from Image:Brno-Ivanovice znak.svg". If you view the source image, it is obvious that the user Howcheng did in fact use Image:Brno-Ivanovice znak.svg as the original source, changing the colors. Please re-examine. -- Steven Williamson (HiB2Bornot2B) - talk 20:42, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
I don't disagree that that's his source, but I am pretty sure that the purpose of the image is to get around the logo problem, and thus I'm pretty sure that the Colts could make a pretty good claim that it's a copyright violation. It would be different if it weren't being used by Colts fans. Corvus cornix 20:57, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
As below, when dealing with the "context" issues you are looking for trademark rights not copyrights. Copyright is largely concerned only with the thing in itself. Dragons flight 21:11, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
Honestly, I don't think it is a copyright violation. In order to assert copyright, one would have to come pretty close to saying that the Colts now have control over all blue horseshoes, which I believe is too broad a claim to be defensible. Under the merger doctrine, a copyright applies to a particular expression of an idea, but cannot be so broad as to encompass all expressions of that idea (i.e. you can't copyright all "blue horseshoes"). The two images are stylized differently, with different dimensions, different numbers of nail holes, different shades of blue, etc. According the image decription, the style used in the SVG is actually copied from a public domain source as well. So, in my opinion, it is not a copyright violation. That said, the Colts undoubtedly do have a defensible trademark claim, which carries with it a different (and more restrictive) set of rights. Whether or not the usage in userboxes and like constitutes trademark infringment is unclear to me. Dragons flight 20:51, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
I agree that this is not a copyright violation. There is extra detail in the Blue horseshoe.svg version, there are more nail holes, the internal curvature is different, and the tips are angled differently and more detailed. Sancho 20:56, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

It's not a copyright violation. It is a trademark violation. – Quadell (talk) (random) 23:35, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

I have no idea why this image was deleted without discussion of the supposed trademark infringement. A trademark is not infringed if it doesn't devalue the mark in question (see Fair use (US trademark law), particularly the statement "Courts have recognized that ownership in the mark cannot prevent others from using the word or symbol in these other senses, such as if the trademark is a descriptive word or common symbol such as a pine tree. This means that the less distinctive or original the trademark, the less able the trademark owner will be to control how it is used." -- As a horseshoe is not a very distinctive mark, it would be covered under fair use under US trademark law.). As this image was being used for userboxes and to illustrate the Colts' article, I am led to believe it was deleted prematurely. As with most issues on Wikipedia, it should've been left up until there was a clear cut violation, which, IMO, didn't exist. If we set such a precedent on Wikipedia, it is clear that images such as Image:Dell logo.svg, Image:PepsiLogo.jpg, Image:Staples.png and Image:Att svg.svg are all subject to deletion without question. Additionally, I believe that an image used in so many places on Wikipedia, such as the Image:Blue horseshoe.svg without first getting some sort of consensus is simply ludacris. NOTE: In the time it took me to write this statement, it has been replaced by User:Howcheng, an administrator on Wikipedia. -- Steven Williamson (HiB2Bornot2B) - talk 13:29, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
Yes, it was deleted out-of-process. But back to the image's suitability: the trademark-holder could not stop you from using a blue horseshoe as a symbol of a horseshoe, or good luck, or even a soft drink, so long as there was no implied endorsement of your product by the Colts. But by using a blue horseshoe to refer to the Colts, there is an implied endorsement, and that's a violation of their trademark. – Quadell (talk) (random) 14:44, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
So wouldn't that be the same with the other images that I mentioned? What makes those any different? As long as the image doesn't take value away from the brand, using the trademark for a similar product, such as using the name Pepsi to sell cheap generic cola, there is no infringement. -- Steven Williamson (HiB2Bornot2B) - talk 16:48, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
Those logos you mentioned are tagged as non-free, and are (as such) not allowed in infoboxes and the like. They can only be used in articles on the company. (Anything else would go against our policy at Wikipedia:Logos.) That necessarily doesn't "dilute" the value of the logo, since it is used only to identify what the logo represents. A supposedly "free" blue horseshoe image, used to identify the user (in a userbox) with the product, does dilute the brand. Someone could, for example, use that logo in their signature and be rude to people, associating the Colt brand with rudeness. Yes, you could wear a Colts t-shirt and be rude to people, but that's a licensed use. If you create your own "Simpsons" t-shirt, you aren't directly competing with Matt Graining, and you could argue that you are increasing the visibility and value of the brand -- but you would still be held in violation of trademark law by "diluting" the trademark, and Graining could still sue you. See United States trademark law. – Quadell (talk) (random) 18:12, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
When was it deleted? It's still on Commons. Corvus cornix 16:58, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
It was deleted, but as I was typing my message regarding it being deleted, it was restored. -- Steven Williamson (HiB2Bornot2B) - talk 18:29, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

Copyrights of dissolved Corporations

The copyright of the logo of the Rhinoceros Party of Canada was almost certainly owned by the party until it dissolved - but afterwards, clearly the (non-existant) party cannot own it. The party was ordered to liquidate all it's assets and turn them over to the Receiver General of Canada - but they refused, and the government didn't pursue the matter. So my guess is that the logo is either owned by the Queen of Canada, or by the (legally unincorporated, renegade) Rhinoceros Party of Canada. Any thoughts? WilyD 13:57, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

The 30 Greatest D&D Adventures of All Time

The article The 30 Greatest D&D Adventures of All Time is essentially just a list orginally published in Dungeon, but not in the same form. I would appreciate any guidance as to whether this would be a copyright infringement or not. Cheers --Pak21 07:49, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

I think it is. I tagged it as a copyvio. Garion96 (talk) 23:37, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
Actually, the "list" in Dungeon is about 4 pages long, and contains scans of each entry's cover as well as additional text describing each adventure & why it was included. A simple list is a far cry from a copyvio.--Robbstrd 00:44, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Need clarification

In the article Thiruvalluvar Statue (older version), the "Construction notes" section has been sourced from this webpage. While the copyright notice at the bottom of that specific page says

Copyright © 1979-2007 Himalayan Academy. All rights reserved.,

when I click on the notice it takes me to this more explicit copyright notice. There, it says

Such image or text may be released for use on Wikipedia under the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) and when thus posted on Wikipedia follows the terms of the GFDL.

Is the original page acceptable to use as a source ? Lotlil 03:26, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

The question is whether the copyright holder did indeed place the text on Wikipedia. If they did, and the "Copyright and Permissions Guidelines" does explicitly admit the possibility, then there is no problem. Otherwise, the "Copyright and Permissions Guidelines" is restrictive such that they must specifically place the text on Wikipedia, rather than giving blanket permission for the contents of their website under the GFDL, which negates the purpose of having the notice in the first place, which is to indicate that the page itself is available under the GFDL without explicit permission from the copyright holder. —Centrx→talk • 04:26, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
I'm not sure they fully understand what the GFDL means, that there's no such thing as "GFDL for Wikipedia" only. At the very least, they should provide a comprehensive list of which of their materials they have been placed under the GFDL.--Pharos 04:32, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
Thanks. It seems very confusing to me, probably better to not include their material. Lotlil 04:46, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
Their verbiage indicates that text and images that they place on Wikipedia are thereby released under the GFDL, i.e. "when thus posted on Wikipedia follows the terms of the GFDL." Without a list though, we have no way of knowing what they, rather than a random reader, actually placed on Wikipedia. —Centrx→talk • 04:37, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
Yes, please write to them on this issue if possible, forwarding the concerns that have been expressed here.--Pharos 04:36, 30 July 2007 (UTC)
Offhand, I'd say that they're trying to comply with our rules and let anyone quote from their website. So I'd ask, but not delete contributions citing them. (note that GFDL doesn't free us from acknowledging sources!) --Alvestrand 05:24, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Citizendium

Everybody's favorite topic, I'm sure... but I'd like to get some extra eyes on the issue I bring up at Wikipedia:Copyright problems/2007 August 8/Articles just to make sure my assessment is correct. --W.marsh 20:22, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Seems correct, Citizendium still hasn't decided on a license. There is still some discussion there to use a non-commercial license. So for now we can't copy their articles to Wikipedia. Unless of course they got the text from us in the first place (as you already mentioned). Garion96 (talk) 20:32, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
Well, additionally you can license your own material under both licenses (i.e. I could easily copy Alar Toomre over to Citizendium). It might be worth asking the author about - since there's a lot of pillage of Wikipedians to their cause. WilyD 20:36, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Sequence of problematic edits from different but similar IP addresses

I just reverted some links to copyright-violation material made by anonymous edits a few minutes apart from similar but not identical addresses. For example, Ethernet from 59.92.87.195, Token ring from 59.92.21.42. In each case the link is to a page on www.netforu.org which is a (bad) copy of a Cisco copyrighted page. My question is this: is there a way to find other edits like this? I couldn't see a way to do it with the logs I can find. The "latest changes" log doesn't go back far enough, and the log by address doesn't do wildcards. I saw these three because of my watchlist. I checked a few others I could think of. Is there a systematic way to check for other contributions from "59.92.*.*"? Paul Koning 15:44, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Special:Linksearch will at least let you find any pages which link to a given site. --Pak21 15:47, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
Awesome. That does the trick, and it says I got them all. Thanks much. Paul Koning 16:01, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Question

It seems that the preferred manner is to list an article for deletion, but that seems a bit far-reaching. What if an article contains some copyvio sections rather than the full article is a copyvio? For example, I've been trying to cleanup Battle of Jenin but have been having problems. I'm nearly to the breaking point and am considering taking the ultimate step, imho, of listing it for speedy-deletion due to copyvios due to the hard-headedness of editors who wish to keep their copyvio sections for POV reasons. Would that be the best move in this case? I'd rather not edit war over this, and unfortunately, others do not feel that way (and one editor has already been temp-blocked for his actions). Kyaa the Catlord 16:18, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm really, really trying to avoid having to take it to that level. I'm a nice guy and really patient. :P I'm going to continue to try to reason with him. Kyaa the Catlord 17:13, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
Oh, and just so I know if I have to make that request, where would I do it? AN/I? Kyaa the Catlord 17:14, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
WP:AIV or WP:ANI - depends on how clearcut it is, really. More clearcut is probably AIV, less so ANI. In practice, both are watched as if by hawks, so it doesn't matter much. WilyD 17:18, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
I fear this is a gravely distorted report of the situation. This editor was treated in a collegiate and supportive fashion when he raised her his objections, see here. There was no display of AGF in the other direction. I was trapped into a 3RR block (lifted) by sloppy, misleadingly summarised reverts (I've never even been warned for this before). There's been no attempt to explain or discuss what the limits of "fair use" are, and this particular article is still in a very poor state. PalestineRemembered 18:01, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Th UN report is in the public domain (General Assembly paper, issued under the UN masthead and with a UN document number). The quote from Derek Holley seems to me to be excessively long for the purpose it is serving in the article, but this is as much an editing question as a copyright risk: quotes of this length can be justified, but I don't think this one is justified here. Physchim62 (talk) 17:35, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Is UN material in the public domain? I always thought it was not. Garion96 (talk) 18:37, 11 August 2007 (UTC)
The section on UN materials on the page for public domain usage is incredibly unwieldy. I read it a bunch of times and have finally given up arguing on this one since I simply cannot grok it. Kyaa the Catlord 19:08, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Sicily

A user User:Scipio3000 kept adding in copyrighted material into the article Sicily and claimed ownership of the Sicily page(that no others are to edit it without his permission), but I see no usable user warnings or tags I can use on his talk page to warn him of copyright infringement, and thus left a short personal message on his page under all the other users that have been trying to talk him into reason but all he cared is how to ignore them and yell at their talk page on the reverts. You might like to be notified and I dropped by to leave this message. MythSearchertalk 16:22, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Does Wikipedia fully comply GFDL?

I've been carefully reading GFDL 1.2 (because I use it a lot for my personal webpage) and have some doubts whether WP is respecting some of the requirements stated on Section 4 "Modifications". My fear is that, with the current state of Wikipedia's software, any user that edits a version from another one is not fully complying with GFDL and, thus, is a copyvio...

This is the list of terms I think modified versions are not complying:

  1. 4.A: "Use in the Title Page (and on the covers, if any) a title distinct from that of the Document, and from those of previous versions (which should, if there were any, be listed in the History section of the Document). You may use the same title as a previous version if the original publisher of that version gives permission." People are not giving any explicit permission to mantain the title of the article. Note: according to Section 1, in Wikipedia's case, the "Title Page" is just the "text near the most prominent appearance of the work's title, preceding the beginning of the body of the text", because it's not a printed document.
  2. 4.B: "List on the Title Page, as authors, one or more persons or entities responsible for authorship of the modifications in the Modified Version, together with at least five of the principal authors of the Document (all of its principal authors, if it has fewer than five), unless they release you from this requirement." No article states in it's "Title Page" who are the principal authors... and no one gives explicit permission to not list them.
  3. 4.E: "Add an appropriate copyright notice for your modifications adjacent to the other copyright notices." Supposedly, each editor retains his copyright for his contribution, where are the copyright notices? Notice that the "History" section is something different.

My solution would be 1) to create a policy which states that every contribution explicitly grants the permission for mantaining the title and not listing the principal authors 2) a "Copyrights" page similar to "History" for each article that automatically adds the copyright notice.

Am I right or just reading everything wrong or missed something? Please, reply me, because I'm very concerned about this. Thanks! --Neigel von Teighen 13:26, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

title page is covered by history. So for example the edit you just made was "Wikipedia talk:Copyright problems as edited by Imaglang (Talk | contribs) at 13:26, 19 August 2007". History lists every author so principle 5 is non issue.Geni 13:37, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
OK, that's when I use the permanent link... but its still lists 1 author, not 5. GFDL exlicitly says it must be done by the Title Page, not just in History! And also, what about the other issues? I'm really concerned, because if I'm right, a malicious user could use this to harm Wikipedia--Neigel von Teighen 13:45, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
The history is the title page. Also the copyright notice.Geni 13:47, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
Well, if so, the copyright and the authors' list "issues" are covered. But, what about 4.A requirement to change the title? --Neigel von Teighen 13:58, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
version names. The title you just used was "Wikipedia talk:Copyright problems as edited by Imaglang (Talk | contribs) at 13:58, 19 August 2007".Geni 14:17, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
Fantastic! So, I was just wrong. Thank you very much! --Neigel von Teighen 14:28, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Confirmed permission

In the case where a whole article is copied from a web site, and the editor has claimed permission from the author and submitted confirmation to OTRS, should the article be left in its fully copied form even if no OTRS ticket number is on the article? Or should the article be reverted to it's pre-copypaste state until the tag is placed? -- Mufka (user) (talk) (contribs) 22:49, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

If the copyright holder has actually sent permission to OTRS, then the text can remain, but the reason for sending permission in the first place is to confirm that the copyright holder has actually released the text under the GFDL, which may not be the case if the claimant on Wikipedia is just some random person with no authority over the text. —Centrx→talk • 04:28, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Similar case

I listed an image of a porn actor taken from a commercial web site allegedly with appropriate licencing at Wikipedia:Possibly unfree images/2007 July 7. There is a double-digit number of other images who are covered by this matter (same original copyright holder, same licence, same uploader). The issue has apparently been resolved by User:Howcheng who is an experienced administrator with particular experience in these matters both here and on Commons. But since I am unconvinced by the reason he has given I want a discussion of the case. Two issues in particular make his decision not sit well with me. The first being that the reply from the image(s)' copyright holder has not been submitted to OTRS and therefore is not available for verification. The second being the added clause, which I would think invalidates the given GFDL licence, of licence specifically being given to Wikipedia. Instead of concluding as Howcheng that a GFDL licence is a GFDL licence, I would argue that this shows that the original copyright holder has not been sufficiently informed about the conditions of a GFDL licence. This inconsistency also emphasizes the necessity of being able to check both sides of the correspondence between uploader and original copyright holder. __meco 21:41, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

I don't know when OTRS was set up, but it's entirely possible that User:Rentaferret was unaware of its existence, so I'm taking his email posted at Wikipedia:Successful requests for permission at face value. Unfortunately, he seems to have exercised his right to vanish and does not have an email address on file, so we can't have him forward any correspondence. You may be correct that hisxpress.com doesn't fully understand the implications of the GFDL, but that's not our problem. If they failed to get the opinion their legal counsel, that's negligence on their part. I have no opinion on these images and if they are to be deleted because we can't really confirm the email, I have no objection. howcheng {chat} 21:56, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
I was hoping to see the case resolved through the email request sent by user:Brianga on July 8 to HisExpress. I'm unsure who User:Rentaferret, whom you are mentioning, is as it was User:Chidom who posted the permission email and user:Brianga who has been doing follow-up on this correspndence. Now that the case has been closed and "blued out", I worry that Brianga isn't going to bother following up on the matter. __meco 07:28, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
FYI, I received no response to my email. Since this issue is, at the present time, "closed", I will not be actively pursuing it any further. Brianga 07:39, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Need clarification on unusual situation

I was looking at cleaning up the article USS Neshoba (APA-216) when I saw a notice left at the bottom of the page by the article's creator, Ussneshoba, that the article is "transcribed" from a published work (or two). The note states that Steve Lanning of Taylor Publishing (which absorbed Newsfoto Co.) gave the creating editor permission to put the material on Wikipedia; however, it is unclear to me whether (1) Mr. Lansing holds the actual copyright to the article, whose authors are Charles W. Smallwood and Clifford Mackin, or (2) that Mr. Lansing has released the material under the GFDL license. I left a note on Ussneshoba's talk page referring him to the WP:RFCA page for further information, and I have emailed him to bring the issue to his attention. I'm disinclined to immediately tag the article as a copyvio since I don't know the actual status of the article (although I am fairly sure it is a copyvio). Should I wait a few days for a response or go ahead and tag it anyway – or is there some "third way" process I should follow? Askari Mark (Talk) 02:45, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

I think it's probable that Taylor Publishing holds the copyright (newsfoto co. having been assigned it by the original authors). But the permission by mr. Lansing needs to be documented in a letter from Taylor Publishing to permissions-en (a).., not just asserted by an editor who has no documented relationship to Taylor Publishing. I'd place the copyvio notice, and wait for an OTRS action to resolve it. --Alvestrand 07:04, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Stephen Leeb

Hi, I believe Stephen Leeb is mostly copyvio of http://www.topstockanalysts.com/cmnts/experts.asp although its been reworded slightly. Please delete if appropriate. Kappa 20:37, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Deleted. —Centrx→talk • 03:13, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Talk:Hamlet

Can someone have a look at Talk:Hamlet? There's a discussion about whether material can be copied from another site. That site has a copyright notice on it. However, I see an assertion that the wikipedian adding the material is also the author of the site in question, and can therefore release his copyright. Comments from someone who knows something about Wikipedia's copyright policy would be much appreciated, I think. AndyJones 08:00, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

According to the intro of this page Wikipedia:Copyright problems, it looks like he would have to change the license on his website, or send an email to the wikimedia foundation, as well, to avoid confusion, but I'm no expert. Wrad 13:50, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Are images of old coins PD Art?

Like it says, are images like Image:Offapennyobv.jpg and Image:Aldfrithrev.1.jpg "exact copies of public domain images" of the type discussed in Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp.? If so, {{PD-Art}} would seem to be appropriate rather than {{Non-free currency}} or {{Fairusein}}. Any thoughts on this? Angus McLellan (Talk) 23:05, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Isn't there a SCOTUS ruling that says that a "slavish copy", presumed to be of a 2D object, results in no new copyright, but a photograph, especially of a 3D object, requires creativity in the application of lighting, positioning and camera and so generates new copyright for the creator? IANAL. Splash - tk 23:32, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
I've seen Wikipedians argue that we shouldn't use images of uncertain status if a GFDL image *can* be produced, even when it's unrealistic that anyone would actually do it. It's certainly possible for someone to find such a coin in a collection, photograph it and release the image under the GFDL, so if you subscribe to that theory, we shouldn't use images that might be "non-free", no matter what SCOTUS says. --Alvestrand 06:04, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Splash, you're thinking of Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp., linked to in the question. It is unclear whether a direct photo of a coin is eligible for copyright. Here are some relevant passages from the text of the decision.

<quote>

There is little doubt that many photographs, probably the overwhelming majority, reflect at least the modest amount of originality required for copyright protection. "Elements of originality . . . may include posing the subjects, lighting, angle, selection of film and camera, evoking the desired expression, and almost any other variant involved." But "slavish copying," although doubtless requiring technical skill and effort, does not qualify.

</quote>

Analysis: The posing of the coin, lighting, angle, etc., could all make a photo of a coin eligible for copyright, in some circumstances.

<quote>

In this case [(Bridgeman)], plaintiff by its own admission has labored to create "slavish copies" of public domain works of art. While it may be assumed that this required both skill and effort, there was no spark of originality -- indeed, the point of the exercise was to reproduce the underlying works with absolute fidelity. Copyright is not available in these circumstances.

</quote>

Analysis: If Wikipedia were to reproduce a photo of a coin, and if that photographer were to sue for infringement, the photographer would have to argue that he had intended to create a new, creative work, and that he did not merely produce a "slavish copy" of the coin. If the judge agreed that the photograph (due to its lighting, angle, film choice, etc.) was a significantly different work than the coin itself, and that the choice was intentionally creative, then Wikipedia would be liable for damages. But if the judge held that the photo was just a "slavish copy" of the coin, producing no new creative content, then the photo would be PD (assuming the coin's design is PD). It would be up to the judge. So far as I know, no case like this has ever been litigated. Wikimedia's lawyer, Mike Godwin, has said that photographs of coins might be copyrighted, and are not worth the risk. Since it's Wikimedia's butt on the line, not mine, I'd go with Godwin on this. – Quadell (talk) (random) 13:56, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

How does one go with "might"? It's as useless as "might not". Splash - tk 21:14, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
Anyone who has tried to take a truly faithful picture of a coin has quickly learned that it is an art. In fact, the more "slavish" one tries to make the picture, the greater the difficulty. You don't have to spend a lot of time looking at coin sales on eBay before you will find copyrighted images. "Borrowing" some other seller's high-quality picture of a coin to portray one you wish to sell can get you suspended — and not just for misrepresentation. Sculptors selected to engrave modern circulating coins formally surrender their artistic rights to the government. Askari Mark (Talk) 01:00, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Copyrights/MikeGodwinSays --NE2 05:10, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Sanare

I'm trying to wikify the Sanare article as part of the wikification drive. The latter half of the article appears to have been partly translated from a Spanish-language encyclopedia (I think specifically from this page). I'd like to know whether or not translating copyrighted material (presumably in the user's own words), either entirely or in part, constitutes a copyright violation. Personally, I'd like nothing better than to erase the section entirely, as it reads like a travel brochure, but I'd like some further justification. Cheers – Liveste 07:40, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

A user and now an IP have been edit warring the removal of an inappropriate fair use image gallery for this artist's biography. I have warned the IP not to replace the image on pain of being blocked, but I would appreciate some more eyes on this. Cheers, Postdlf 14:55, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

The process seems to be to erase the entire contents of a page once all of the copyright violations have been dealt with (e.g., Wikipedia:Copyright problems/2006 April 30). However, doing so seems odd. At the very least, can a category or something be added to these pages so that they won't be listed in as short pages when queries are run. Or perhaps an archive of some type could be set up on the specific pages. Having entirely blank pages with the only record of content being preserved in the history seems incredibly odd. Thoughts? --MZMcBride 02:42, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

The blanking is not done anymore. But what to do with thise old pages, I have no idea. Perhaps just revert them to a non-blanked version. Garion96 (talk) 08:42, 2 September 2007 (UTC)
What do you think about me adding {{OldCopyrightProblems}} to the old pages? --MZMcBride 06:21, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
That seems like a lot of work, I hope you are a bot owner. :) It would work for me. Deleting them, for that matter, would also work for me, but I would like some more input on that option though. Is there a good reason to keep them? Garion96 (talk) 17:50, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
I'm not sure whether or not they should be kept. I'm also not sure where one might go about discussing something like that.... These old pages really aren't needed, so I'm inclined to just list them on WP:MFD, but somehow that seems like it wouldn't be the best option. Is discussion needed, and if so, where? --MZMcBride 18:50, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

I wonder if there are any legal experts on this page who might be able to provide some advice for Wikipedia:WikiProject Schools as we'd like to establish some basic guidelines for the project on the copyright and reproduction of school songs. As far as I can establish from studying the various Wikipedia guidelines copyright expires between 50 and 70 years after the author's death. I believe therefore that it is possible to publish in full the song lyrics to for instance the La Martiniere School song on the La Martiniere Lucknow page as the author died in 1909. However, we currently have two good articles Auburn High School and Baltimore City College both of which reproduce lyrics written in the twentieth century. I have tried posting notices on both talk pages about the copyright status of these songs but have not received any replies. In addition I note that there is an entire category dedicated to something called fight songs at Category:Fight songs. I've only looked briefly at these songs but a lot of them seem to have been written quite recently and would appear to be infringing the copyright laws. Some songs are anonymous. What are the copyright laws in this case? Does copyright expire a given number of years after first publication or performance? Dahliarose 15:35, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

They are treated like anything else - being a school song isn't any different from any other song lyrics. Secretlondon 16:00, 2 September 2007 (UTC)
Any copyright violating lyrics need to be removed. Secretlondon 16:03, 2 September 2007 (UTC)
I appreciate that the copyvio lyrics need to be removed. What I'm struggling to establish are some clear guidelines so that we know which ones to remove, eg, lyrics published after a certain date. Should we allow a minimum of 70 years for the date of the author's death or should a higher limit be set? Dahliarose 08:28, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
As a practical rule, I would suggest that songs for which we don't know the author should be treated as anonymous, until someone comes along to complain. That means that any song less than 70 years old (95 years for the United States) should be deleted as a copyright violation. Older songs may be kept unless and until we get information about authorship which suggests that they are still under copyright. Physchim62 (talk) 13:46, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
In answer to your technical question, I would imagine that most school songs would be treated as "unpublished works" under U.S. copyright law, which is what I've assumed for the above suggestion. Physchim62 (talk) 13:49, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
The 70-year rule seems a reasonable guideline. Does it make any practical difference as to whether the song has been published or not? I would imagine most songs have been published at some point either in a school history or school magazine. If the song is anyonymous does the copyright expire so many years after publication? Which country's copyright laws apply? If the school is in India and the author is British but the article is hosted on Wikipedia's US servers would the copyright laws of all these countries apply or just of the US? Dahliarose 14:01, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

If we know who the author is, it's not anonymous! In that case, copyright usually expires 70 years after the death of the author, although some countries have (slightly) shorter terms. If we don't know who the author is, copyright expires 70 years after the first known performance (in this case) unless it is a U.S. school, in which case the period is 95 years. I've not gone into all the intricacies there, but it should suffice for a rule of thumb: if you have "difficult cases", feel free to bring them back here, as it's usually easier to discuss a concrete case than to give general guidelines. Physchim62 (talk) 14:07, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Thank you. That will be a very helpful rule of thumb and I will add an appropriate section to our main project page. I didn't explain myself very well. I was trying to ask two different questions at once about anonymous songs and those with known authors but you've answered both questions for me. Dahliarose 14:27, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Middle-earth

At Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Humanities#literature_-_notability_-_serious_question (re ask) I have asked amongst other questions whether or not the better part of Wikipedia:WikiProject Middle-earth currently is a derivative work - since it is effectively a re-writng/re-ordering of the intellectual property contained in JRR Tolkiens work. Quote "A work consisting of editorial revisions, annotations, elaborations, or other modifications which, as a whole, represent an original work of authorship, is a “derivative work”."

I'd be interested in your feedback, and whether the problem is solved by referencing the numerous articles covered. (At present most articles are totally unreferenced). Could you respond on the link above?87.102.21.232 08:48, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Image:00000010.jpg

Regarding Image:00000010.jpg, it appears to have been taken from a copyrighted web page (http://www.respetopro.com/photos.html ) . I've asked on his/her talk page (User talk:Respetopro), someone who knows the proper procedures please follow up if necessary. Kappa 00:12, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

I tagged the image as a possible copyvio and listed it on the project page. Garion96 (talk) 22:07, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

Speedy deletion criteria at Wikipedia:Copyright problems#Instructions incomplete?

For a copyvio article to be eligible for speedy deletion, WP:CSD#Copyvio requires that "the material was introduced at once by a single person," but this criterion is not mentioned in the section on speedy deletion at Wikipedia:Copyright problems#Instructions. Should it be added? --Rrburke(talk) 15:17, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

The purpose of "the material was introduced at once by a single person" in the CSD is to ensure that "The text on Wikipedia really is an infringement of another source". CSDs are supposed to have strict factual determinations like that, but ultimately if a text "really is an infringement" then it should be deleted. The purpose of {{copyvio}} is to ensure that it really is an infringement where it might not be clear. So, it could be changed here, but it is not necessary and the statements here and at CSD both have the same underlying meaning. —Centrx→talk • 17:28, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Copyrighted pictures of people

Wikipedia typically does not allow copyrighted pictures of a person as long as that person is still alive. I've found pictures of politicians during key moments of their career or life that cannot be recreated. For instance, I tried to add a picture to the Gray Davis page of Davis during his miltary career. It was deleted but perhaps I didn't provide a long enough or properly formated defense of why the picture should have been used. This picture cannot be recreated. No source of the picture is listed on the page it was found, which is from the Gray Davis Digital Library at ttp://www.gray-davis.com/Gallery/. I think the picture can be used under wikipedia's fair use criteria. Am I wrong? User:calbear22 18:59, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

I think that would be fair use, but it has to be made clear that the picture is being used not to identify the living person in general, but for the specific historical purpose of describing his military career. —Centrx→talk • 17:31, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Image:Elam-tar.jpg

This image was taken from the Iran National Museum catalogue. It is not a free image as the uploader implies. The use of the image requires permission from the Museum. There is no indication that the uploader had sought that copyright permission. HelenWatt 01:35, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

There are several issues here:
  • Regardless of copyright status, this image may be usable under fair use for historical reasons, with or without permission.
  • If the uploader made this photograph himself, then it is under his own copyright (or altogether it may be that a photograph of this historical artifact may not be copyrightable at all), regardless of the internal policies of the museum.
  • The copyrights of Iran are not recognized in the United States, so there is no legal problem.
—Centrx→talk • 17:39, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Reuse violation

There's a "book" on google books which is a dump of various wikipedia articles. It does not contain the text of the GPL. It can be found [17] here, entitled Terrorism & It's Effects By various. I almost used it as a circular reference.... -- 67.98.206.2 19:56, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Backlog help needed! 20 days and growing

At the moment, the backlog is at 20 days. I'm doing a couple of articles a day "while the project is compiling" (I'm a slow worker), but that doesn't even start to dent the backlog. Help! --Alvestrand 05:38, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

We have two school articles Mayo College and La Martiniere Lucknow which contain images of postage stamps. I'm having trouble establishing if it is permissible to reproduce these images. (One image has already been deleted by one editor and reinstated by another.) India Post gives permission for black and white images in philatelic magazines. The copyright tag on the images in question seems to suggest that they qualify for fair use. I also found a stamp image used in another article on Margaret Preston. I would be most grateful if someone could advise on the situation. Many thanks. Dahliarose 15:01, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Hi together, as you propose a simple revert of versions which contain copyright violations, these versions are still in the history. I am wondering, don´t you remove copyright violations from the history? To my opinion all versions of an article must be in agreement with GFDL, but they´re not simple reverting the version containing copyright violations. Regards --83.242.60.206 14:22, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

There's been some discussion of this; the approach I've seen advocated that makes most sense to me is to roll back to a non-copyvio version (leaving the copyvios in the history). This is the approach recommended in the guidelines - "if you can roll back to a non-copyvio version, do so". Then we can remove the copyvio history entries if a copyright owner complains, but we should rarely need to do so. Opinions may differ, however. --Alvestrand 15:12, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Non-infringing plagiarism

Prompted by a question on the Help Desk, I noticed that Wikipedia:Plagiarism is a redirect to Wikipedia:Copyright problems. Unfortunately, this page doesn't (or didn't) address what to do in cases where an editor has plagiarised text without committing a copyright violation.

I've inserted a section to deal with this circumstance: Wikipedia:Copyright problems#Plagiarism that doesn't infringe copyright. Feel free to clean up the wording and guidance, and expand or correct it as needed. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 20:18, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

excellent job! DGG (talk) 08:50, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Please advise

Can anyone give an opinion on whether the article Trimön qualifies as a copyright violation from [18]? I am thinking of the fact that the second sentence of the article is verbatim from that page, the third sentence paraphrases the following sentence from that page, and the fourth sentence is a paraphrase of a later sentence.—Nat Krause(Talk!·What have I done?) 04:38, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

comment I've attempted to address this archived version and have rewritten it further. PLease see the current edit Trimön thankyou ♦ Sir Blofeld ♦ "Talk"? 10:02, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Unreleased television pilot: public domain?

Hi, folks. The article Lost in Oz, about a television pilot that never went to series, links to a YouTube page containing said pilot. That page claims "The LOST IN OZ pilot is believed to be public domain as it was never released, and possibly unfinished, thus uncopyrighted." That sounds dubious to me, but IANAL, so I thought I'd ask for clarification here. I would have thought that an unfinished television pilot was analogous to an unpublished manuscript, and I know that even unpublished manuscripts have copyright. Can that article link to the YouTube page, or is it a copyvio that should be removed? —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 02:49, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

It is definitely not in the public domain merely because it was never released or unfinished but if it's old enough (which is doubtful) then it may have fallen into the public domain. --ElKevbo 03:02, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
Nah, it was made in 2002. I figured it wasn't public domain — I'll remove the link. Thanks. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 03:25, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
I am perplexed by this excision. This is an external link we are talking about here, not material that had incorrectly been uploaded to the wikipedia or a sibling project. I too suspect that the wikipedian who asserted that the video was in the public domain was mistaken. But how does merely linking to the video violate anyone's copyright any more than linking to any other non-free video, or non-free article violate someone's copyright?
Cheers! Geo Swan 10:50, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
Okay, Talk:Lost in Oz points to Linking to copyrighted works, which answers my question... But it raises another question for me. Some newspaper articles, such as those from the New York Times, are free for only a week or two -- then become freely available, through the NYTimes site, only to its subscribers. The article remains available to others, prepared to pay a fairly stiff fee. The New York Times acquired the International Herald Tribune, which republishes many NYTimes articles, when then are freely available in its archive. Lots of newspapers have a link on their site for those who want to republish their works. So, merely finding an article from a big newspaper on a different site, doesn't mean the big newspaper's copyright is being violated. Is there some specific phrase one should look for before linking to a mirror of an article?
Cheers! Geo Swan 11:23, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
I think you've answered your own question. It is fair to presume that the IHT knows what they're doing and won't allow copyvios on their pages, at least not for long. However a copy of a newspaper on some user created or other unreliable site (forum, blog, whatever) is probably a copyvio baring evidence it is not Nil Einne 17:24, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Shetlopedia

23 Wikipedia articles are incorporating text from Shetlopedia, an online encyclopedia about Shetland. The content of that wiki was free (GFDL), but today the founder changed the copyright to "all rights reserved". An anonymous editor subsequently placed a speedy deletion tag in the {{Shetlopedia}} template. I removed it, since that retroactive copyright change is clearly illegal. What should we do about that? Mushroom (Talk) 17:02, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Do what you did: modify the template to say that it only applies to content that was there before today. That should be all we need. Fut.Perf. ☼ 17:26, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
I'm one of those who have taken text from Shetlopedia (I also created the Shetlopedia attribution template). As I understand the GFDL, surely Wikipedia articles that took text from before the change would be OK. Indeed, we could still grab text from revisons of the articles made prior to the change, but in the interests of maintaining good relations with the Shetlopedia folks, I'd advise against it.

Whether Shetlopedia ever incorporated text from Wikipedia while it was GFDL is another issue. I don't know of anything, but will look into it.

I know that GPL projects can relicense their code under a new license, but I think a GFDL project would have to get the permission of every contributor (IANAL, etc). But that is not an issue for Wikipedia- its their problem. As long as the content we have taken from Shetlopedia is kosher, I don't care if they were right to relicense their wiki. Lurker (said · done) 09:51, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

I think I only used Shetlopedia once on Papa Stour, and it is in any case referenced back (via inline refs) to the relevant article. No problem there I imagine. Are there any issues with Commons images to be aware of? I copied one (that is in any case PD-Old) prior to September 14th. Ben MacDui (Talk) 12:30, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

NB - they also have a few copyright issues of their own, for example, where is this picture sourced from, and is it copyright free? A bit cheeky anyway, since Shetlopedia was largely founded on articles filched from wikipedia. Even the name is based on it. --MacRusgail 20:27, 15 September 2007 (UTC)
An anon is trying to get the Shetland bus article deleted claiming that it is a copyvio from Shetlopedia. See also the talk page of User:Inge. Much of the article is imported from Shetlopedia but that webpage is attributed as required by the GFDL, so their case seems flimsy at best. Valentinian T / C 22:47, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
Once you grant copyright via the GFDL (or GPL... same issue here) it can't be retracted later. Indeed, the license itself is explicitly designed so something of this nature. As evidenced by this link (http://web.archive.org/web/20070110024110/www.shetlopedia.com/Main_Page) the content was originally licensed under the GFDL. There is no copyright violation at all for copying any of this content prior to this "license change" and there is no reason to remove that content which can be clearly documented from the internet archives or if you are certain you retrieved it prior to this license change. To include the content on Wikipedia or not may be subject to other Wikipedia policies (NPOV, OR, etc.) but copyright violations are not one of them.
BTW, you don't need to "attribute the webpage" as the attribution is not required by the GFDL. Instead, you need to identify clear each of the authors... including anonymous authors. There is quite a bit of false information floating around on IRC channels and the like about what the exact legal requirements are for copying GFDL'd content, and it is far better to actually read the license than to take the "short form" that has been posted even here on Wikipedia about the subject.
BTW, in regards to the issue of removing content because the Shetlopedia is doing a better job of hosting the local content, I think they are shooting themselves in the foot if they were trying to encourage Wikipedia visitors from using their website for additional information. By switching to a propritary license methodology, I think it would be foolish to transwiki content from Wikipedia to that other project... as the content is no longer available under the GFDL. The Shetlopedia may also be in violation of the GFDL themselves, but that is something to be decided by those who have made contributions to that Wiki. --Robert Horning 22:54, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

I think there's some guidelines about this, but I cannot find them: www.dhushara.com is a domain used a few dozen times in wikipedia. The links in mainspace appear to me mostly (entirely?) to excerpts from copyrighted material. As I understand it, such links should be removed though the reference the original work should be kept of course. Am I missing/overlooking something? Isn't there a guideline on this somewhere? The issue came up as part of a COI report: Wikipedia:Conflict_of_interest/Noticeboard#Sakina. --Ronz 03:30, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

After going through the links a bit more, some are identified as excerpts, others that are clearly excerpts are not identified as such, still others are difficult to tell if they are copies of full articles or only excerpts. --Ronz 18:50, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Lists

Creation of a list of articles to be covered in a (conventional, printed) encyclopedia is a job that should and probably does take considerable intellectual effort. Speaking as somebody who's not a US copyright lawyer, I'd call it the intellectual property of its creators (and let them decide whether it's the editors', publisher's, or whatever). Still, reuse of the list probably does little to harm its creators (for what this may be worth in potential copyright/IP disputes).

Take a look at a dormant user's amalgamated list of the bios in three editions of a reference work. He (or somebody) has put quite some work into typing them up or OCRing them and then collating them. Possible copyright issues aside, good for him -- but of course his work is dwarfed by that of the editors/publisher.

I'd like to copy this and perhaps others of his lists into subpages of a WikiProject, with an eye to linking from them (mostly redlinking, alas), as an guide to what needs to be done. But I'm reluctant to rely on my own ideas of fair play (which are anyway confused) or yours. What's the position in copyright law? -- Hoary 03:32, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

The bottom of your browser page should have a reminder that all text in Wikipedia is under the GFDL. Credit the author when copying. Your mention of lists of things to be done reminds me that there is a Wikiproject which lists articles which exist in other sources but aren't in Wikipedia. When someone mentions what that is, you might see if how they are arranged is useful for your project. (SEWilco 04:09, 1 October 2007 (UTC))
You're looking for Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles. Yes, lists of topics are copyrighted, and can't be used verbatim without permission. We used to use a list of all Encyclopedia Britannica article names, but we had to delete that list for copyright concerns. Instead, we replaced it with a "hotlist" that I created, by merging several different lists together, adding some extra entries, and removing some that I deemed unimportant. Other topic-specific hotlists were made later; note particularly the Hotlist of Art & Architecture. Perhaps this list could be intelligently merged into that one? – Quadell (talk) (random) 14:16, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
The list of photographers is in Wikipedia userspace, so it is under the GFDL and can be re-used. I don't know if that list was copied from someplace else, but you can look through its edit history for clues. Doing web searches with several names on the list might help find similar lists online, although that won't find offline lists. The list's edit history might mention sources or you might be able to see whether it appeared full-blown or was assembled piecemeal. (SEWilco 15:20, 1 October 2007 (UTC))
As I already said, it's compiled from three versions of a single, commercial, non-GFDL (and non-copyleft) source. -- Hoary 07:23, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
Oh dear. This is bad news: it's an obstacle to a certain other list that I've been working on recently. I'll originalify that within a week or so. -- Hoary 07:23, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
Well, if it's a copyright violation then put a copyvio tag on it. (SEWilco 14:40, 4 October 2007 (UTC))

1. Image:Matsalu logo.gif, the logo of Matsalu National Park. I've specified it as fair use at the moment, however, according to the Estonian copyright law: "Copyright does not apply to works of folklore, legislation and administrative documents, court decisions and official translations thereof; official symbols of the state and insignia of organisations." (full text of the law in English is here). Therefore - is this logo, as well as similar logos, licensed as fair use or without copyright in en:wikipedia?

2. Estonica (www.estonica.org) material is released under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 1.0 Generic license. How does that apply to material in Wikipedia? Specifically, if I upload images from Estonica to Wikipedia (not Commons), I have to attribute the photo to Estonica/photographer on image page, but do I have to re-use that attribution when I use those pictures in articles - either as notes or in thumbnail caption?

Thank you in advance. -- Sander Säde 10:07, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Interesting copyright exemption that, but it seems to be OK. We should make

to document it. As for the attribution, we do not usually include attribution in image captions, as it is 'industry-standard' practice not to do so in English-language encyclopedias. In any case, the image can only be used under fair use. Physchim62 (talk) 18:38, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Is there a place on Wikipedia that clarifies the use of material licensed under Creative Commons? I've looked, but so far haven't managed to find anything about it, other then few words in Wikipedia:Free or semi-free non-Public-Domain information resources. Also, who could do the {{PD-EE}} template? -- Sander Säde 18:55, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
I've made the tag up for you. It's not protected, so, if anyone wants to improve the formatting a bit, they should feel free! Wikipedia:Image_copyright_tags/Free_licenses#Creative_Commons give a list of the many Creative Commons licenses which are compatible with Wikipedia, while [[19]] lists the licenses which we cannot freely use, either because they don't allow the production of derivative works or because they don't allow commercial reuse. Physchim62 (talk) 20:33, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
Thank you for the template. I replaced the flag with Image:Flag of Estonia (bordered).svg, as otherwise the white stripe was nearly invisible.
I'll read up a bit on Creative Commons licenses - thank you for those links as well - and will then decide which course to take, ie. use images from Estonica or wait until free images will be available (which means very probably until next summer when I have a chance to take those pictures).
-- Sander Säde 00:26, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Images uploaded by User:Karabinier

Karabinier (talk · contribs) is a new hard-working user, mostly interested in military articles - however, I don't think that images he has uploaded can be licensed under GDFL - or used in Wikipedia at all. As he himself put it: "Images belong to the armed forces of Estonia but I ahve edited them -t herefore the images are not the same, they ahe been cut and resized more than 50% of their original size." ([20]). -- Sander Säde 00:43, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Locust_bean_gum#Copyright_notice

Here is something interesting. I have never seen something like this. Can this be done? Locust_bean_gum#Copyright_notice --Chocolatepizza 23:29, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

He has to give a GFDL license, which allows other people to change the article. In cases of website copying, that's most easily done by email to permissions-en (at) wikimedia.org. I can't see that he's done that. --Alvestrand 06:14, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Secular Islam Summit

I'm pretty sure that user:CltFn repeatedly posts a thing called the St. Petersburg Declaration on the article page, Secular Islam Summit in its entirety, which seems to be a violation of copyright. I'm not entirely sure, so I'm posting it here first. Jayran 15:52, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Alamo, CA

Resolved

A user added text to Alamo, CA, and then posted on the help desk to say its not a copyright violation. I've replied to the user (76.103.217.38 (talk · contribs)) and left a note on the article talk page. Should this be listed somewhere, or is there anything else which needs to be done (which I can do)? --h2g2bob (talk) 01:56, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Issue resolved via email --h2g2bob (talk) 00:00, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Images of artworks - copyright photographer or "derivative work" copyviolation?

Someone's slapped copyright violation tags on a number of pictures of Madame Tussaud's wax images, including Image:WxwrkHitler.jpg, claiming that the photos are derivative works, and the images are therefore infringing on the copyright of the wax image owner. This resembles the controversy over the Cloud Gate sculpture; it's not clear to me whether we should accept this idea on Wikipedia images. Comments? --Alvestrand 06:03, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

material from university of north carolina

Extensive archival material from the University of North Carolina archives is being placed on wikipedia by User:Scuastud. He asserts that it is their intent to donate the material under a free license, but that is not what it says on the web site The user has been notified on his web page, but be aware of the problem--it should be dealt with in a uniform way. (The notability of some of the pages is also possibly questionable, but that's a different matter). How should we proceed in this?DGG (talk) 19:38, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

This is a clear WP:COI on Scuastud's part. --Ronz 19:55, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
Sure it is, and she's realised it, and agrees about notability problems--they will be screened--but the question is about the copyright. She wrote to me that she thinks all the other local universities will be doing likewise, so there will be some problems coming. DGG (talk) 03:50, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Help needed

Image talk:DSCN0732.JPG and Talk:Nobel Prize (scroll down). Thank you. The user who created the image continually removes the warning templates on it despite the templates saying not to do so. I have requested review of the licensing claims on the image. It lacks a detailed fair-use rationale; it appears to violate the copyright and trademark of the image of the Nobel Medal by the Nobel Foundation, despite the user's claims to the contrary. The user is taking this matter personally; this matter is not personal. It is a copyright and trademark violation issue. --NYScholar 03:59, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

NYScholar has attempted reapedly to change the licensing and remove information from the image as a means of deception. ONLY this was reverted, the review template is still intact. A review would be much appreciated.Anubis3 04:09, 19 October 2007 (UTC)
The above statements are untrue. (1) I have not been "deceptive"; (2) the above user has repeatedly reverted deletions of a questionable image whose statement of license is misleading. He has also deleted the appropriate templates questioning it and stating non-free image (Nobel medal image) uses relating to that image. He has reverted my templates and my comments regarding it multiple times. I have in no way been "deceptive"; even the statement that he makes above about reverting is not true. I strongly advise looking into the history of this image. It does not belong in the infobox for Nobel Prize or anywhere else in Wikipedia. The statements in the summary page are inaccurate, and it has not been rejected for speedy deletion. There was not enough time to consider it for review before the user who created the image deleted the template. The editing history of the image bears out this point. At this point, I do not see good-faith editing on the part of the above user. I am not the only editor questioning the validity of his statements about this image. Please investigate. thank you. --NYScholar 05:49, 19 October 2007 (UTC)
Here are the editing diffs: 165561276. He has deleted my templates again prior to the review taking place (see next edit by another user). --NYScholar 05:53, 19 October 2007 (UTC) There is no adequate detailed fair-use rationale of the image of the Nobel Medal (such image is copyright and trademark-protected by the Nobel Foundation), which requires written permission for its use and the featuring of trademark and copyright symbols of ownership by the Nobel Foundation if such written permission is granted. The user who created the personal photograph of the image provides no evidence that he has permission of the Nobel Foundation to feature its trademarked and copyrighted image (image of the medal). His photograph can be used for personal use only, not for posting and licensing as if he owned the image; he doesn't; he only owns his own photograph. The Nobel Foundation protects publication of its Nobel medal images (the likeness in profile of Alfred Nobel stamped on its medal). It is very clear about that. The user ignores this and posts a false license. --NYScholar 05:58, 19 October 2007 (UTC)
By repeatedly deleting my templates saying that I have requested a review of the image from the image talk page, the user is masking that fact. The template says not to remove it until after a review has occurred and the problems resolved by other parties. Administrators: Please advise and please replace the template that he also deleted from the Nobel Prize infobox indicating that it has been labeled for speedy deletion via the template on the image page. Thank you. --NYScholar 06:00, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

User:Roadcrusher3's edits

I'm not exactly sure where to post this, but I think someone should go through User talk:Roadcrusher3's contributions (list here). My issues mainly relate to the pictures the editor has uploaded (log here), however, the editor also created the article Board of Transportation of the City of New York, which looks suspicious (copied). (An aside, the subject may be notable as I believe they used to run the New York City Subway system).

Regarding the images, many of them look professionally done (probably copyrighted). See especially Image:Second Avenue Subway (SAS)station.jpg, probably a computer-generated image. Many (most?) of them have been tagged with Template:PD-USGov (probably definitely wrong) and do not have a source (talk page list of warnings). Also see possible attempts to add sources such as here, maybe referring to the government (albeit copyrighted, I believe) web site of the NY MTA. Jason McHuff 05:56, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

One other thing: I'm not sure who made the map at Image:Second Avenue Subway (SAS).jpg, but the background looks a lot like the official MTA map, the copyright of which has been enforced. Jason McHuff 06:01, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Avian Web

OK, here's a copyvio that appears to be the reverse of the normal problem. This site has literally copied the Australian Ringneck article from our site (from a couple of day's ago, since someone's made some recent changes) and put it on their website— but then asserts their own copyright on it here. Shouldn't this be a free-use copyright, since they're using our material? I notice they have now attributed the photo, which they weren't doing before the photographer directly contacted them. This came up because of a conversation here in the GAR arena. MeegsC | Talk 09:38, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Any copyright problems in sending PDFs or other content between editors?

Ok, this is a little weird. There is currently a proposal at Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals#Interlibrary Loan (InterWikipedian Loan?) about maybe trying to create an internal way for editors to be able to send information to each other for the purposes of article development, potentially including transmitting PDF or similar files accessed through a library. Would doing the things described there possibly result in any copyright problems? I personally think responding on that page would probably be best. Thank you for your attention. John Carter 19:57, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Partial copyvio treatment?

The "Plot" section of Peter and the Secret of Rundoon is an obvious copy from the book's blurb (see for instance B&N). In this case I can simply delete it, but suppose that I only thought it were a blurb and didn't have evidence? How would I tag that in a way that's less angry and more specific than {{copyvio}}? Ideally, I want a standard "This article or section may be in violation of copyright." or "This article or section does not appear to be original text." template. Thanks. --Tardis 02:05, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

If you think a section is a copyvio but do not know wherefrom, you probably think it is a copyvio because it appears like advertising or is otherwise not written like an encyclopedia article. So, even if it were not a copyvio and were kept, it would still need to be re-written, so it would be best to re-write it. I don't know if we should make a "This may be a copyvio but at the very least needs to be re-written" template, though. —Centrx→talk • 02:59, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
You can use {{cv-unsure}} in the talk page of the article to mark one as "it seems a copyvio, but I cannot provide a source". If you found a section that is copy/pasted, you can mark it with {{copypaste}}. An administrator will review the matter and decide whether there should be a history purge to remove the copyright violation versions, or just remove the section. If the whole article is copyvio, mark it with {{db-copyvio}} if you can find a source, or {{copyvio}} if the user claims he is the copyright owner, or that the text is available under a free license but you can't find the license in the source. -- ReyBrujo 03:27, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Any copyright problems in sending PDFs or other content between editors?

Ok, this is a little weird. There is currently a proposal at Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals#Interlibrary Loan (InterWikipedian Loan?) about maybe trying to create an internal way for editors to be able to send information to each other for the purposes of article development, potentially including transmitting PDF or similar files accessed through a library. Would doing the things described there possibly result in any copyright problems? I personally think responding on that page would probably be best. Thank you for your attention. John Carter 19:57, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Partial copyvio treatment?

The "Plot" section of Peter and the Secret of Rundoon is an obvious copy from the book's blurb (see for instance B&N). In this case I can simply delete it, but suppose that I only thought it were a blurb and didn't have evidence? How would I tag that in a way that's less angry and more specific than {{copyvio}}? Ideally, I want a standard "This article or section may be in violation of copyright." or "This article or section does not appear to be original text." template. Thanks. --Tardis 02:05, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

If you think a section is a copyvio but do not know wherefrom, you probably think it is a copyvio because it appears like advertising or is otherwise not written like an encyclopedia article. So, even if it were not a copyvio and were kept, it would still need to be re-written, so it would be best to re-write it. I don't know if we should make a "This may be a copyvio but at the very least needs to be re-written" template, though. —Centrx→talk • 02:59, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
You can use {{cv-unsure}} in the talk page of the article to mark one as "it seems a copyvio, but I cannot provide a source". If you found a section that is copy/pasted, you can mark it with {{copypaste}}. An administrator will review the matter and decide whether there should be a history purge to remove the copyright violation versions, or just remove the section. If the whole article is copyvio, mark it with {{db-copyvio}} if you can find a source, or {{copyvio}} if the user claims he is the copyright owner, or that the text is available under a free license but you can't find the license in the source. -- ReyBrujo 03:27, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

PubMed Abstracts

Are abstracts featured on PubMed (for example: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=AbstractPlus&list_uids=17535893) public domain as a work of the US government, or are they copyrighted by the author/publisher? If they granted permission for the US Gov to use the abstracts, could we piggyback on that or ask for our own? There are so many pharmacology stubs which could use this abstracts as starting points for expansion. ? Miserlou 02:37, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

Most likely the abstracts are copied from the abstract in the journal article itself, or are supplied by the publisher. In either case, they would not be in the public domain. A copyright holder who supplies some content to the U.S. Government does not relinquish his ownership nor is he obligated to release it into the public domain. —Centrx→talk • 21:18, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
I concur with Centrx. The exception is when the authors of an article (and abstract) are U.S. Government employees, for instance with the NIH. In this case, the abstract and entire article would be in the public domain. Most of these journals require the authors to assign copyright to the journal before they will publish, but provide an exception to the work of US government employees since they do not hold copyright in the first place. Ydorb 19:02, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
It is established that abstracts are copyright in the UK, but I am not aware of any any actual legal case that they are subject to copyright in the US, though publishers have told me that they presume them to be. Does anyone have an actual legal citation?DGG (talk) 02:07, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

Legal basis for combining GFDL text with CC images

Hello. I'm sure this has been discussed before but I can't find a good explanation. What basis do have for combining the GFDL-licensed text in our articles with non-GFDL (e.g., creative commons) pictures? Is it because the combination text + pictures is considered an aggregate and not a derivative work? In how far is this wishful thinking? I did read m:Do fair use images violate the GFDL? but that page is very hard to read (at least for me), it's rather old and I assume we have more copyright expertise now, and it talks mostly about fair use which may be different (there is a section about non-fair-use at the end but I found that rather unconvincing). As I that, I'm sure it has been discussed extensively before, so just a pointer to prior discussion would probably suffice. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 13:27, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

The Creative Commons licenses page lists about six different CC licenses an image can have. I think the Wikipedia theory is that the source statements on the image page suffice for the BY (attribution) part of the requirements, and that the composition of a page out of GFDL text and references to CC images doesn't really form a new work with a separate copyright (otherwise, we would be violating at least the ND and SA variants, and probably the NC one too). But I find this field murky, just like you do. --Alvestrand 19:28, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
We don't accept ND and NC. Regarding Jitse's question, because images are not store at the same place of the text, they are not considered "a single thing", but instead, a combination of several sources. Take, for example, the Wikimedia logo. It is not a free logo. We present a page that has article text released under the GFDL, an image released under CC, and a logo that is trademarked and protected by copyright laws. The full presentation is a mixture of licenses clearly delimited, and therefore there is no problem. It is pretty hard to explain for someone who is not a lawyer, so I guess you can get a better answer than mine ;) -- ReyBrujo 02:22, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

Any copyright problems in sending PDFs or other content between editors?

Ok, this is a little weird. There is currently a proposal at Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals#Interlibrary Loan (InterWikipedian Loan?) about maybe trying to create an internal way for editors to be able to send information to each other for the purposes of article development, potentially including transmitting PDF or similar files accessed through a library. Would doing the things described there possibly result in any copyright problems? I personally think responding on that page would probably be best. Thank you for your attention. John Carter 19:57, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Book published by John Wiley copies Wikipedia article.

A book published in 2006 by a major US publisher, John Wiley & Sons, contains at least two pages of material lifted from Wikipedia. The book is Black Gold: The New Frontier in Oil for Investors (ISBN 0470048034.) The text of this book can be searched using Amazon's Search Inside function, http://www.amazon.com/Black-Gold-New-Frontier-Investors/dp/0471792683. Its author is George Orwel, an experienced reporter for Oil trade magazines.

I have provided a more detailed report at User:Ydorb/khobar-copyvio. This was pointed out to me by Gabi S.

Does anyone know what to do about this? Is there a List of Books that copy Wikipedia or something like that or is this a first? Ydorb 22:01, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

It's certainly not a first! One respected 1French publisher, whose name need not be disclosed, joked with Wikimedia France that he was getting tired of receiving humanities manuscripts which were obviously plagiarised from Wikipedia. How did he know that they were plagiarised? Because when the prospective authors did the copy-and-paste, Word preserved the Wikilinks in the text! Physchim62 (talk) 17:00, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
IANAL, but this seems to be a violation of the GNU public licence under which wikipedia is published (you can read it from the link at the bottom of every page). If John Wiley & Sons hasn't published the terms of the GNU licence in the book and stated the source of the material, the WikiFoundation could have grounds to sue. Cheers Saganaki- 13:42, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
Apparently. Anyways, with Slashdot picking up the news, it should make enough noise. Maybe we should indeed have such an list :) -- ReyBrujo 14:31, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Definitely looks like plagiarism, but technically there might not be any copyvio, as Ydorb was the only significant contributor and his contributions have been released to the public domain. It could probably be argued that Wikipedia's licensing terms were broken, so I believe the Wikimedia Foundation could complain to the publisher, but no individual authors would have standing to complain. Kaldari 01:56, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

Oh, didn't notice that banner. Yes, that would discount his contributions. -- ReyBrujo 02:23, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

Partial copyvio treatment?

The "Plot" section of Peter and the Secret of Rundoon is an obvious copy from the book's blurb (see for instance B&N). In this case I can simply delete it, but suppose that I only thought it were a blurb and didn't have evidence? How would I tag that in a way that's less angry and more specific than {{copyvio}}? Ideally, I want a standard "This article or section may be in violation of copyright." or "This article or section does not appear to be original text." template. Thanks. --Tardis 02:05, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

If you think a section is a copyvio but do not know wherefrom, you probably think it is a copyvio because it appears like advertising or is otherwise not written like an encyclopedia article. So, even if it were not a copyvio and were kept, it would still need to be re-written, so it would be best to re-write it. I don't know if we should make a "This may be a copyvio but at the very least needs to be re-written" template, though. —Centrx→talk • 02:59, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
You can use {{cv-unsure}} in the talk page of the article to mark one as "it seems a copyvio, but I cannot provide a source". If you found a section that is copy/pasted, you can mark it with {{copypaste}}. An administrator will review the matter and decide whether there should be a history purge to remove the copyright violation versions, or just remove the section. If the whole article is copyvio, mark it with {{db-copyvio}} if you can find a source, or {{copyvio}} if the user claims he is the copyright owner, or that the text is available under a free license but you can't find the license in the source. -- ReyBrujo 03:27, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

List of Time 100 [etc]

I know this has been discussed previously, but Time 100: The Most Important People of the Century is now being discussed at [[21]], where it and similar lists are claimed to violate Time's copyright. Now, I may well be totally confused, but it was my understanding of US copyright that while the list itself as published in the magazine is copyright, the information that someone is on it is information, not expression and is not subject to copyright. If the detailed text in the WP article as well as the names was reproduced from the magazine, yes, that would be a copyvio. If the names were found on the list, and the info. from WP, etc., used to identify them, it's not. I thought that we can publish about any list we please, and say who is on it--that is not the same as publishing the list. As this is apparently objected to here, I've mentioned this discussion here.DGG (talk) 02:52, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

Logos on "useful objects"

Discussion copied from Wikipedia_talk:Copyrights#Logos on "useful_objects". No response after 72 hours.

As I understand it, objects whose "useful purpose" outweighs their creativity are automatically considered PD-ineligible. For example, the creative element (e.g. colour and shape) will not affect the nature of a pen or a bus, whereas it will affect the nature of a sculpture or a painting.

There are a lot of "PD-ineligible" images here however, which contain the manufacturer's logo, which by itself IS copyrighted. My question therefore is "If an image of a 'useful object' contains a copyrighted component, should the image remain PD ineligible?". I suspect not, but I'd appreciate some more input here. There are a lot of these images being moved to Commons, when I think they should actually stay here under fair use.

A couple of examples:

Thanks, Papa November 12:16, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Ouch! Seriously, this is one of those areas where fair use law really starts to break down, and it becomes very subjective. At least you have in these examples stripped out the question of image copyright, which is a totally different issue than the one you are presenting here. That would be if you copied a P.R. photo from the Intel website, claiming no copyright due to the image being non-artistic.
This is something that would get a whole bunch of legal opinions and precedent that could be found for both keeping and removing this image, and certainly something that is not clear cut in any way that you can describe here. Keep in mind here that copyright and trademark are two completely different sets of laws that cover different legal problems. In fact, I'm not completely sure if a logo or trademark can be legally copyrighted. Any legal experts know of a legal precedent allowing a logo to be copyrighted as well as trademarked? I'm talking a copyright of the logo itself, not its incorporation into something copyrightable.
Remember that the owner of a trademark does get to control how that trademark can be used, and in fact the normal limitations of copyright don't apply to trademarks. For example, trademarks (such as the Intel logo) don't expire due to age. Trademarks that were created in the 19th Century are still protected logos and trademarks...as long as they are still being used in commerce and trade by the original party. It gets more complicated, but that is the general point here.
Copyright can also be assigned to the shape of an object, such as the physical shape of the Lexus. In this sense, you are dealing with the same issues that apply to photographs of any 3D art. A good argument can be made that the design of a Lexus is a creative expression. As a matter of fact, that is often even a selling point by the manufacturer. And copyright is established as soon as something is put into a tangible medium. You would be very hard pressed to consider something put into steel and plastic to not be something tangible. That the "art" is mass produced is irrelevant here. Obviously the computer chip would be much harder to prove artistic expression... at least in terms of the physical appearance on the level of this photograph.
Fair use doctrine does allow critical review of copyrighted material, and makes explicit allowances for "the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work" (USC 17-107(4)). Wikipedia in this sense is the critical/scholarly forum that discusses these objects, and I don't see how a NPOV article about either of them can possibly harm the economic value of the same objects. Indeed, it would seem as though both companies would even desire Wikipedia articles about them and encourage photographs of these objects from a promotional viewpoint. This would even include a for-profit organization who reproduces Wikipedia articles about the object.
Assuming that there is a company that is protective of their logo to an extreme... to the point that they aggressively go after anybody using their logo in any place. Or for that matter, imagine a Wikipedia article that includes information that is substantially negative about the product that the company doesn't want to have widely published. For instance, the Lexus has a manufacturing flaw that has killed 50% of the drivers within 10 minutes after it left the dealership (to use a horrible example I'm making up for the sake of argument here...no automobile is this bad, especially a Lexus). You certainly could include this "fact" in a Wikipedia article and maintain NPOV, but it would not be something the manufacturer would desire and might not want their logo used in an article about their product in this way. Is it reasonable in this situation to have the manufacturer demand the removal of this image from a Wikipedia article, asserting a copyright violation as the reason to demand its removal? Under what conditions could the WMF (assuming a generous donation to defend its use on Wikipedia) and the authors of the article stand up to the manufacturer and insist upon the "right" to "publish" this image, even under such negative circumstances?
In even the most extreme situations where these kind of images would be used, I do believe you could find a position for Wikipedia editor/contributors to prevail legally with a hard challenge, but it wouldn't be easy to accomplish. It is a grey area at best. ---- Robert Horning (talk) 17:36, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for your detailed reply. Am I right in summarising that you believe it is safer to assess these images for "fair use" in each context they appear in? It certainly seems difficult to justify them being moved over to commons now, given the legal grey area! -- Papa November (talk) 17:49, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
I do indeed think fair use is a much better rationale for these images than claiming overall public domain justification for them. It is important, however, to make sure that the image rights themselves (which can be separated from the copyright over the object) be explicitly noted. This may be a place where free images ought to remain on Wikipedia and not be transferred to Commons. In other words, maintain the Creative Commons image license, but also note that the image contains a logo, and that the logo is being used under fair use principles...including required fair use rationale. --Robert Horning (talk) 18:05, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

Re-examining whether EB1911 really is PD

This thread poses the question is Encyclopaedia Brittanica 1911 really PD? Is the Dictionary of National Biography 1880-1900 PD?

The concern I have arose from copyvio challenge made on the commons to an image taken from a 1920 Punch Magazine [22].

If the logic being applied to the Punch cartoon is extended to EB & DNB, then we face the need to remove thousands upon thousands of articles. I think we need an informed ruling.

In the [[UK, the term of copyright is 70 years after the death of the author, or of the last surviving author of a jointly authored publication. Even if copyright has been assigned to an employer, unlike in American copyright law, duration of copyright term does not vary regardless of who owns the copyright.

If this is so, then let's do the maths:

30 year old contributes to Punch in 1920 and lives to 70 years. Date of death = 1960. Copyright expires 2030
30 year old contributes to EB1911 in 1911 and lives to 70 years. Date of death = 1951. Copyright expires 2021
30 year old contributes to DNB in 1895 and lives to 75 years. Date of death = 1940. Copyright expires 2010

The US signed up to the Uruguay Round Agreements Act, and as a result a 1920 UK publication in copyright in the UK is in copyright in the US too.

It appears to me inescapable that UK generated content is protected for the 70 years after the death of the author. Unless we know the dates of deaths of the contributors, we do not know for certain the copyright expiry date and we certainly cannot treat EB & DNB as PD as we currently do. Discuss. --Tagishsimon (talk) 23:36, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

I think a 1911 publication published in the USA is PD. 1911 EB is considered the first EB edition which tried to attract a U.S. audience. And my copy is labeled as being published in New York, with "Copyright, in the United States of America, 1910, by the Encyclopædia Britannica Company". SEWilco (talk) 23:45, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
I can go with that. What about Punch & DNB? --Tagishsimon (talk) 23:46, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
As you're insterested in the UK, you might look at [23] which includes a link to a Museums Copyright Group flowchart. SEWilco (talk) 00:02, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
Thanks. Same conclusion; we know the author, copyright is 70 years after author's death. We don;t know date of death. Bad lookout for the copying in from DNB. --Tagishsimon (talk) 00:09, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
Comment: The 1920 Punch cartoon discussion is on Commons; on Commons practice is to go by copyright in country of origin. Here on en:Wikipedia past practice has been to go by US copyright law. Thus there are some things which are PD for use here but not on Commons. The copyright for the 1911 Britannica has expired in the USA, so for USA use it is PD-US. The situation in the UK or elsewhere may be different. -- Infrogmation (talk) 01:50, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
But US copyright law - specifically 17 USC 104A - effectively restored in the US copyrights on foreign works. So it is not enough to say "we go by US law so it is PD" as US law - specifically 17 USC 104A, says the US abides by the copyright of the country of origin. See Uruguay Round Agreements Act for further discussion of this. All that said, I;ve calmed down a lot since first posting this. I do think we're in trouble with 1920 Punch cartoons. EB is fine. DNB - all of the authors I've researched so far died before 1938. --Tagishsimon (talk) 03:01, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
Hmm. Edward Irving Carlyle (1871-1952) was assistant editor of the DNB 1895-1901, and contributed several articles to volumes appearing between 1896 and 1901. Dsp13 (talk) 10:41, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
How does copyright work for multi-volume works produced over a number of years? Is each volume treated, for copyright purposes, as a single work? Or are they treated collectively? Dsp13 (talk) 10:41, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

Re-publishing statistics

I recall a debate at one time that creating an article that simply lists the Forbes 500 list (or similar) constitutes a possible copyright violation of Forbes IP. If true, I'm wondering if Web Search Engine Statistics has similar problems, since it simply appears to be duplicating the exact Nielsen//NetRatings source (ie, May's chart: [24]). --ZimZalaBim talk 19:56, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

Repeat offenders

I have edited language on the project page to include this unambiguous statement, "Contributors who repeatedly post copyrighted material after appropriate warnings will be blocked from editing to protect the project." A statement of this sort may be required by a provision of the DMCA:

(i) Conditions for Eligibility.—

(1) Accommodation of technology.— The limitations on liability established by this section shall apply to a service provider only if the service provider—

(A) has adopted and reasonably implemented, and informs subscribers and account holders of the service provider’s system or network of, a policy that provides for the termination in appropriate circumstances of subscribers and account holders of the service provider’s system or network who are repeat infringers; and"

We have the policy, but not the statement. Fred Bauder (talk) 15:53, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

how does this page work

I seethe only edits recording in the history is from the archiving by bots and the placement of backlog notices, and --but do not people place items on it manually? There seem to b some such edits on the page, but I do not see them in the page history.DGG (talk) 00:03, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

All the sections on this page are transcluded sub-pages. Edit the page to see. —Centrx→talk • 01:56, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Possible partial copyvio in Swedish settlement in Argentina

A portion of the text in Swedish settlement in Argentina seems to have come directly from http://www.nordicway.com/argentina.htm. The article appears to have been deleted as a copyvio in April 2006 but was recreated soon after. (Details are in the talk page) I haven't deleted any text yet nor checked if there's any salvageable text and was wondering if someone else could take a look at it? –panda 05:11, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

File:Umjetnicka galerija12.jpg

This picture is mislabelled. It displays: "Liberation of Jajce" (in WWII), made in 1950s, author: Ismet Mujezinović 99.229.96.231 00:13, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Virtualology

  • Greetings, I am a voluntary editor of Virtualology sites. I have spoken with Mr. Klos recently about utilizing his Appleton's content to add and improve biographies in Wikipedia since quite a bit of famousamericans.net text is in Wiki postings but do not cite Virtuaology as the source. Mr. Klos thought it was a good idea to add new information and where needed an entire biography for a missing historic figures in Wikipedia. My question simply is, If Mr. Klos agrees can these biographies be utlized to expand Wikipedia by adding missing biographies and thereby give your contributors a base to work from? Can this be done with a computer program rather then manually since there are approximately 25,000 biographies to review? Damslerset —Preceding unsigned comment added by Damslerset (talk • contribs) 01:16, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Reply, yes and we started added the quotes/re-writes to improve the articles and where we found that someone used our edited Appleton's Article we just cited the sentence or paragraph. The Appleton's Articles on Virtualology have all been edited. Some in very minor fashion while others completely re-written due to gross inaccuracies or just plain ficition. I and som other voluntary Virtuaology editors have been back and forth with Wiki Editors over the years. Just looking for direction to properly cite our work and improve wiki content which would be a good quid pro quo Virtualology. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Damslerset (talk • contribs) 21:24, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
Well, according to the site, the revised biographies are arranged separately, as explained "If you would like to edit this biography please submit a rewritten biography in text form . If acceptable, the new biography will be published above the 19th Century Appleton's Cyclopedia Biography citing the volunteer editor." from, e.g. http://www.famousamericans.net/thomasandros/ However, I see no firm indication that this is in fact the case, and would like to see some examples of this. Ones directly from Appleton's are not copyvios. Ones modified from Appleton's are copyvios, because the Virtualology site is copyrighted. Unfortunately, the original ones are also known not to be reliable or accurate. (It is additionally plagiarism to use them with just the tag at the bottom, without indicating that the entire article was copied and what the exact source is.) I therefore doubt that any material from this site can ever be incorporated in Wikipedia. If unmodified, they are not reliable. If modified, they are not public domain. DGG (talk) 00:15, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
See also comments at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Biography and User talk:Damslerset. DGG (talk) 01:11, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
Comment - responding to the notice left at the Biography project talk page, I have to agree that there would be problems as defined above. It might be possible to create, as it were, a third variation which includes the revisions of the errors of the original edition in some form other than that used in Virtuology, but I'm not sure how practical that would be. Alternately, the original content containing the factual errors could be removed at posting the content, provided that the Virtuology article isn't itself a case where that is done. I honestly don't see how to easily resolve this, because we are faced with public domain errors and copyrighted corrections. Maybe the best thing to do would be to create a list of the article names for the Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles, and working with them and the Biography project on trying to develop this content? John Carter 14:13, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
See this discussion:
--A. B. (talk) 18:32, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Missing source

Image:Elisha.jpg has been ostensibly licensed under the GFDL, but no source is provided. The image looks like it might be copyrighted. What's the right way to deal with such images? -- Ddxc (talk) 23:37, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Quoting from music reviews

I am having a friendly discussion with another user on the fair use of quotes from music reviews, and could use some more opinions. In short, in several articles about singles from Duran Duran, I have used quotes from a reviewer at All Music Guide, who does an excellent job of describing the songs in ways that I can't do as original research. I felt selected quotes, properly attributed, were fair use and a good way to provide more detail about the sound of the songs, and the sections have remained untouched by other editors for a year and a half. FromGermany feels the quotes are too long to be fair use (and I agree I might not have been selective enough with all of them), but I don't think it's appropriate to remove all of the the quotes wholesale from all the articles on copyright grounds.

A couple of samples:

source

Quoted discussion from User talk:Fromgermany:

I just wanted to question your removal of quotes from Allmusic reviews from the various Duran Duran articles I have worked on. I believe that these selective quotes qualify as fair use of text, and they are fully credited and cited. Could you please explain why you don't believe that they should be used here? — Catherine\talk 07:06, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Quotes are far too long and therefore make a violation of copyright, no matter if they are fully credited and cited. And it's only one single point of view which is presented about each single. This makes it a POV and is not very neutral at all. --Fromgermany (talk) 07:22, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
I used selected quotes which serve to describe the musical effect and technique of the song, which I cannot do in my own words without it being original research. I can search out quotes from others to improve POV if you like, but it didn't seem necessary for what are relatively short and simple articles. My reasoning for fair use: the "purpose and character" of the use is educational, not a mere reproduction of the review. The "amount and substantiality" of the quotes varies from song to song, since the amount of the review which describes the music varies. I can reduce the length of the quotes used to improve this, if necessary. The "effect upon the work's value" is less clear, and I understand some doubt here; I would hope that the prominent credit and citation of the Allmusic site would actually lead more people to the full work. I'd like to ask for some more opinions about this from others, if you don't mind. — Catherine\talk 17:44, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

End quoted discussion.

Thanks for your help - please let me know if there's a better forum for discussing the issue. — Catherine\talk 17:44, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Derivative works

For some reason I'm having trouble finding policy on derivative works based on copyrighted images... i.e., this image clearly incorporates the "official" Windows logo (as an admitted MS Paint hackjob), but it is tagged as PD and is used in a non-article namespace. Is this considered a copyright violation, and if so, what's the best way to tag it? Thanks! --Kinu t/c 18:32, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

plagiarism of wikipedia on .pravda.ru

look at the last paragraph of http://english.pravda.ru/russia/politics/26-12-2007/103172-strategic_bombers-0 and then look at the first paragraph of Tupolev Tu-160. lazy journalism, they could not even paraphrase it or just give a source.

--Greg.loutsenko (talk) 21:08, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Actually, the 2nd from last paragraph of the Pravda article compares to Wikipedia's first paragraph. The last Pravda paragraph is the first paragraph of Tupolev_Tu-160#Description. Hmm. So a Russian publication is using Wikipedia as the source for the number of aircraft in Russia's Air Force. -- SEWilco (talk) 21:29, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
Doesn't this topic belong in a different location? I'm not sure if WP:Copyright problems is the right place. -- SEWilco (talk) 21:29, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
I don't know if we have an official place to report these, but see Wikipedia:Standard GFDL violation letter for what to do about it. --Spike Wilbury ♫ talk 21:38, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Bot down?

The bot that maintains the listings of this page, User:Zorglbot, hasn't been running in the past few days, so the new listings for the 28th and 29th haven't been created properly. I took a stab at the 28th, but I think I messed it up... BuddingJournalist 04:29, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Never mind. I was able to make the 28th and 29th appear correctly. I hope this is just a short term thing though. BuddingJournalist 04:35, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Need help

Found a copy vio page, but have to have an account to add it to create the list. Here's the info, if someone else could add it I'd appreciate it. Thanks. 68.221.253.252 (talk) 01:20, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Disregard - added to page after it was created. 68.221.253.252 (talk) 17:02, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
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