Wikipedia talk:Copyright problems/Archive 15

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EPR paradox article

Pretty well the whole of the EPR paradox article may appear in this book: Quantum Computers by Jon Schiller PhD. The book says "This is a report of the latest research found by searching the internet." It has an ISBN, and is available on Amazon. It also says "No part of this book can be reproduced in any form."

Which came first? I do not know. Myrvin (talk) 11:03, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Much of it can be seen here: [1]. See Appendix C. Myrvin (talk) 11:13, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

This was also listed at Wikipedia:Copyright problems/2011 March 10 and has been resolved as reverse copyvio. Explanation and tag are now at the article's talk page. VernoWhitney (talk) 22:25, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Linking to material PD in Australia (but probably not in U.S.) on Australian web server

A. J. Alan died in 1941 having written and published some short stories in Britain. Hence, his work is PD in Australia (50 years p.m.a. prior to January 1, 2005)[2] and, indeed, some of his work is (legitimately) on Project Gutenberg Australia.[3] It looks as if his work is not PD in U.S.[4] Alan's stories will become PD in Britain in 2012 (70 years p.m.a.). I believe what I have said here is correct. Questions: (1) is a citation link to a story on Project Gutenberg Australia a breach of WP:COPYLINK, (2) is an "external link" type of link to a story a breach of WP:ELNEVER, (3) if so, will it be OK in 2012?

Commercial records were made of Alan reading some of his stories which were released in Britain in 1933. Uploads are widely available on the web, even for sale as Apple iTunes material, presumably because British copyright on the recordings only lasted 50 years from 1933. However, it occurs to me that this may be a breach of the "literary" copyright. Could enwiki link to these recordings? Thincat (talk) 15:10, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

Strictly speaking, I'm afraid that enwiki can't really link to these. :/ Enwiki is bound by U.S. copyright laws and hence unable to publish anything that is not PD in the U.S. Concerns of contributory infringement are also based on U.S. law, since that's the governing court. If the stories were published in Britain, Australia's stance is immaterial completely. But their entering PD in Britain in 2012 unfortunately does not mean they will be PD in the US then. See Wikipedia:Non-US copyrights#Duration of restored copyright. See also this chart at Cornell. At this point, unless the material was also published in the US, it will not be PD until 95 years after publication. If it was published in the U.S., it may be public domain depending on when it was published here and under what circumstances. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 19:24, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
Thank you for your advice. I have been trying hard to find the fatal flaw in your argument but so far I have not succeeded! The U.S. law regarding copyright of sound recordings in the public domain in their "source" countries seems very unsatisfactory. I have no evidence that anything was published in the U.S. and I very much doubt that A.J. Alan would have appealed to anyone outside middle England. Thincat (talk) 12:20, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Licensing problem

Pamela Evans was originally G12 deleted and has been restored after the creator added licensing to the source [5], but it's CC BY-NC-SA 3.0. I'm sure that needs to be changed to CC BY-SA 3.0, but would I be correct in thinking it also needs to make reference to the GNU free documentation licence? The creator has already been given the impression that the problem is resolved so I want to make absolutely sure before approaching them again. January (talk) 20:37, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

Hi. Yes, that needs to be CC-By-SA 3.0. Whether it also needs GFDL depends on whether the person who is adding it here is the sole copyright owner. Under our Terms of Use, in that case, yes, it needs to be co-licensed under GFDL. If copyright is shared or belongs to somebody else, CC-By-SA is sufficient. You can refer them to Wikipedia:Donating copyrighted materials if that will help. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 20:43, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
Thanks. I've added it to today's listings. January (talk) 22:00, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

Timothy Everest

Hi guys. Not sure if I'm in the right place. If not would you let me know where to go please. When I stumbled across Timothy Everest, it consisted of direct copies from articles found on newspapers, magazines and websites. I have completely re-written it now and I think all the copyvios have been dealt with. Would it be possible to run a bot over it though, just to be completely sure? Many thanks, Daicaregos (talk) 10:23, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Copy-pasting an old version of an article, rather than reverting using the normal tools

As I read Wikipedia:Copying_within_Wikipedia#Proper_attribution, it would seem that if you use a copy-paste of an old version of an article to revert, rather than using the proper revert tool, you would need to explicitly state the source of the copy in the edit summary, to preserve proper authorship history. Is this correct? I ask, because the question has come up here: [6]. Personally, I cannot see any good reason not to use the proper tools in any case, but evidently others think differently. AndyTheGrump (talk) 22:51, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

He was reverting multiple deletions of article sections. Unless he has got Twinkle installed, then each edit has to be manually undone one at a time - and in my experience that sometimes does not always work. He did complain about the user's deletion in his edit summary and only reverted that one user's edits  Ronhjones  (Talk) 23:00, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

one sentence

Would copying one sentence and giving the source, but not using quotation marks qualify as plagiarism? --Stone (talk) 00:58, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

Unless it is otherwise clearly attributed (e.g., According to John Smith, blah blah blah), yes, even one sentence can be plagiarism. VernoWhitney (talk) 14:52, 21 March 2011 (UTC)
Thanks, I will try to get this to the author of the sentence.--Stone (talk) 15:01, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Outer barrier

In the Outer barrier article, I just found a paragraph that appears to be lifted from the Columbia Encyclopedia as published by Yahoo. The suspect is the introductory section, third paragraph that starts with "The lagoons enclosed...". The end of the paragraph seems to be a direct lift from [7]

Can someone figure out if the Columbia Encyclopedia was first, or did they take it from Wikipedia? Also, I am unclear as to the copyright status of the Columbia Encyclopedia... Can someone take a look at this and give advice?

--Arg342 (talk) 14:19, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Vancouver Voice

I find the conversation about this odd. First of all, it is taking place here: Wikipedia talk:Copyright problems/2011 March 12. I don't know if creating a subpage is standard procedure here, but I think it would help if more people took a look at this. Second it's mostly taking place between an editor with a fully transparent, declared COI, and someone who has an odd style of interacting, which is kind of muddying the copyvio issue, I think. The question is whether something that someone wrote for the Wikipedia article that is now appearing on the article subject's web page years later is a copyvio. Cheers, Valfontis (talk) 13:19, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

Daily subpages are standard here just so that we can keep a handle on the backlog. Entries generally aren't reviewed for a week after posting in order to give editors time to rewrite or otherwise remedy the situation when there is an actual copyvio. Please note that I have not looked into this particular case at all, I'm just letting you know why noone who regularly handles copyvio situations has weighed in yet. VernoWhitney (talk) 13:59, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
Great, thanks for letting me know. Valfontis (talk) 14:03, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
FWIW, the Duplicate Detector report indicates that that article still has significant problems. Dcoetzee 21:24, 21 March 2011 (UTC)
See the discussion here and a summary of Moonriddengirl's investigation on the article's talk page. Valfontis (talk) 19:18, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

Alix Strauss possible vios

Have commented out what appear to be copyvios in the article. Links to material are:

We hope (talk) 13:10, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

Articles like this really need a quick G11 headshot, but in absence of that I have had a look at it. The first copyvio is a straight copy paste, but I don't see the second one. Yoenit (talk) 13:39, 23 March 2011 (UTC)
Just left you a talk page note about this; copying it here:
This should show the second possibility I was referring to. Think it was deleted here with this change. We hope (talk) 15:19, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

Bing not supporting view of copyright violation link

I've identified many copyright violation pages in the past. Now I have a problem that seems to be related to a change in Bing search results.

In abstract, this is my process: I come across a Wiki article that is in a coherent style, but is not Wiki's style. I select a longish phrase in the Wiki article, with distinctive words, such that it is unlikely to be repeated in completely unrelated articles. I do a literal search on the whole phrase. In the past, Bing search results often track down the source article.

Now something has changed, and I would appreciate any interested and informed opinion.

In a concrete example, I came randomly to the Wiki article GRENOUILLE. The article reads very lucidly, but it is not in the Wiki style. I searched on this literal string from the second para "only a few elements, and a cost, weight, and size considerably less than previously available devices", and found a single match in Bing[8]. In the search result item, after expanding it on the right with mouse over, I can see the text I'm looking for. When I click the link, however, I'm directed to this page[9].

Is there something profound here I need to understand, or is this a Bing bug?

Thanks. 98.210.208.107 (talk) 11:04, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

The only match on that search I see besides Wikipedia is wn.com, which is a Wikipedia mirror so it's no use in tracking down possible copyvios. VernoWhitney (talk) 15:28, 23 March 2011 (UTC)
Now that I started looking though, I did find a result via Google Books and an academic paper which match the text almost verbatim, so I've blanked it and another article. VernoWhitney (talk) 16:10, 23 March 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for spending some time on this, I was puzzled, and you did catch one thing I missed. 1) The Bing text I'm referring to is at the side of the Wiki mirror search item result you mentioned (!), on a mouse-over pop-up "MORE ON THIS PAGE". In full, it reads, "Grating-eliminated no-nonsense observation of ultrafast incident laser light e-fields( GRENOUILLE) is an ultrashort pulse measurement technique based on frequency-resolved optical gating(FROG). The somewhat frivolous acronym was chosen because of the technique's relationship to FROG; grenouille is French for frog". So you can see something is wacko -- since that isn't the Wiki page you mentioned.
2) I noticed that Google returned the page that did suggest the source of the copyright violation, but rather than confuse the issue, I decided to let some other intelligent person spot it. Which obviously you did. Thanks! 98.210.208.107 (talk) 07:57, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

Perrigo

The lead paragraph on the Perrigo article is copied from the company's homepage at http://www.perrigo.com. Much of the about us section has also been copied from http://www.perrigo.com/company/aboutus.aspx?id=306. PCHS-NJROTC (Messages) 02:58, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

As a start, I removed the long section that listed the management structure in detail. The issue there is not so much copyright violation, since it's just a list of names and positions, but that Wiki is not the place to list employees who are not otherwise Wiki-notable and have no special, unusual, pivotal role in the organization that is not called out by the article. The rest of Wiki material is liable to be from some company source -- but it wouldn't necessarily be published online. And frankly I get bored seaching for it. (How's that for honesty?) So the best approach may be to remove WP:PEACOCK and unencyclopedic, uncited information? 98.210.208.107 (talk) 09:21, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

Klaus Tange

Went to copyedit the article Klaus Tange in response to a copyedit tag, and while doing so found that the unreferenced text was basically word-for-word with the IMDB article. While the text is now quite a bit different after my copyedit, I'm still concerned this is a copyvio: pre-copyedit version of article ... first version of article ... IMDB article.

A possible extenuating circumstance was that both articles may in fact have been created by the same person - the article here was created by the single use account Special:Contributions/Augustdk, while the article at IMDB was created by the single use account August. Can't see any date on the IMDB article to get an idea of which one was first. Having said which, if this is the case I then have some concerns over notability and lack of references as well. --jjron (talk) 12:05, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

Working in this space

Do you need to be an admin to check/verify entries on this page? The instructions seem to suggest that. I am very much interested in helping out here and at WP:SCV.--NortyNort (Holla) 02:56, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

You need to be an admin to close entries at this page (so I believe), but there are tons of ways you can still check/verify and help out! And you don't have to be an admin to help out at SCV at all. Wikipedia:WikiProject Copyright Cleanup/How to clean copyright infringements includes some suggestions for how to help out here and some instructions for helping at SCV. Please let me know if you find any of that confusing. :) I've just updated it to take into account new listing types here, as previously we did not include {{copy-paste}} and {{close paraphrasing}} articles.
You are also very welcome to come by my talk page any time you want advice or would like to discuss any aspect of this work. I try to help out here as I can, and I also have some extremely knowledgeable talk page stalkers. :D --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:54, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for the response and link. I have been coming across and recognizing copyvios more so in the last year and thought I should face the inevitable and come help out here. I have gotten pretty familiar with procedures but will definitely have a read-through on the "how-to guide". There is always something to learn in this area. I look forward to working with you and other editors here.--NortyNort (Holla) 15:31, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
Well, it's great to have you aboard. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 18:21, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
Indeed. Extra eyes are always appreciated. VernoWhitney (talk) 18:51, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
Thanks, I will look over entries then and provide comments. An admin can come close it if necessary.--NortyNort (Holla) 02:18, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

Ellis M. Zacharias

A couple of copyright issues have come up during a GA review of Ellis M. Zacharias - I've flagged it up, and more details are on the review page, Talk:Ellis M. Zacharias/GA1. Any help gratefully received. Hchc2009 (talk) 06:58, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

I moved your comment to Wikipedia:Copyright_problems/2011_April_22 and left some comments myself.--NortyNort (Holla) 07:42, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Friday Night Dinner

A lot of the text on the characters in Friday Night Dinner seems to come directly from the Series' Website. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.145.133.105 (talk) 17:43, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Important question

An issue has arisen at WP:AN#Copyright. As a result of that issue, I've asked a question as it appears that there may be a wider issue concerning the status of images when the website they are sourced from ceases to exist. Please answer at AN. Mjroots (talk) 07:12, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Question

Just looking for some advice about establishing whether or not a text is copyvio. I'm suspicious of this addition to the Geelong West Football Club article as it matches word for word the material at the club's website. I have however come across plenty of instances where clubs add wikipedia text to their websites. So basically, how do we know who produced the text first? We know the wikipedia edit was made in June last year but I can't establish when the text first appeared on the club website. Is there a way of finding out? Jevansen (talk) 11:11, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Hello Jevansen, and thanks for brining this up. I moved the report from this section to Wikipedia:Copyright problems/2011 April 28 as it appears to be a possible copyright infringement. Normally, the entire article or most of it copied and attributed to Wikipedia. That website is much more extensive.--NortyNort (Holla) 11:29, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Hmm...

The intro of this board said "this page is for listing and discussing possible copyright problems involving text on Wikipedia." What if it's the reverse (i.e. website literally copying thousands of articles from Wikipedia and slap it with a copyright symbol)? Where should I talk about this violation? I thought about bringing this issue to Wikipedia talk:Mirrors and forks but the traffic is less than ideal for any meaningful discussion to take place. OhanaUnitedTalk page 08:21, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Well, Mirrors and forks is the place you should be. Steps for taking action are given here, but this requires your copyright is being infringed, which makes it difficult. It would help if you would at least tell what the site in question is. Yoenit (talk) 08:41, 3 May 2011 (UTC)
I'm talking about systematic copyright violation (see [10]). The article is dated but the company didn't do anything to address the concerns raised years ago. What we're looking at is a massive copyright violation by this company that infringed the rights of thousands, if not millions, of individual contributors (both IP and registered) spread across no less than 3 languages' Wikipedia (English, Chinese, and Japanese). The mirrors and folks talk page only attract less than 10 views per day so that's why I don't think it's ideal for the discussion to take place. Is there other venues aside from mirrors and folks which will be appropriate given the size of this violation is so massive? OhanaUnitedTalk page
The problem is that the Foundation doesn't hold the copyright to the articles, the individual editors do, so as far as I know there's not a whole lot they can do. Maybe bringing up the class action idea proposed in the news article at meta:Wikimedia Forum would work? I don't know if anything ever came of that, but someone on the Board should know or be able to find out if something like that is a possibility, so asking an individual person could be another approach. VernoWhitney (talk) 17:49, 3 May 2011 (UTC)
Yes, I totally understand that it's individual editors who hold the copyright and not the WMF. And we already tried at Wikimedia Forum (see meta:Wikimedia_Forum#Press_release_of_copyright_violation_of_Baidu_Baike_and_letter_to_Baidu) but I think it's more appropriate to address this at each Wikipedia since it's those editors whose copyright got violated. Maybe I'll try WP:AN and see if they can help me on that. OhanaUnitedTalk page 22:18, 3 May 2011 (UTC)
Maybe a subpage like WT:Mirrors and forks/Baidu Baike or WT:Mirrors and forks/Systematic site-wide infringement, with a listing on WP:Centralized discussion? I don't see a WP:Requests for comment topic that matches. Using a different site as an example, WP:Village pump (miscellaneous)/Archive 30#WP site rip-off not attributing got some discussion, but no resolution, and WT:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-04-25/In the news#Qwiki got zero responses. Flatscan (talk) 04:14, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
WP:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-05-09/News and notes#Chinese online encyclopedia accused of infringing on Wikipedians' copyright is a Signpost article on Baidu Baike. Flatscan (talk) 04:06, 10 May 2011 (UTC)
Yes, I saw that article too so I started Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks/Baidu Baike to centralize discussion. That page still needs some work but the main points are already summarized. OhanaUnitedTalk page 15:55, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

Rolling Stone Top __ of all time content

There are some articles about various Rolling Stones lists, The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, The 100 Greatest Singers of All Time, The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. These lists have a sample listing of ten results for copyright reasons. FakePlasticSpirit (talk · contribs) is expanding entries to the list without any talk (example). On the The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, there are hidden comments saying not to copy the list because of copyright reasons. The talk page consensus is to limit the list to ten.

Should FakePlasticSpirit's expansion of these lists beyond ten entries be reverted? Thank you --CutOffTies (talk) 17:58, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

Personally, I think they should. If he s/he is going against community consensus on reasonable limits and adding copyright material, said edits should be undone (at first) and her/him warned. If s/he ignores the warning, reversion is allowed because it becomes vandalism. If s/he keeps at it... block. As for the limit, I think 10 would be enough. The AFI lists include the whole thing, but I'm not sure on the copyright status of that. Crisco 1492 (talk) 12:15, 9 May 2011 (UTC)
AFI gave us permission; Rolling Stone did not. :/ --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:17, 9 May 2011 (UTC)
Good to know. I think we should stick to the consensus and just list the top 10. Crisco 1492 (talk) 12:26, 9 May 2011 (UTC)
I should've noted in my original question that the talk page link I gave with the consensus is from years ago. Recent attorney advice is more valuable IMO. --CutOffTies (talk) 12:29, 9 May 2011 (UTC)
We really need to work that one out. :) I keep meaning to launch that RfC with the hope of subsequently publishing User:Moonriddengirl/Copyright in lists in project space, but there's always something.... This week, I'm traveling and will be unavailable from Wednesday through Saturday. Maybe after I get back. :/ --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:37, 9 May 2011 (UTC)
Yeah. We could get rid of the lists for now and keep the critical reception bits, but they may end up on the AFD without including some of the list. I would be happy to join in the discussion when this is brought to CFD. Crisco 1492 (talk) 12:42, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Colony Club

I'm not certain if this is a problem or not. Please see the indented 2nd paragraph (beginning "This is not...") under "Second Clubhouse" at Colony Club. This appears to be a direct quote from the cited book (I do not have access to the book) and was in the earliest version of the article with quotation marks. Is this allowed as fair use or otherwise, or is the quotation too long? Station1 (talk) 22:25, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Clerks for WP:CP

I have proposed creating clerks for WP:CP; see Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#WP:CP clerks and please weigh in if you have input or ideas. Thanks. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:29, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

Proposed: replacing header

Hi. I have for a long time been wanting to clarify the header of this page based on feedback I have received over the years. The purpose is to make the processes clearer for taggers and responders. Since it has to be revised anyway to note the inclusion of clerks, I figured I'd go ahead and do it now. Please review Wikipedia:Copyright problems/Header redo and let me know if I've introduced any problems. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 23:52, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

  • Support - I've compared these side-by-side and find MRG's version to be a definite improvement. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:31, 29 May 2011 (UTC)
  • Support an improvement indeed. I noticed you improved Template:CPC as well (what was going to be one of my suggestions). However, I don't see it appearing in the edit pane.--NortyNort (Holla) 14:10, 29 May 2011 (UTC)
  • Thanks. :) I was trying to get that in user-friendly order but stopped because of the redundancy of Template:CPC and Template:CP. There's also Template:SCV. We really don't need three sets of templates, but I'm not sure how best to consolidate them. I was planning to create a table listing them by code for ease of use. :/ Not sure what to do about that? In the meantime, I figured I'd better go chip at the backlog. :D --Moonriddengirl (talk) 14:17, 29 May 2011 (UTC)
  • Aah, I see. Can CPC be placed here (admin-edit only)? With the exception of {{CPC|def}} {{CPC|u}} for SVC and {{SCV|list}} and {{CP|cp}} for CP, there isn't much difference. I can help fix it up. I am going to work on the clerk advice as well. I am backed up with time; the typhoon came over yesterday and knocked power out. I also think one should be created for a cut/paste move that a non-admin can't fix but has requested a history merge for. I come across that daily.--NortyNort (Holla) 14:47, 29 May 2011 (UTC)
  • Okay, what I've done is create a transcludable table at CPC which is now incorporating in the edit notice. It'll be easier to update it. The redundancy of templates...we can deal with that another day. I wouldn't be happy giving up my CPC prefix; I'm too used to it. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 16:16, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

Business broker

Business broker (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

I just got a message from Blinking12 (talk · contribs) about their addition to the business broker article, which I had reverted because it added a promotional link. However, in Blinking12's message it said "the origin for the text comes directly from our company handbook that was written well over 40 years ago". I'm not sure if they are referring to the text they added (seems too short to add copyright-infringing text), or to the entire text of the article (seems unlikely glancing at the article's history). I thought I would err on the side of caution, though, and post here. Could this be a copyright problem? — Mr. Stradivarius ♫ 02:41, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

Not sure about his company's brochure. I would ask for proof; a scan, electronic copy, etc. I do see a lot of the text is similar to here and here. I found one backwards copy but I am not sure those are backwards as well. I think they are judging by the citations.--NortyNort (Holla) 03:43, 30 May 2011 (UTC)
Asking for proof sounds like a good strategy. I'll wait and see if they reply to my message and update here if necessary. I suppose they must be talking about the entire article text, but looking at the original version I don't see any similarity to those links. I suppose we won't know what the issue is until we hear it from Blinking12 directly. Thanks for the help! — Mr. Stradivarius ♫ 04:22, 30 May 2011 (UTC)
User:Wintonian just found this, which is almost identical to the original version. If it's just the original version which is in violation then the article may have already been changed enough, but I think this definitely deserves some closer investigation. Shall I make a new post at WP:CP? — Mr. Stradivarius ♫ 05:02, 30 May 2011 (UTC)
Wintonian also pointed out that the "Types of services that a broker can provide" section, now removed, shared a substantial amount of content with this page from the Citizen Eagle website. With this removed, hopefully there won't be any more problems. — Mr. Stradivarius ♫ 06:21, 30 May 2011 (UTC)
Well, a 14 May 2011 archive of the Citizen Eagle site shows different text, perhaps they copied from us. Two other sites are very familiar as well, here and here. Archives for those pages go as far back as 2008. I can't prove we took it from them but given the variety of different mirrors, I suspect they took from us. I will tag the page and list it at WP:CP though for a closer look.--NortyNort (Holla) 08:03, 30 May 2011 (UTC)
Ok, thanks! — Mr. Stradivarius ♫ 08:11, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

Picture copyright violation

File:901011e0fe64acbc152851ecc04ec1f5.jpg is taken from [11]. If you download the files to your hard drive, you can see that WSU neglected to put their copyright info on the file they posted on the public website but it is on the file that was improperly posted here. James470 (talk) 02:34, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

I tagged it for speedy deletion on Commons were it resides. Thanks for reporting the problem but this talk page isn't the place to report specific violations. In the future, please tag such violations for speedy deletion on Wikipedia or Commons or list them for discussion on Wikipedia or at the file deletion process on Commons.--NortyNort (Holla) 02:45, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Text of the GNU Free Documentation License

We have a somewhat concerning situation here. Wikipedia:Text of the GNU Free Documentation License contains the following boilerplate:

Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.

Of course, that we have changed it, namely by massaging the formatting to match the prevailing MediaWiki / Wikipedia layout contention (Wikimarkup for header lines, for instance). It is not at all clear that the license allows this, but even if it did, the text is quite definitely not compatible with our content license and I'd argue that we can't use a Wikipedia page to host the licence. Instead, a text file with the original formatting should be moved to the file: namespace (and appropriately tagged as non-free) and the page in question redirected there.

If there's a better place to flag this then I'd appreciate if people pointed potentially interested parties at this discussion.

Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) - talk 12:38, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

I think perhaps you should mail the question to [email protected]? --Moonriddengirl (talk) 19:56, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

Proposed overhaul for {{copyviocore}}

Hi. There's a proposal to update {{copyviocore}} at Template talk:Copyviocore#Propose replacement. Please weigh in, if you have interest. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 19:56, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

Palacio de Cristal

Palacio de Cristal seems to be a Google translation of this site, which has a 2004 copyright notice on it. Is translating into a different language considered to be enough of a change to avoid copyright problems? WP:COPYVIO does not say. 71.234.215.133 (talk) 23:23, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

Translating a copyrighted source creates a derivative work. In this case, it is obvious because the sentence structure and the ordering is the same. Nice catch. The article has been blanked and listed. MER-C 10:50, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

Will Allen (urban farmer)

Would someone be able to take a look at the Will Allen (urban farmer) article? I strongly suspect that parts of it are copied (or closely paraphrased) from this book. The possible copyright infringements were introduced in August 2010 [12] by User:Phaeton23, who's been warned about this stuff before. The quality of his prose in this article varies dramatically, which makes me think that some parts were simply copied. Some of the content he added is jarringly amateurish ("When he played for the middle school team, he was a huge and powerful kid and proved to be unstoppable."), but most of it looks like it could have come from a professionally written publication.

If anyone could help, I'd greatly appreciate it. Thanks! Zagalejo^^^ 06:42, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

Copyright problem: Antibody Labeling

I apologize for not knowing how to address this properly, but this page on antibody labeling is almost entirely lifted from the Innova Biosciences Guide to Antibody Labeling (pdf). Maybe another user more familiar with the nuts and bolts of how to handle this can check it out and figure out what to do. Thanks! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Chparadise (talk • contribs) 14:56, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

Yep, that is a match [13]. Tagged for speedy deletion. Thank you for reporting the problem. Yoenit (talk) 15:09, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

Requested RD1 redaction

If someone could perform a RD1 redaction on Haseena Khan, it would be appreciated. Mssohag (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) keeps reverting my changes to the artice, including the Revdel template, and each time the copyright violation is readded. Thanks --BelovedFreak 08:41, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

Ramirez

Thank you, but it's supposed to go on the front page. :) I'm putting it in the right place for you. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 02:58, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Disappearance of copyright allegations for section in Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington

Not sure where to address this so starting here. On 19 June a section of the article was tagged as a copyvio and that section was blanked. The article was listed on the WP:CP dated 18 or 19 June, seven or eight days ago. (It was tagged around midnight so not sure which day it was actually filed under.) For several days the article remained listed on the WP:CP page while a lengthy discussion on the article's talk page, Talk:Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington#Copyright allegations, indicated several editors felt it was not a copyvio and possibly a frivolous report or false positive.

I expected a resolution this weekend and that the huge banner plastered across the article would be removed but it appears that the article is no longer listed at WP:CP and a review of the page history does not show me how or when it was removed from the WP:CP listings.

I am concerned that if the article is not listed then it will not be reviewed and the huge tag will remain on the article. Please let me know if there is a more appropriate forum or process to address administrative concerns for this project or if there is a portion of the process that is working correctly that I am not aware of. Sincerely, Veriss (talk) 02:08, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

This concern appears to have been resolved. Thank you very much. Veriss (talk) 03:32, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

removal of cv notices by editor

Hi. Not sure how to handle this. I tagged an article for being a cv violation. An editor de-tagged it, not at all addressing the cv issue -- just maintaining notability. See here.--Epeefleche (talk) 18:21, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

And here, he removed a cv notice at a different article, on the basis that it was "not a BLP".--Epeefleche (talk) 18:28, 8 July 2011 (UTC)
From a quick glance at the history they could well be backwards copyvios. I would suggest listing them at WP:Copyright problems for further evaluation. January (talk) 18:39, 8 July 2011 (UTC)
Is that permissible, even after the cv notices were removed? Tx.--Epeefleche (talk) 18:43, 8 July 2011 (UTC)
In fact the editor addressed the alleged copyvio [14][15], User:Future Perfect at Sunrise has since reinstated one on the basis that it was a backwards copy [16]. January (talk) 19:07, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

From blacklisted site

Just had an issue using the copyvio template because the edit won't save because the url was a blacklisted site. Kinda sub optimal as they say!. I have got around the issue by shortening the url, here in the article Shri Jyotiba (Kolhapur). Regards, SunCreator (talk) 20:01, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

You can always try www DOT whatever DOT com as well--NortyNort (Holla) 02:01, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

Tom Burlinson

Tom Burlinson was tagged as copyvio on June 20, yet I cannot find where it has been discussed. (Actually, I cannot find evidence it was even listed at CP.) How do I find out if it was handled and what the result was, before listing it (back?) on the main CP page? 71.234.215.133 (talk) 06:26, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

We appear to be having some bot problems. Will start a new section below as this is quite important. Will point various people at it as well. Dpmuk (talk) 10:42, 9 July 2011 (UTC)


Bot problems

We appear to be having some quite severe bot problems at the moment. It would appear that the bots currently aren't listing {{copyvio}} tags that haven't already been added to WP:CP meaning some have been missed entirely, e.g. the one mentioned in the section above and Alpha Industries. It would also appear that we are no longer having copypaste tags listed leading to a backlog, an example not listed is 2011 Texas Rangers season. Dpmuk (talk) 10:42, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

Same with close paraphrase. MER-C 11:19, 9 July 2011 (UTC)
VWBot has been down for awhile and VernoWhitney hasn't edited in three weeks.--NortyNort (Holla) 11:49, 9 July 2011 (UTC)
I don't think it's just VWbot that's the problem - I seem to recall another bot used to add copyvio's that hadn't been added manually. Have offered to help VernoWhitney with his bot but obviously that depends on him seeing the message at the very least. For the moment we probably just need to check the categories manually. Dpmuk (talk) 12:09, 9 July 2011 (UTC)
DumbBOT and Zorglbot usually create the CP day and add the CSBot listings but this has been done manually as of late. I will leave a note at those bot talks.--NortyNort (Holla) 12:28, 9 July 2011 (UTC)
Zorglbot has been blocked since March, VWBot was the back-up.--NortyNort (Holla) 12:34, 9 July 2011 (UTC)
Zorglbot has not been reliable for a long time, and it seems that Shutz could care less. He was asked in April when he planned to have the bot unblocked, but though he has edited since, he doesn't seem to have been bothered to answer. We had issues previously that prompted me to follow him to his home wiki in France, multiple times, and he evidently didn't consider that worth responding to, either (see my 2009 note). I'd much rather replace it with a new bot, ideally one that can be maintained whether its creator loses interest or not. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:57, 9 July 2011 (UTC)
I wasn't referring to the listing the stuff you're doing manually but rather when someone adds the copyvio tag to a page but doesn't list it at WP:CP. This used to be done by a bot but now isn't being done at all. I've dropped VernoWhitney a message saying I'd be happy to help with his bot. I don't have enough time at the moment to start a bot from scratch but I may be able to get an already existing bot back up and running if I can get hold of the source code. Dpmuk (talk) 21:25, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

Socialist Party of America

There's an accusation of plagiarism and copyright violation against User:Peter G Werner, made by User:Kiefer.Wolfowitz, at Talk:Socialist_Party_of_America#Plagiarism.

The suggestion is that material introduced to Socialist Party of America by Peter, some years ago, plagiarises this Socialist Party USA document.

A duplication detector comparison of the two (using an old version of the Wikipedia article) does indicate quite a few phrases in common. However, the more problematic of these phrases were not added by Peter.

The material that was introduced by Peter, which Kiefer believes constitutes plagiarism, is as noted on the talk page by Kiefer (Talk:Socialist_Party_of_America#Plagiarism). now posted in this thread by Kiefer --Demiurge1000 (talk) 08:11, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

My thoughts on this are that, while there may be some lack of detailed attribution of the sort that we would expect in 2011 (but not five years ago), the element of actual plagiarism and copyright violation here is little to none. For example, the closest exactly matching phrase is "Shachtman and his lieutenant, Michael Harrington" which seems more coincidental or common wording than anything else. The real underlying concern here seems to be that Peter had, according to Kiefer, written a section that largely conveys the ideas of the Socialist Party USA document, but while citing some of that section to a book written by Peter Drucker. While this may be problematic in other respects, it doesn't constitute copyvio as far as I can see.

This issue is now the subject of some argument at WQA and various talk pages, so it would be useful if someone uninvolved and with a clear understanding of the relevant policy, could comment on the validity of the plagiarism (and copyvio) accusations against Peter. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 08:21, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

That was a clear, non-partisan, and helpful request for help. Thanks! (I had asked a member of this project for help previously, but the member is unavailable now.) Another phrase is "democratic centralism".
I quote the text of parallel passages. The passage Demiurge1000 mentioned and the phrase "democratic centralism" are identifiable because of one phrase (the Harrington as Lieutenant phrase weird and the democratic-centralism phrase terribly offensive). The others involve large prose segments whose thought is the same but whose structure has been permuted with rewording: These are probably the larger problem:
  • SPUSA: The ISL was a Trotskyist splinter group founded and led by Max Shachtman ....

In 1958 the ISL dissolved, and its members joined the SP-SDF. ... the concept of “Realignment.” Shachtman and his lieutenant, Michael Harrington, argued that what America needed wasn’t a third party, but a meaningful second party.

The Realignment supporters said that in sixty years the Socialist Party had failed to bring labor into the Party, and in fact kept losing their labor sympathizers (such as the Reuther brothers) because they saw they could do more within the Democratic Party.

  • WP: In 1958 the party admitted to its ranks the members of the recently-dissolved Independent Socialist League led by Max Shachtman, a ... Trotskyist .... Shachtman and his lieutenant [[Michael Harrington[17]]] advocated a political strategy called "realignment," arguing that rather than pursuit of ineffectual independent politics, the American socialist movement should instead seek to move the Democratic Party to the social democratic left by direct participation within the organization.[1]
  • SPUSA: At the ... Democratic National Convention ... in 1968, Realignment Socialists were present as delegates.... At the same time, many Debs Caucus members were in the streets with the demonstrators.

  • WP: This division was manifest most strongly during the 1968 Democratic Convention, in which members of the Debs Caucus were among the protesters outside of the convention, while members of the Coalition and Unity Caucuses were among the convention delegates.[2][3]

Another plagiarism due to User:Peter G Werner

  • SPUSA ... Max Shachtman’s leadership, ... showing a growing tendency toward a Stalinist “democratic centralism” in practice.

This plagiarism was due to User:Peter G Werner

  • SPUSA In the 1972 Presidential election the Shachtmanites supported Henry Jackson .... During the campaign itself, they took a neutral position between McGovern and Nixon, following the lead of the AFL-CIO. Harrington and his Coalition

Caucus supported McGovern throughout. Most of the Debs Caucus members supported Benjamin Spock, candidate of the People’s Party....

  • SPUSA At the end of 1972, ... many of the states and locals within the Debs Caucus, .... Early in 1973, the Socialist Party of Wisconsin, with the support of the California and Illinois Parties, ... voted to reconstitute the Socialist Party USA.
  • WP: Socialist Party USA (not Socialist Party of America): Numerous local and state branches of the old Socialist Party, including the Party's Wisconsin, California, Illinois, ... organizations, participated in the reconstitution of the Socialist Party USA.[4]

*SPUSADue to America’s restrictive and often undemocratic ballot access laws (which have made it almost impossible to break the two-party monopoly on national politics),

  • WP the financial dominance of the two major parties, as well as the limitations of the United States' legislatively[5][6] and judicially[7] entrenched two-party system.

*SPUSA: the party views the races primarily as opportunities for educating ...

  • WP: The Socialist Party USA ... runs candidates for public office, though these campaigns are often considered educational in intent ....[8]
The sentences have been re-written , using the New York Times, so any copyright violation does not appear in the present article.
An important question is whether the past problems were substantial enough that a project administrator should remove the history: Removing the history would make it difficult for others, particularly those who may find objections to my recent edits, to revert to earlier versions, however.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 21:33, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

Daily Mail

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2015653/British-soldier-shot-dead-Afghanistan-routine-patrols.html

Here the daily mail is using a image of helmand province from wikipedia, I can't see any references on that page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.14.81.26 (talk) 14:10, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

Pity, I see this all too often.--NortyNort (Holla) 01:00, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

James Wyatt

This is substantially the same text as it was in 2004 [18], where it's credited as being quoted from A Biographical Dictionary of English Architects, 1660-1840 by H.M. Colvin, 1954. It's evolved a bit, over the years, but enough? Most of the phrasing is still Colvin's.Ruskinmonkey (talk) 00:47, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

Oil mafia of Maharashtra

The first entry on Wikipedia:Copyright problems/2011 June 27 -- Oil mafia of Maharashtra hasn't been fixed yet but the date-section has been archived already. Can someone take a look? cheers. —SpacemanSpiff 21:25, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

Olive oil extraction

At Wikipedia:Media copyright questions#Wikipedia Article Plagiarized, someone noted that Olive oil extraction appears to be plagiarized from this. Since the article was created whole-cloth by an anon, it looks very suspicious to me. Could someone take a look? Thanks, – Quadell (talk) 16:32, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

Err... whole-cloth by an anon? I see a gradual evolution mostly from a named user towards the text in 2005, 5 years before the purported source. What have I missed? MLauba (Talk) 16:44, 20 July 2011 (UTC)
My mistake: newbie error. I just saw the first 50 edits in the history and thought it started at this edit. You're correct, it has been gradually built upon over years. – Quadell (talk) 17:11, 20 July 2011 (UTC)
Update as I'm not certain I'll be available later on, I see it as a backwards copyvio. I've also played around on archive.org to check whether the very first claim of copyvio in 2005 had any merit, and haven't found anything even close. To me, I think the whole stuff is ours. MLauba (Talk) 17:05, 20 July 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for checking! – Quadell (talk) 17:11, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

File:Anders Behring Breivik (Facebook portrait in suit).jpg

File:Anders Behring Breivik (Facebook portrait in suit).jpg File:Anders Behring Breivik in diving suit with gun (self portrait).jpg

The files states reuse must be attributed, however the sourcesays it can be used by anyone for any use, it does not require attributation, the attributation at wikipedia the files require are to his manifesto, making attributation a stealth method of promoting his cause through work that is already warned as original research.--Hemshaw (talk) 14:53, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

File:Anders Behring Breivik in black suit (self portrait).jpg|thumb|150px|Breivik in his Freemason regalia

File:Anders Behring Breivik in black suit (self portrait).jpg|thumb|150px|Breivik in his Freemason regalia WP:NOR as above. The files states reuse must be attributed, however the source says it can be used by anyone for any use, it does not require attributation, the attributation the files requires is to his manifesto, making attributation a stealth method of promoting his cause through work that is already warned as original research--Hemshaw (talk) 16:11, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

copyvios in GAs

I've been looking through some geography Good articles. Several have (possible?) copyright violations in them:

Some of these might strictly speaking be "close paraphrasing" but some are copy/pastes.Volunteer Marek (talk) 16:32, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

What I can suggest is to remove the sections and cite the copyvio source and tool. Delist the GA's if you need to. User:Zscout370 (Return Fire) 18:20, 25 July 2011 (UTC)
How do you go about delisting GAs anyway? Volunteer Marek (talk) 18:21, 25 July 2011 (UTC)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:GAR User:Zscout370 (Return Fire) 18:29, 25 July 2011 (UTC)
I listed Lajjun at today's entry and notified the creator/main contributor. It will be examined further later. Usually where there is some close-paraphrasing/copying, there is more in the article. I will check out the other two that haven't been tagged later as well.--NortyNort (Holla) 03:14, 29 July 2011 (UTC)
I cleaned out the mosque article. A user already cleaned out the Town Hall.--NortyNort (Holla) 00:47, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

Peter Tomsen

A recently created article on a living person, Peter Tomsen appears to have been copied word for word from the sole source linked to the page. Since this is a new user, I'm going to apply a welcome template then apply the copyvio user warning. The subject happens to be a guest on Jon Stewart's show tonight, so I suspect this was a good faith effort to add information about a notable living person to the pedia. Subject has lots of sources about him, so actually sourcing the page doesn't look a huge problem. BusterD (talk) 11:34, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

The article looks clean now, likely the result of a good faith error on the editor's part.--NortyNort (Holla) 02:55, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

Blood-C

A copyvio has been directed at the "Terminology" section on the article of the anime series Blood-C, for content translated from the Japanese that appears in a reference resource on the official website.

Per Wikipedia's guidlines for translation, "Because Wikipedia licensing requires attribution, the translation source must be credited to avoid copyright violation." The extremely brief translations in this section are original text provided by myself and other contributors, and have been credited to their source, which is a resource opened to the web free of cost by the original publishers. Being that the source is not in English, text has not been replicated verbatim. In certain instances, text contains content from other Wikipedia entries. Content in this section is provided on Wikipedia for informational purposes, and is not intended to compromise market value of the subject of copyright. Per Wikipedia's guidelines on inclusion of text from other sources, text has not been copy-pasted verbatim; text is provided in original language that did not exist in the source, and is thus not a close paraphrase; the source is both cited and linked.

Clarification of translation-related copyright guidelines would be appreciated. This text also appears on: Talk:Blood-C.

-- Fallacies (talk) 15:58, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

Note: this is being addressed at Wikipedia:Copyright_problems/2011_July_30.--NortyNort (Holla) 12:42, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

Royal St. John's Regatta

Please check out Royal St. John's Regatta. I just took out most of the history section because it was identical to The official regatta site history p-age http://www.stjohnsregatta.org/history.jsf. I think the Falcon editor allowed the change to stand. I do not understand the instructions of how to tell if the text was a real copyvio or not. Thanks. 174.88.10.35 (talk) 02:03, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

Yes, you were correct to remove the text. I located a Feb 2005 archive prior to the article's creation and you can see the text there.--NortyNort (Holla) 12:33, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

Aligarh Muslim University

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Aligarh_Muslim_University&oldid=442398931

Editor has removed the copypaste-template without comment.--Diwas (talk) 08:58, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

I removed text from one source, the other was a Wikipedia mirror. I also found copied text from an additional sources by different users. Additionally, I removed a lot of copied text from Zakir Hussain College of Engineering and Technology. I think that is all. I warned Vamiqsalman about their contributions. In the future, please list article problems at on the project page.--NortyNort (Holla) 11:14, 2 August 2011 (UTC)
Thanx NortyNort, “© Winx Club” (at the bottom of the mirrored wikipedia-article) is another problem. --Diwas (talk) 23:09, 2 August 2011 (UTC)
No problem, glad I could help. Yes, they are supposed to atribute us but there are many sites that don't. It is a bit of a problem. What gave it away was the CommonsCat they copied.--NortyNort (Holla) 02:05, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

Help with images on a page- URGENT

I have placed an image on the plot section of an article, Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole and a user removed it, saying that the ceritain image of a character does not need to be placed on the page. But I think that since the article only has one image, that it needs another image to make it look complete, and less bare. It also gives readers a picture to look at when they are reading the plot. The image is non free, but I have created a proper FUR for the image. Could this please be pointed out why the image got removed? Thank you. (I dont think this is even the right place to post this messeage) Monkeys 9711 (talk) 15:49, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Media_copyright_questions for questions about images. The article does appears to have one fair-use image already and a second isn't needed. Also, plot summaries normally don't have images in them.--NortyNort (Holla) 21:17, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Mein Kampf in the Arabic language

This article contains a rather extensive discussion of the 1963 Arabic translation of Mein Kampf.

The copyright of Mein Kampf is owned by the German government, which does not authorize translations. The Arabic translation is therefore unauthorized, and in violation of copyright law.

I am wondering if Wikipedia should be writing an article about a work that is in clear violation of copyright law. --Ravpapa (talk) 16:15, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

There is nothing in copyright policy to prevent our talking about it, whether or not it is legal. If we are not selling it or providing a link to it in its entirety, we should be okay. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:11, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

Seeing more undetected copy copyvios

In processing Wikipedia:Database reports/Long stubs, I'm noticing a new trend which is the addition of large blocks of text lifted from other sites. Over the ones I have looked at today, I think at least 5% of the articles I have looked at are clear violations. These can not be simply deleted since the material seems to be getting added to existing articles. So a revert to a previous version of the article is usually the solution. Don't know if the editors over here have any tools to detect that type of violation, but if you can that would be good. Note that the list I'm using only gets updated weekly. Vegaswikian (talk) 18:32, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Most of our tools are currently dead. :( If we could get Corensearchbot functional again, we could probably come up with something that could scan articles on that list. The problem is that Yahoo have changed their terms of service, and as I understand it we are negotiating with Google to try to come up with something in the alternative. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:08, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

War Horse

Have a look at War Horse (film). --91.10.26.218 (talk) 15:40, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, that was a problem. :/ Thanks for taking care of it. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:06, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

Backwards copying: when Wikipedia had (or may have had) it first

The section "Backwards copying: when Wikipedia had (or may have had) it first" needs updating. At the moment it includes two links

I suggest that we remove the link meta:Non-compliant site coordination from the project page.

However I would like to know what I am supposed to do about reporting a book which is probably a copyright violation of several Wikipedia pages. Wikipedia has an article called Special Forces (United States Army). There is a book:

  • IBP USA, USA International Business Publications. Us Special Operations Forces Handbook:World Strategic and Business Information Library (6 ed.). Int'l Business Publications, 2007. pp. 70, 71. ISBN 1433057727. {{cite book}}: |author= has generic name (help) that duplicates the Wikipedia article "Special Forces (United States Army)" based on this Revision as of 23:51, 20 February 2011 by Joe712. The detail of how I can to this conclusion can be found in the section Talk:Special Forces (United States Army)#Copyright problems.

I can not be sure it is a copyright breach by them, because I can not see all of the book with the Google preview (specifically pages 1 and 2) where they may credit Wikipedia. But as a search for the word Wikipedia in the book fails it is unlikely to be the case as does copyright. Others of their books such as the Indonesia Business Law Handbook have on page 2 a standard page that among other things says "UPDATED ANNUALLY" and "We express our sincere appreciation to all government agencies and international organizations which provided information and other materials for this Handbook", Searching on those strings in the "Us Special Operations Forces Handbook" returns both of them on page 2 so the book appears to have the standard page two without any mention of Wikipedia.

Where should a book be reported so that it can be followed up to confirm or refute the copyright accusation? Once I know that I can update the section "Backwards copying: when Wikipedia had (or may have had) it first" to cover what do do with books. -- PBS (talk) 05:24, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

I've replaced meta:Non-compliant site coordination with Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks, which is not historical. The thing to do is tag the article with {{backwardscopy}} if you are quite sure that we had it first. There is not really anywhere to report a book or a website for somebody else to follow up on it; the Wikimedia Foundation does not own copyright to the content on its websites, and it is up to contributors to follow up on these things themselves. The only people with legal standing here are the people who wrote the article. You can, however, note at Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks whether you did or did not contact the publishers yourself. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:03, 16 August 2011 (UTC)
Thanks. What I think would be a good idea is to add a hidden category to the templates so that we can easily find out how many articles are tagged and what they are. -- PBS (talk) 01:51, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

User:Shroffameen

Editors may or may not feel inclined to keep an eye on User:Shroffameen. This editor is either unwilling or unable to grasp copyright policies and continues to add copyright violations despite warnings. He is apparently unsuitable for blocking.--BelovedFreak 14:16, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

"Unsuitable for blocking"? What? Could you explain that a bit more? :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 14:40, 16 August 2011 (UTC)
Sorry, frustrated and short of words! Probably my fault for taking it to the wrong venue or something. He had been warned, (admittedly some time ago) then gently reminded about copyvios (although this may not have sunk in). He then created PanIIT and PETAH (may have been some confusion with second one as I think it was from his website, but that itself had copied Wikipedia's PETA article without attribution). So I didn't warn him at this point (other than speedy deletion notices), but reported to AIV. This was declined, for not being after a warning. I gave some ore advice on copyvios/close paraphrasing, then noticed this addition, so left formal warning. Then, Theriomancy was created that was copied from a site that has some kind of license (I can't remember what as I've lost the link, but it wasn't compatible with WP because it was for no modifications.) I guess it's possible Shroffameen thought it was licensed freely, but based on his other contribs, I have a feeling that was a coincidence. Anyway, I reported to AIV and was declined as out of scope and no longer an issue. So anyway, probably worth keeping an eye on this guy as although he appears to be acting in good faith, he doesn't seem to get it. --BelovedFreak 15:01, 16 August 2011 (UTC)
Ok, seems to have been resolved for now and he has been blocked for 2 weeks.--BelovedFreak 18:25, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

user:Psycotics1454

I have just found a blatant copyright by user:Psycotics1454 see talk:Royalist rising of 1651 to 1654. I went to place the message generated by {{copyvio}} on that user's talk page only to find that the user was blocked in 2007 as a sockpuppet of user:Mjgm84.

I guess that there is a need to check all of the edit of Psycotics1454 to see what else was copied from a copyright sourcce by this user. -- PBS (talk) 10:00, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

The Soul Stirrers -- backwards copyvio?

Anyone who can help me out? I'm nowhere near experienced enough with this kind of issue to know for sure. I was taking a look at The Soul Stirrers, and on the talk page an IP user noticed that the content is also on the site http://www.singers.com/gospel/soulstirrers.html . After a bit of research, I think it's a backwards copyvio, though: the very first revision of this was written by a (now de facto retired) admin, User:TUF-KAT: [23]. Some parts of this text were then changed by an IP a year or so later: [24] and it's this revision which seems to be the main issue. It's unlikely enough an admin would have gotten away with writing featured material while also introducing copyvios, but incredibly unlikely he would have copied from a site which then changed its content, only for the IP to copy from the same site.

After poking around some more, their page on the Birmingham Sunlights appears to be copied from this page dated 1994, which, to my mind, would almost certainly mean it's singers.com that is violating others' copyright and our licensing requirements. But I'm not sure where to go from here. Email the site owner? Not sure I'm the right person to do that, or that I feel comfortable doing so. Tag the article with {{backwardscopy}}? Despite being largely convinced, I'm not convinced beyond all doubt, and I'm not sure it's appropriate to tag it until I am; certainly a second set of eyes would help. It's also very possible that they're publishing other Wikipedia articles without due attribution or permissions, but I'm not sure how to go about identifying them. Any experienced editors who could give me some advice/input? Would be very helpful, thanks! Buttons to Push Buttons (talk | contribs) 14:28, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

Merely possible copyright infringement

The process outlined leaps straight from a heading saying (my emphasis) "Suspected or complicated infringement" to an instruction to: "Remove the infringing text or revert the page to a non-copyrighted version...". What if there is only a suspicion - as opposed to certainty - that our text infringes copyright? The process could do with being made less ambiguous.

As a case in point, I recently noticed, while making improvements to it, that the episode descriptions on List of Onedin Line episodes are the same as those on the equivalent IMDb list, but have no way of knowing which was copied from the other; nor indeed that they were not authored by the same person in both cases, and published legitimately on both sites. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 18:39, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

If you are unable to obtain evidence that it is either definitely or definitely not a copyvio (e.g. by talking to the author or the external website operator) then we usually base it on user reputation (if they have a history of copyvio it's probably a copyvio), otherwise keep and investigate further. In some cases though it is necessary to be conservative. Dcoetzee 08:26, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

Possible copyright violation for article Key Ceremony

A part of this article is a copy and paste of another website. In addition, this article is not well written. Could be this article be removed altogether from the encyclopedia? Malosse (talk) 19:03, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

Although the source is dated after the creation of the article, a quick glance at the history and creator's contributions reveals this is a likely copyvio and definite self-promotional spam. Blanked. MER-C 12:05, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

Template usage problems

I've spotted a prolbem at the Nicky Trebek article, where everything beyond the third sentence in the lead appears to have been copied from this web page. I am however a bit uncertain of how to deal with this, as the {{copyvio}} template is not functioning (or blanking) the way I'd expect it to. I would appreciate if someone with more copyvio experience could take a look at this and apply the proper tag correctly. Thank you.  -- WikHead (talk) 07:02, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

In obvious cases like that, it is okay to simply remove the copyvio text with an explanatory note. (I went ahead and deleted it.) But thanks for raising the other issue. I am not sure why the template is no longer blanking the text. I found the same problem -- the template extends neither to the bottom of the page nor to a /div marker. We'll need to have someone with some mark-up skills check the program language. I'll see if I can find someone. — CactusWriter (talk) 16:36, 10 September 2011 (UTC)
It appears that some "tweaks" were made to the template on September 8 -- and these are preventing it from blanking the page. I've reverted the template to the prior version. For legal reasons, the blanking is a crucial function of the template and supercedes any of the "tweaks". It seems to be functioning properly now. Thanks again for bringing this to attention. — CactusWriter (talk) 17:00, 10 September 2011 (UTC)
Excellent work CactusWriter, thank you kindly. I've probably only discovered copyvio issues three times in as many years, so attempting to deal with it correctly requires leaving the instructional document open in one window while running previews in another, and following through step by step. In this case, regardless of what I tried in preview, one window only seemed to contradict the other... and I nearly abandoned my efforts in hopes of it being detected by another user more familiar with the procedure. Thanks again for your quality help and advice.  -- WikHead (talk) 20:47, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

Piruzan

I have just removed the entire section on Umar's murder from this article; lifted from (a new external link to a site registered on Wikipedia's blacklist!] www. cais-soas .com /News/2007/June2007/28-06.htm. )

I suspect that more of this article may have been copy-pasted from other sources as well (but am too tired to go original-hunting!) Can someone better able than me deal with this one, please? Pesky (talk …stalk!) 10:17, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

Hi, Pesky. You are correct that the text was copied -- but it was all copied from Wikipedia. Piruzan was copied from two duplicate articles -- Pirouz Nahavandi and Abu-Lu'lu'ah. (Talk page discussion shows some discussion about a merger but apparently never acted upon. And the creation of a third article with copied text and subsequent redirects is improper.) I have now merged the two articles, add "copied text" templates to the talk pages and redirected this third article. As far as the CAIS website goes, it gives a date of June 2007, but the text in the Abu-Lu'lu'ah article history goes back to 2005. This is probably a reverse copy. Cheers. — CactusWriter (talk) 19:04, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

The Contender (articles - probably more than one)

Hey guys - knotty problem for the experts here! I CSD'd new article The Contender 1 as a copyvio, having found various phrases to be exact matches for many places on the web, including pages that came up 404's when clicked on from Google. Please see this section of my talk page, where editor says this content was moved from main article. It seems there may be a big copyvio problem with the original article and anything that stems from it, though tracking down the originals may prove problematic at this point. Beyond my level of expertise, in any event! I got the heads-up from seeing a wall of consistently-written and styled text with no inline citations. Nice little project for someone? Pesky (talk …stalk!) 06:43, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

Possible copyright violation for article African palm civet

See here possibe copyright violation from the book Handbook of the Mammals of the World. --DPC (talk) 17:20, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

Posh Nosh

Posh Nosh or large sections of the article appear to be a copy/paste copyright vio from http://www.angelfire.com/trek/amsguy/PoshNosh.html, especially the "In Depth" section.Jarhed (talk) 02:35, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for bringing it up, and sorry it's taken so long for us to get to it. :) This one is almost certainly a backwards copy, as there is evidence that the content developed here naturally. See the talk page for more information; I've added some explanation to the "backwardscopy" tag. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 17:21, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

Possible copyvio at List of awareness ribbons?

The article List of awareness ribbons (including images) appears to match verbatim the website "Disabled World". Is this a case of them taking from Wikipedia, or a copyvio? — Michael J 19:52, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for raising the question. It seems like they took from us. :) Further information in the template now at the top of the article's talk page. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 17:14, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

Request assistance with DRN thread

Hi there everyone. If it's not too much trouble, could someone with a good working knowledge of copyright law take a look at a dispute at the dispute resolution noticeboard? It is a case where an editor appears to have taken quotes from Metacritic, but has sourced all the quotes to their original sources; the alleged copyright violation is of the Metacritic page itself, but I'm not sure how this would fall under copyright law. The thread can be found at Wikipedia:Dispute resolution noticeboard#Top Gear (U.S. TV series). Thanks for your time. — Mr. Stradivarius ♫ 14:11, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

Fundación Ciudadano Inteligente (Smart Citizen Foundation)

I'm suspecting a copy-paste (with translate in there somewhere) from the official website, but I don;t have the relevant language skills to do a thorough check. I've done quite a bit of work sorting out inline ELs into refs, etc. so someone may need to go back to how it looked before I got into it. Pesky (talk …stalk!) 09:23, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

I've verified some copy-paste, and I join you in concerns that there may be more. I've blanked the article, with a link to the blatantly copied source, and left a note for the creator. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 16:18, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

{{Article-cv}}

FYI, template:Article-cv has been nominated for deletion. As it is included in your instructions, this will likely have an impact here. 70.24.251.158 (talk) 07:52, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. That would have been quite a mess. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 10:47, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

iDate Sam & Freddie

It would appear that the entire 'plot' - and thus almost the entire content - of this article is copied from elsewhere - it appears on [25] (under "Synopsis/Summary of iCarly Season 4 Episode 15 iDate Sam & Freddie:") dated 7 Sept, and the content was not added to Wikipedia until 10 Sept.

I'm not sure of the best approach; I'd previously redirected it to the article on the series - but that was not over copyvio, it was because there was no referenced content, and I thought a redirect would be the best approach.

Please could someone else take appropriate action? Thanks,  Chzz  ►  16:09, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

I removed the plot as the source predates the article by a few days and redirected the article to the main episode page. Other similar episodes are listed there as well. I don't think this article rates a stand-alone.--NortyNort (Holla) 18:20, 24 October 2011 (UTC)
Agreed; thanks for another opinion.  Chzz  ►  04:17, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

Inclusion of 90+ rankings at The Intelligence of Dogs

There's been some discussion at the talk page of this article (Talk:The_Intelligence_of_Dogs#Re_removal_of_.28most_of.29_Coren.27s_rankings_list). I felt that including all 90-some entries in the WP article didn't comply with WP policy on creatively-compiled lists, the other editor wanted to see clarification (the discussion took place while other articles based on rankings were being discussed at Articles for Deletion). Could other people here weigh in? Thanks, Novickas (talk) 22:40, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the note, I left a response.--NortyNort (Holla) 23:59, 23 October 2011 (UTC)
Thanks, NortyNort and Yoenit. Novickas (talk) 14:17, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

Music Publishers

Hi, I would like to know how to find publishers of certain songs, for permission of use and payment of royalties. Is there a site where you can look up publishers? I'm having a terrible time! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.118.56.107 (talk) 18:38, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

Copypaste tags and unlisted copyvio tags

Could those that deal with copyright please remember that as we don't have a working bot articles that are tagged with {{copypaste}} aren't showing up and that's led to a backlog at Category:Copied_and_pasted_articles_and_sections. I've started to work on it but there are a lot there. My attempts at getting a bot up and running have stalled due to a dead laptop but before it died it was producing lists of copyvio tags that weren't being listed here and there were certainly quite a few. Obviously they're still being listed at Category:Articles tagged for copyright problems but that doesn't show which ones aren't listed so I'm not sure what the best way to deal with this problem is. Dpmuk (talk) 23:06, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

Ack. We really need to get some bots going on this page again. There's promising movement on the CSB front, but that's just going to amp up the work here. :) Dramatically. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:02, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

point shaving

Hi, I'm looking at the third paragraph of the "Other Sports" section of point shaving and wondering if it is a copy and paste from the cited website or reverse (can you cite something that uses Wikipedia as a source?). 018 (talk) 03:07, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

I now think this might be a reverse copy and paste job. What does one do about that? 018 (talk) 01:49, 8 November 2011 (UTC)
{{backwardscopy}}. :) Thanks for looking into that, and I'm sorry you've been sitting without response for so long! --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:03, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

College of Science - University of Baghdad

This article is very large and large portions of it are copyright violations but not all (at least from what I can find so far). I could use some help combing it to see if there's enough information left to warrant an article. I'm tempted to just make it a stub but if anyone has some time, I could use some help. OlYeller21Talktome 19:43, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

I should note, I think redirecting to University of Baghdad would probably make more sense than creating a stub. OlYeller21Talktome 19:47, 4 November 2011 (UTC)
Wow. He keeps putting this back. Over and over again. :/ I've indeffed him. It may become necessary to protect the page. Redirecting is completely an editorial decision, though, so you might want to bring it up at a different forum. :) I try not to mix my copyright hat with other work. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:09, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

Copyedits

I started working my way through the page, and found that I believed the text of the page could be improved, so I've started copyediting it. Others are welcome to take a look at my changes, and discuss them or (if I've erred in some way) revise them as appropriate. I found particularly confusing the para that made it seem, when you got to the end of it and if you did not read further, that there were only 2 (rather than 3) ways to address copyright concerns ... I've now fixed that.--Epeefleche (talk) 06:46, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

Looks good to me. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:01, 22 November 2011 (UTC)
Thanks. It needs much more work, to turn it into even passable English, and fill in words that are simply missing. I'm glancing at the next section ... "... check the discussion page to see if a note has been added to the top of the talk page allay people's concerns." Really? This is a hot mess. Within 2 weeks, I'll try to slog through it all.--Epeefleche (talk) 18:52, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

Copyvios from psychology students

I just wanted to give other editors a heads up about a group of psychology students. I noticed one blatant copyvio appear on my watchlist and followed the editor in question to this class. I spot-checked two more students on that list and they had both copied and pasted text from other sources without permission, indicating there may be a larger problem. I have notified the professor of the class, but it might be worth keeping an eye on. --BelovedFreak 10:49, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

  • Another one here [26] I am in discussion with the prof. And we will need to figure out how to proceed.--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 13:42, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

{{Copypaste}}

Hi! I'm not sure if this question can even be answered but are article that use {{Copypaste}} patrolled by editors who frequent this board? I only ask because I'm investigating how the template is used. I feel that it may be used in error or may be used when immediate action should be taken (like a G12). We may need to more adequately define the scope of the template but if its use is closely monitored, there may not actually be a problem that needs addressing.

Here's a list of article that use the template. As of this post, it's being used 230 times[27]. OlYeller21Talktome 20:10, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Up to 237. Can I assume that the lack of response means that no one who monitors this page also monitors the use of this template? OlYeller21Talktome 18:19, 4 December 2011 (UTC)
Hi. Sorry. I try to keep an eye on this page, but sometimes I fail. :) Articles marked {{copypaste}} used to be listed here but fell off when we lost Verno's bot (User:VWBot). We currently are botless, which is a pity as we're losing a lot of cleanup. :/ --Moonriddengirl (talk) 18:37, 4 December 2011 (UTC)
Hey, it's no problem. I think the template points out a problem that most likely needs to be addressed quickly and I'm going to try and come up with a way to make sure we address those problems in a timely manner. Maybe I need to teach myself how to make/use bots and get that bot running again. OlYeller21Talktome 18:50, 4 December 2011 (UTC)
That would be awesome. :D Besides VWBot, we've lost the assistance of Zorglbot and DumbBot. We are distressingly manual. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:02, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Possible copyvio images

Possible copyvio images uploaded by this user:

They are high quality, and I can see a watermark on one. Cheers, Anna Frodesiak (talk) 17:39, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

The only two I did not find within WP:CSD#F9 are now listed at Wikipedia:Possibly_unfree_files/2011_December_6#File:Citycenterhyd.jpg_and_File:Outeringroad.jpg. I do not find his assertions of "own work" trustworthy. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:08, 6 December 2011 (UTC)
Many thanks. :) Anna Frodesiak (talk) 13:19, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

CSBot

... is back in action. — Coren (talk) 04:24, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

Good news. Thanks for helping to get it back up.--NortyNort (Holla) 07:03, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nashik#Tourism

This section seems to have been copied from multiple sources. A few of them are as follows:

Jobin (talk) 17:58, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhule#History

This section seems to have been copied from the following source:

  • dhule.gov.in/html/history.htm Jobin (talk) 18:03, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osmanabad

The section Dharashiv caves of the above page seems to be copied from some other source which is currently blacklisted. Please Google search to find the link.Jobin (talk) 18:21, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marwadi

The section History & Origin of the above article seems to be copied from the following source:

The_Intelligence_of_Dogs

Hi,

I am new so first I would like to apologize if I shouldn't have started a new topic.

I am writing regarding article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Intelligence_of_Dogs

After having this page published with the full Intelligence list for years wouldn't it be wise to not remove the list until clarification is given by legal counsel? It is my understanding that no complaint has ever been received by the copyright owner and that it's not even clear if copyright has been infringed. It seems absurd to be removing the list after having it published on Wikipedia for years, all without any complaint from the copyright owner. I think it is safe to presume that the copyright owner does not object to his list being published on Wikipedia or he would of contacted Wikipedia years ago, seeing as it's the number 1 ranked Google search for "Dog Intelligence" , unless he lives in a cave, I think he is aware. Why not wait for legal counsel to advise if copyright is being infringed and only then make a modification if needed or if the copyright owner contacts Wikipedia, why the rush after years... I think it is wise to wait. If you disagree feel free to remove the list but I think that would be a disservice to the Wiki community after having this page ranked 1 on Google and referenced by many other webpages, especially when no complaint has been made. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cantanyuser (talk • contribs) 13:55, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

Possible copyvio at Concept note

It seems content here may have been copied from a Word document on a wiki without attribution. Could someone take a look? I have started a discussion at Talk:Concept note#Possible copyvio. Thank you. --MegaSloth (talk) 23:19, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Explicit symmetry breaking

As well as being incomprehensible as it stands, this article appears to have been copied verbatim from a paper Castellani, E. (2003) "On the meaning of Symmetry Breaking", available at http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/927/1/SymmBreaking.pdf --Keith Edkins ( Talk ) 14:02, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Cleaned by User:Dpmuk. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:03, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

Potentially Unfree Files

I am attempting to work with my local Transit Agency to get a set of images for specific stations that are currently listed as needing a photo. I would like to get a consultation regarding the viability of this section in the context of uploading the photos. Is the Use Policy compatible with the "free" portion and therefore able to be uploaded to Commons, compatible with the Fair Use policy, or should not be uploaded with the current Use Policy? I have not yet uploaded these images as I want to ensure the copyright/licence is acceptable before uploading. If I have asked at the wrong place please let me know where I should take it. Thank you. Hasteur (talk) 18:02, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

You're probably best off asking at Wikipedia:Media copyright questions as you're likely to get a wider audience there. This venue is mainly concerned with text-based issues. Dpmuk (talk) 18:36, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia

I am posting this because many un true facts I posted were deleted. I like many others wanted to use Wikipedia to have fun and lie to gullible people and after this post Runs With Eagle will never use wikipedia again. This statement is an apology. I have learned that I can not use Wikipedia for my own selfish needs of tricking people. This is fine because there are many people at my school whom I can trick. And so I conclude by saying that Wikipedia is ment to be a reliable site that should only be used for people to openly discuss topics of life. I hearby resign from wikipedia until I can learn to be responsible and use this noble site for it's proper design — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.104.178.37 (talk) 02:07, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Copyrighted images and copyright notice not allowed on the English Wikipedia?

Will somebody please have a look at this. I added a picture to an article, but it was removed by the user Binksternet with the reason, that "No copyrighted images allowed, no images with requirement for copyright notice"[28] Is this true? I think Binksternet has misunderstood something. Many images on Wikipedia are not in the public domain, but are copyrighted and can be used under a license. If one think that copyright means "do never use this image" then one have misunderstood the situation. Does the English Wikipedia have a policy saying something like "No copyrighted images allowed, no images with requirement for copyright notice"??? --JAL78 (talk) 03:16, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

The guideline at WP:CREDITS says that no copyright notice should be placed in the article. The larger issue with the image in question is that it is part of a promotional campaign by JAL78 to replace Bösendorfer, Bechstein and other competitor piano images with an image of a Steinway & Sons piano. ([29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41]) I reverted all of the images thus placed because of conflict of interest issues. Binksternet (talk) 05:04, 1 February 2012 (UTC)
– Yes, the credit does not necessarily need to be on the article page itself – that cannot be required by the copyright holder; having it on the image page is enough by most Wikipedia projects' standards. Binksternet said that copyrighted images are not allowed on Wikipedia, which is false. Binksternet deleted the image – not only the optional byline – and he wrote that "No copyrighted images allowed, no images with requirement for copyright notice".
– Binksternet's accuse of my edits being a "... part of a promotional campaign..." is just an attempt of removing the focus from the case about a misguided Binksternet deleting pictures, because he doesn't understand what "copyright" and "license" mean. And yes, I removed some bad pictures, including pictures of Steinway(!) pianos, and replaced them with this extremely good picture. There is nothing wrong or suspicious about that – it's actually pretty normal to replace pictures when better pictures become available; that is a part of making Wikipedia better, which is an ongoing process. And by the way, be aware that other editors revert Binksternet's edits.example here --JAL78 (talk) 06:00, 1 February 2012 (UTC)
Now that we're all clear on the credit issue, I suspect that what we have here is a slight clarity issue and that what Binksternet meant was that we don't generally accept content that places more restrictions than our licenses allow or that require us to give credit on the image or article itself. I would imagine that the vast majority of photographs on Wikipedia are copyrighted. Most of them are compatibly licensed, although some of them are claimed as fair use under WP:NFC. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 14:23, 1 February 2012 (UTC)
MRG, I think your comment "I would imagine that the vast majority of photographs on Wikipedia are copyrighted" is possibly accurate, but misleading. We are only hosting copyrighted images on en-wp because we can't host them elsewhere. Millions of images are available on Commons that started out on WP. Buffs (talk) 22:10, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
Actually many, if not most, of the images on Commons are copyrighted as well. :) Content released under compatible license is still copyrighted. Use of the material in a way that violates the license is still copyright infringement. (I don't actually know the ratio of compatibly licensed to public domain content on Commons.) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:54, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

Doubt regarding Copyrights of material on Wikipedia

Hi All,

I am a post-graduation student. I have open book end semester exams. Can I print the material posted on wikipedia for using it as a reference in my exams? Will it be considered as a copyright violation issue?

Thanks, Preet — Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.91.215.55 (talk) 12:56, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

While I can't speak to what is permitted by your university, most content on Wikipedia can be liberally reused. Please see Wikipedia:Reusing Wikipedia content. I can't give you legal advice, but I would myself be comfortable with printing out articles for my personal use. If you look in the "toolbox" on the side of every article, you'll even see there's a link you can click to print the page. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:10, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
Yes you can, no it won't. But check the facts carefully, and I suspect that if you are required to cite your references WP will not impress the markers. On Moonridengirl's point, ask your faculty. Rich Farmbrough, 12:32, 8 February 2012 (UTC).

Turning myself in

Hey copyright specialists,

I've just been accused of being a serial copyright violator over at DYK, and need some guidance. The argument, if I understand it correctly, is that I've written several biography articles recently organized by chronological order; compared to sources on the individuals which are also organized in chronological order, these are then too similar in structure, thereby making it a copyright violation. Unfortunately, the charge is coming from an editor I've had issues with in the past, but of course that doesn't mean it's not legit. Would it be possible to get a second opinion on the articles Aboubakr Jamai, Musa Muradov, and Nosa Igiebor? If I'm on the right side of this policy, I'd like to clear my good name; if I'm on the wrong side of this policy, I'd like guidance for how to improve. And, of course, if I'm somewhere in the squishy gray area on this policy (I suspect this is the most likely outcome), I'd still appreciate a bit of guidance on how to improve to help get myself wholly into the "white". Cheers, Khazar (talk) 19:45, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

Khazar, I've been here at WP for some time. I too have been accused (and even hounded) over claims of copyright infringement/paraphrase issues (please keep in mind I've also contributed heavily to four FA articles. There is a case of severe paranoia here on WP. What people don't recognize is that this is indeed a gray area. It isn't cut & dry. So, what we need to do is stop biting the newbies, assume they meant well, and help them out. I recently contributed to an article only to have 2 entire paragraphs deleted and erased from the edit history because it was "too close" to the original. Now, I took quite a bit of care in crafting the sections and there was quite a bit of original work so I was quite taken aback. I asked for the previous versions to be temporarily accessible (not restored) so I could rephrase them and was told "no because that would open us up to potential lawsuits." I can't even fix the problems and that sort of attitude bites down on the noobs quite hard. In short, the plagiarism/copyright paranoia in WP is staggering. We can fix most of it without harsh deletions, removals, and hidden edit histories. We haven't had a lawsuit yet and I see no reason we're going to get one in the future. Buffs (talk) 22:08, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
If I understand Moonriddengirl correctly, there won't be any lawsuits because the Wikimedia Foundation is shielded from them by complying with the DMCA. All it has to do to avoid lawsuits is remove the questionable content. I believe Buffs's statement is correct: we haven't had a lawsuit yet. (I couldn't find any using Google search). If the worst case for WMF is that it removes content challenged by the copyright holder, then there is no point in driving good editors like Khazar away with accusations of copyvio. Arguments claiming "too close paraphrasing" and copying "structure" were advanced against Khazar's edits. These are ill-defined, subjective concepts that often require a judge and jury to decide. Given that this is a gray area of copyright law, it frankly baffles me how any editor here can achieve such a level of certainty about a paragraph or two in one of our articles that he is ready to start making accusations of copyright violation against the editor who made the paraphrases and "copied" the structure. If Wikipedia is losing editors, we can ill afford to be driving good ones away by overzealous enforcement of our copyvio guidelines, especially when the "downside" is so negligible. --Kenatipo speak! 00:34, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
This is not to say we shouldn't TRY to be free of copyvios, but vilifying and overly criticizing simply isn't going to help; it's only going to drive people away. Explaining what needs to be done should be accomplished in favor of "NO! NOT THAT!!! SWEET MERCIFUL HEAVEN, THIS GUY HAS NO IDEA WHAT HE'S DOING!!! DELETE EVERYTHIGN HE DID!!!". Buffs (talk) 00:42, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
I agree with you completely that we should not vilify and overly criticize people, and we should never have to lose a contributor over copyright issues if that contributor is willing to work to adjust his or her practices. Quite a few people who have had copyright issues - some of them extensive enough to require a WP:CCI - have continued contributing and done well.
That said, "there won't be any lawsuits" is really only true of the Wikimedia Foundation and only so long as we maintain protection under the DMCA. The contributors who add content are not sheltered and are vulnerable to lawsuit themselves. Some of them have had legal problems. So have some of the content reusers who have taken our words that the content was freely licensed. It's a real problem and we need to make sure for the protection of contributors and reusers that we try to offer good guidance and properly monitor content.
I've worked copyright heavily on Wikipedia for, what, four years? Maybe longer? I'd be so happy if we could foster a serious, professional approach to copyright on Wikipedia that would eliminate the drama. Copy-pasting is one thing, but close paraphrasing issues are well described as a "squishy gray area", ranging from what probably almost anybody would agree is a copyright problem down to the point that almost anybody would agree is not a copyright problem. There is always going to be some conflict in determining where our line of acceptable is, and I imagine there are always going to be border cases. People who fall into the border may need to approach the matter differently, but they aren't bad people or even bad writers. They're just working on a particular skill. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:08, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
Moonriddengirl, were the Wikipedia editors who had legal trouble guilty of copy-pasting copyvios or were they guilty of "close paraphrasing" and copying the "structure" copyvios? --Kenatipo speak! 17:09, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
Don't copyright infringement lawsuits usually arise because the copyright owner feels someone is making money from something he "stole" from the copyright owner? There's no monetary benefit to editing Wikipedia that I know of. --Kenatipo speak! 17:16, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
In the case of Musa Muradov, can't someone just ask CPJ.org to read our article and get their opinion on whether the phrasing is acceptable? --Kenatipo speak! 17:21, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
There have been issues of both copy-pasting and close paraphrasing. But copyright infringement lawsuits don't usually arise because somebody else is making money off of their content, but because of concerns that somebody is preventing them making money off of their content. :) That said, the non-commercial status of Wikipedia doesn't factor into our copyright policies because of the license we use to release our content; we could have used a "non commercial" license, but because we wanted as few restrictions as possible on material, we opened our material to commercial reusers as well. And non-profit organizations also have rights to their material, so even if we took from somebody whose right to profit isn't being affected, copyright issues can still lead to lawsuits.
I'm not sure how CPJ.org would feel about such a request. I would imagine they're likely to be busy. :/ --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:33, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
MRG said: "The contributors who add content are not sheltered and are vulnerable to lawsuit themselves. Some of them have had legal problems. ... There have been issues of both copy-pasting and close paraphrasing." I wonder how many of us editors are aware that we are personally liable if our paraphrasing is "too close". --Kenatipo speak! 18:33, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

This has long been a concern of mine, that our editors may not realize this. A few years ago, for instance, a German contributor uploaded content on English Wikipedia that he believed consistent with US fair use and WP:NFC, but the content was German and he was German, and the publisher went after him because it wasn't legal in Germany. (They did this without going in any way through the WMF; WMF generally will not pass on personal information about contributors without a subpoena, but this fellow was editing under his real name and they were able to find him that way.) I don't know what ultimately happened with that case.

Even if you comply with Wikipedia policy, you may be liable for actions that violate laws in your jurisdiction, and people in other jurisdictions may at least attempt to reach you (see National Portrait Gallery and Wikimedia Foundation copyright dispute; fortunately, that one ended well).

In terms of close paraphrase, I would hope that it would have to be really close before issues would be raised - I mean, to the point that most of us would agree it was a problem. But you never know what people are going to raise issues with. And even if a court finds ultimately no infringement, it's no picnic going through the legal process. It's a good idea to be careful. Our policies on "fair use" are constructed to be deliberately conservative, and taking a similar approach pays for our contributors as well.

Copyright is not the extent of potential legal liability. We are all legally liable for any content we post. For instance, libel. Oh, and a specific case that comes to mind: it is evidently a crime punishable by imprisonment in India to publish a map that challenges the sovereignty of the Indian state - for instance, the big one at the bottom of this section. In November, a group protested a Wikimedia meeting in India attempting to get criminal charges lodged against Jimmy Wales and others attending (see [42]). Jimmy and the India office have some protection in that they have never edited the article, but there's a reason that on page two of that story Jimmy "stressed that Wikipedia editors and contributors should abide by the local laws." :/ --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:05, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Thank you, again, Moonriddengirl. Your responses are always informative and thoughtful. You speak as one having authority and not like the scribes, (even when you're not speaking "as one having authority"). --Kenatipo speak! 20:18, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Close paraphrasing used to be discouraged, until SV changed the wording in some of the guidelines. I have recently raised in on Wikipedia Talk:Plagiarism#Clarification of what "with very few changes" means as an issue and I think it is time we revisited it. I think that the previous rules we had that you either summarise someone else's copyrighted text or quote it served us better than the wording we have now. While the old wording may may cramp the style of talented editors like SV, I think that for the thundering hurd old guidance served Wikipedia better. -- PBS (talk) 04:45, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

IPA chart

File:IPA_chart_2005_png.svg seems to be a copy of this copyright image. --Surturz (talk) 02:43, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Since they both cover the same material, there are bound to be similarities, but not a single section is identical. I don't see a copyvio here. Moreover, it's a commons image. They have their own boards. Buffs (talk) 04:01, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Bryan's Dictionary of Painters and Engravers

Extensive use has been made of direct copying of the 1896 edition of this work, which is PD in the US, but still probably in copyright in the EU. Is this a problem? Rich Farmbrough, 02:36, 29 January 2012 (UTC).

I'm guessing the we mostly use the even later 1903-1905 editions: see Michael Bryan (art historian). The only way it might still be in copyright is the "life of author + 70 years" clause, applied to the editor (Williamson) as author. But almost all of the actual text is from articles in the work written much earlier by earlier authors who died even longer ago. Since even Williamson died in 1942, the work as a whole will be PD within a year at most. I feel that it is not worthwhile to go back and scrub all of our articles looking for (mostly non-existent) changes made by the Williamson. Each such scrub would simply find an earlier edition of the work and verify that the specific wording we copied was in fact in the earlier edition. Arguably, even this is unnecessary since most of the articles in the dictionary are attributed to their original authors and not to Williamson. The work is therefore under copyright as a derivative work, and copyright applies to the creative elements added as part of creating the derivative work, while the original authors' rights apply to the included works (the articles,) and those rights have expired. But we are not copying the creative elements of the derivative work, which include such things as added commentary, composition, order of compilation, etc. Am I missing something? -Arch dude (talk) 11:14, 29 January 2012 (UTC)
One I happened across today was from the 1910 edition, and unattributed (although it was referenced in some way). I'll note the article here tomorrow. If we are using earlier editions there is less likely to be a copyright issue, although saying we are only breaking the law by a year seems weak. I noticed that one contributor to the 1896 edition lived to 1946. None of the articles I have seen cite the author, only the work as a whole. Rich Farmbrough, 23:42, 4 February 2012 (UTC).
The article Friedrich Rehberg does, in fact, use text common to both 1903 and 1910, it references the 1903 edition but does not attribute. Rich Farmbrough, 23:58, 4 February 2012 (UTC).
If so this is a plagiarism issue, but (probably) not a copyright issue. Fix it by adding attribution, not by removal. -Arch dude (talk) 00:47, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
As I understand it in the case of joint authors, which would include editors, and for unattributed parts of a work written by a group of people, all those who contributed to the work as a whole, copyright would subsist until 70 years from the death of the last author. Rich Farmbrough, 00:00, 5 February 2012 (UTC).
I am not an expert on this. However, if it is unattributed in a collective work and we cannot determine the author after a good-faith search, I think the passage falls under the "anonymous" clause and is free of copyright 70 years after publication. However, the known editor may reasonably be assumed to also be one of the authors of an unattributed section, so we must also wait until 70 years after his death, i.e., we must wait until this year. In an excess of caution, we may also want to find an earlier edition, but frankly this is silly. -Arch dude (talk) 00:47, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
I just did a little research. According to Wikipedia:Public domain, The English (at least) Wikipedia's copyright rules are based on U.S. copyright law. Use of material that is PD in the US but not elsewhere may be a problem for re-users, but it is (apparently) not a problem for Wikipedia. In U.S. copyright law, anything published anywhere in the world prior to 1923 is PD in the U.S. There is lot of strange stuff about material that was created earlier but not published until later. So, we are not breaking the law, nor are we violating the stated policy, when we use this material. Our contributors are violating WP:Plagiarism policy when they fail to attribute instead of merely citing the work. A larger issue is whether or not the "U. S. law" policy is the correct policy, but this is not the correct forum for that discussion. If we change this policy, Brian's is the least of our worries: we will need to attack EB1911 and DNB first, I fear. -Arch dude (talk) 17:11, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
As I understand it (and that's why I was looking for clarity on this noticeboard) we attempt not to breach copyright in any country, but are of course only bound by Florida/US law in some senses. (Incidentally you should say we are not breaking US law, I, and other EU readers, are potentially breaking our laws.) Re: EB and DNB - yes that had crossed my mind - fortunately the DNB is relatively clear in internal attribution, so it is a much simpler task to resolve. This does look very hard to resolve (except for saying forget about it), especially since there are many editions, and the authors are noticed, if at all in the introduction. For myself I may look at DNB first. Rich Farmbrough, 21:30, 5 February 2012 (UTC).
Please read Wikipedia:Public domain carefully. As I read it, we explicitly adhere to U. S. copyright law as our policy. If I am incorrect about this, please cite your reference to WP policy. Again, I do not assert that I think that the policy is correct, but if it is not, I think you should take your case to the talk page of that policy or another policy page, and get the policy changed or clarified before you begin applying it. DNB will be easy to analyze since the Wikisource project has gone to extreme lengths to identify the 700 or so authors. EB1911 is more likely to be a problem. Note that there are differences between the copyright policies of Wikisource, English WP, and Commons. -Arch dude (talk) 03:25, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
Archduke, you are indeed incorrect. Copyright is currently determined in the country of origin. This copyright acknowledgement is completely in disregard to the actual legal status in the US. As clearly annotated above, the US does not recognize copyrights prior to 1923. Some countries do. This provides one HELL of a conundrum as the images are PD in the US and not necessarily at home (this debate is currently raging at Wikipedia talk:Copyrights#RfC: What to do with respect to the copyright of countries with which the US does not have copyright relations? and I invite ALL to participate).
IMNSHO, it is difficult to determine copyright status in the US with all the laws with which we have to contend and it will be impossible if we go to the lengths to determine copyright status in other countries irrespective of US law. I respect the laws of other countries, but people publish works in those countries full-well knowing (or out of ignorance) that their copyrights end at the borders. To extend those copyrights to US and WP conflicts with copyright law and reduces the availability of works which are PD in the US by prohibitting or limiting usage on WP servers.
Once again, a related policy discussion (linked above) is already discussing potential changes/clarifications. Your input is requested.
For the sake of clarity/transparency, I was asked by Rich Farmbrough for my opinion. Buffs (talk) 04:50, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
You say I am incorrect. I only made two assertions:
  • According to Wikipedia:Public domain, WP policy is that we follow U. S. copyright law.
  • According to U. S. copyright law, anything that was published anywhere prior to 1923 is in the public domain in the U. S.
Which of these assertions is incorrect? -Arch dude (talk) 20:08, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
You are partially incorrect on the first assertion and incomplete on the second.
  1. Wikipedia policy is currently muddled. WP:Copyrights currently states "The Wikimedia Foundation is based in the United States and accordingly governed by United States copyright law. Regardless, according to Jimbo Wales, the co-founder of Wikipedia, Wikipedia contributors should respect the copyright law of other nations, even if these do not have official copyright relations with the United States.". Unfortunately, this leaves us with some unclarified issues. What do we do about images that are PD elsewhere, but not in the US? What about images that are PD in the US, but not PD in the country of origin?
  2. You are absolutely correct on that assertion, but that doesn't mean we can use them on WP. WP has decided (poorly in my opinion) that we shouldn't just take into account US law, but the law of every other country...but has conflicting guidance on the subject (reference the questions at the end of #1).
You aren't a bad person or anything. You certainly aren't disruptive. But figuring out the status of an image is becoming more and more complicated. Personally, I think we should just stick to what the US uses (I couldn't care less if we replaced "US" with "France" or "Switzerland" or "Japan" as long as we had a clear standard) and our servers are in the US. It simplifies things dramatically and doesn't delve into the depths of (for example) Iranian copyright law. Buffs (talk) 21:40, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
In the case we are discussing here (the 1903 edition of Bryan's,) The US does in fact have official copyright relations with the relevant country (the UK,) so Jimbo's statement is not precisely on point. Further, the work in question was in fact published (in the US, in this case) prior to 1923 so my second point is valid for this case. I was not attempting to generalize to unpublished works or post-1922 works. Jimbo's statement needs to be modified to provide clear guidance, and the resulting clear policy needs to be propagated into Wikipedia:Public domain. Until all of this is clarified, I think we should spend our time more productively on clear copyright violations under US copyright law. -Arch dude (talk) 22:12, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
Absolutely. I just want to make sure people don't get the wrong idea. Bryan's appears to have first been published in the US with a registered copyright. I find it hard to believe that anyone could make a claim in the US regarding copyright infringement. However, they may have a claim in the EU. Quite honestly, I don't know but that question falls under "What do we do about images that are PD in the US, but not PD in the country of origin?" There's quite a lengthy discussion about it with a WMF ruling expected today. We'll see what happens. I really hope they don't kick this bucket back at us and say "You guys figure it out." That won't solve anything. Buffs (talk) 22:22, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
I think we are all in basic agreement here, both on the legal status in US/EU, that we (WP) are bound by US/Florida law, that individual editors may be bound by other laws, that there is a community desire to be compliant with other laws, and a desire to maximise content, which pull in opposite directions, that there is a need for clarity between the statement of policy and the "Jimbo statement".
The only other factor is that these are text submissions, therefore there is not the same imperative to use the original.Rich Farmbrough, 12:24, 8 February 2012 (UTC).
I'm glad we are in agreement. Is there a way to press for clarification? You probably have a lot more clout than I do. Yes we could paraphrase or otherwise avoid copyright infringement, but it is more fitting to use the original words where appropriate and when possible. For these very old reference works, the original authors and their estates are not benefiting from the copyright in any way, and I strongly suspect that contribution to Bryan's, EB1911, and especially to DNB, was treated then very much as contribution to WP is treated today. By using their words, we are honoring the original authors. -Arch dude (talk) 23:41, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

I'll not comment on the later editions of this work (and I don't believe that there was a 1896 edition, as stated), but I am the editor who has made "extensive use" of the 1886 edition of this work. I have (of course) not been notified of this discussion by Rich Farmbrough, which is as could be expected... Anyway, 2012 - 70 years is 1942. 1942-1886 = 56 years, which makes it not impossible that some co-author still lived in or after 1942. Do we know who the authors are? No, we only know about Michael Bryan (art historian) (died 1821), Walter Armstrong (died 1914), Robert Edmund Graves (died 1922), William Bell Scott (died 1890), and Jean Paul Richter (died 1937). Are there others? Perhaps, but since we don't know, Wikipedia:Non-U.S. copyrights#UK Copyright applies, and this work falls into the PD following those rules in the UK, and obviously also in the US. Whether the same applies to other sources like newer versions of Bryan's, or the 1911 EB, or the 1900 Dictionary of National Biography (extensively used by, indeed, Rich Farmbrough), is less clear. DNB contributors like Charles Alexander Harris are not dead for 70 years yet, so it would appear as if the DNB is not in the PD yet, but perhaps some other rule applies here? Fram (talk) 12:55, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for your contributions. They are great contributions to WP. Please take a look at WP:Plagiarism. When we use text from a PD source, we still need to attribute it, not just cite it ("Attribute" merely means that you add "some content copied from" in front of the citation.) Is the 1886 edition available online? If (as is likely) the editor died sooner than Williamson, then that removes one presumptive author for the unattributed articles in Bryan's. I think that is is legitimate to treat unattributed articles as "collaborations" between the editor and one or more anonymous authors. The rule for collaboration is that copyright is held by each collaborator. The UK rule for anonymous works is "publication+70 years." (I am not a Lawyer.) -Arch dude (talk) 23:41, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
Found Volume 2. Editors were Armstrong (d. 1918) and Graves (d. 1922). Do you know where the other volumes are?-Arch dude (talk) 23:59, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
The articles I created can be found in Category:Wikipedia articles incorporating text from Bryan's Dictionary of Painters and Engravers, and are properly attributed. At Template talk:Bryan, you can find links to PDF and text versions of the 1886 (part I) and 1889 (part II) editions of the book. Fram (talk) 09:37, 15 February 2012 (UTC)
No this is exactly the same for DNB, I have raised it at the project page. The 1903 edition of Bryan is definitely a problem if we care about EU copyright. Fortunately the authors for DNb are clearly identified, and those for the 1903 Bryan are identified by and large. Rich Farmbrough, 18:33, 9 February 2012 (UTC).
Typically, English Wikipedia would allow anything which is in the public domain in the United States, regardless of its status elsewhere. That's why we have {{PD-US-1923-abroad}} (might sometimes be PD abroad), {{PD-ineligible-USonly}} (often the case with British logos) and {{FoP-USonly}} (for example French buildings). The legality of the last one is currently being discussed on the template's talk page. I'm not sure why this British dictionary would be any different from any other {{PD-US-1923-abroad}} works. --Stefan2 (talk) 01:16, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
See Buffs above,

Wikipedia policy is currently muddled. WP:Copyrights currently states "The Wikimedia Foundation is based in the United States and accordingly governed by United States copyright law. Regardless, according to Jimbo Wales, the co-founder of Wikipedia, Wikipedia contributors should respect the copyright law of other nations, even if these do not have official copyright relations with the United States.". Unfortunately, this leaves us with some unclarified issues.

Rich Farmbrough, 02:41, 17 February 2012 (UTC).
Rich, please visit Wikipedia talk:Copyrights. The WMF has recently rules on this and Jimbo's statement has effectively been superseded. We are working on rephrasing it now and your input would be appreciated. FWIW, I don't find arguments backed up by "Jimbo said so!" to be that convincing...and neither does Jimbo. Buffs (talk) 18:08, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

When can an external link be a copyright violation?

Hi, I have a general question regarding copyright. When and under what circumstances can an external link to the complete text of a book (in an article about the book) be a copyright violation? I have in mind the second of the two external links currently in the article on Louis Althusser's book Reading Capital, which leads to the complete text of Ben Brewster's translation. Are links like that OK in copyright terms or not? Polisher of Cobwebs (talk) 22:56, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

External links to the complete text of a book in an article about the book are a copyright problem, forbidden by policy, when: (a) the book is under copyright, and (b) there is no reason to believe that the website has licensed the right to display the text. That one looks like a pretty clear WP:LINKVIO to me. Thanks for bringing it up; I've removed it pending some plausible reason to believe that the text is legally licensed. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:19, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
Thanks for the help. I looked through the history of the article, and it turns out that link had been there since 2007. So you can understand my confusion about whether the link was legit or not; if something has been somewhere for a long time, it's easy to see it as proper even if it isn't. Polisher of Cobwebs (talk) 23:16, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

How should this be handled?

Over on Occupy Wall Street I have been finding a good amount of text copyright problems. Entire chunks of text from the sources are copied and in many instances have not even bothered to alter but a single word in the entire sentence. Many are extremly close paraphrasing that use large chunks of text from the sources without attributing as a quote. The entire article appears to suffer greatly from this, should I place the tag on the main article that blanks the page until an investigation can occur? I already tried to start bringing this up but editors are reluctant to discuss and when they do they have placed "resolved" on the discussion when there are still copyright issues. I mentioned it when one stated it had been resolved, but when I brought up that the section still had issues they told me paraphrasing is acceptable, although this wasn't a paraphrase...it used exact wording from the source. Should I place the copyright tag on the page? Do I go to the notice board with EVERY Single issue? What is the best way to handle this?--Amadscientist (talk) 02:49, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

I haven't looked at the actual article, but was asked about one passage at my talk page. In my opinion, that passage at least was all right as the phrase is a common one in the subject and thus devoid of creativity (see User talk:Moonriddengirl#Occupy Wall Street).
Handling of close paraphrasing issues requires some serious, subjective analysis and also documentation. How much is there? Does the taking seem to you to be substantial? If so, then the copyright problems board is likely to be the way to go. If the taking does not seem substantial, then I'd use {{close paraphrasing}} on the article. In either case, you should document the problem you see at the talk page. If you are talking about a lot of piecemeal partial copying, I wouldn't hesitate to put five or six examples, even more if the case seems borderline. If there are more obvious, longer passages, fewer are sufficient. If you've got a whole paragraph, for instance, of clear close paraphrase, a single example may suffice.
I present examples and analysis myself this way:
Extended content

The [url source] says:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Etiam aliquet laoreet lorem eu eleifend. Phasellus elit dui, elementum ut consectetur et, elementum sed mi. Vivamus et nibh vel odio ullamcorper dictum. Aliquam non augue sem, et lacinia mauris. Maecenas venenatis lorem adipiscing metus vehicula at condimentum magna bibendum. Morbi commodo.

The article says:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing odio. Ullamcorper etiam aliquet laoreet lorem eu eleifend. Phasellus elit dui, elementum ut consectetur et [...]. Vivamus et nibh vel odio ullamcorper dictum. [...] Maecenas venenatis lorem adipiscing metus vehicula at condimentum magna bibendum. Morbi commodo.

To make it clearer where duplication occurs, I've bolded precisely duplicated text. ([...] indicates where text has been removed.) The non-bolded text is minimally altered from the original.

With close paraphrasing there may not be as much bolding, but you can point out where language is precise and where structure is completely duplicated.
Again, these examples are valuable whether you are blanking the article or simply flagging it for close paraphrasing, as they will help other interested editors see and repair the issue and as they will help contributors who have created the issue learn not to. Wikipedia:Close paraphrasing can also help.
Copyright is a delicate and serious issue, and while there's a lot of work on the front end, it truly is a "stitch in time" situation. The better you can document your concerns, the more likely others are to see and understand them immediately. This reduces the inevitable drama of disagreement, and allows you to more quickly move forward to fixing the problem rather than arguing over whether and to what extent it exists. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:15, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
Thank you. The example you showed didn't go to the correct discussion, but I am almost certain I know which one it refers to and agree with your assessment. For now I feel better leaving the copyright issues I found and any further violations I may find intact. The civility of the talk page there has simply fallen to new lows and I am not willing to put myself in further position to be attacked over the issue. Thanks.--Amadscientist (talk) 21:42, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
Correction...it is WAY out of hand. Since the reception on the talk page has degenerated and aggressive and uncivil responses seem to be the norm I will simply remove the violations and make note on the talk page. Regardless of how neutral I word it...I'll probably be attacked, accused of a number of things, told I don't know what I am talking about and generaly dragged through the mud...but this is getting pretty bad. I would hope someone would simply look into who is doing this and just give them a polite warning unless this is an overall problem with the editor.--Amadscientist (talk) 23:37, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
With the removal of the last bit of copyright infringment I did find out who placed it and left a polite warning about close paraphrasing. I like the editor and don't wont a bad situation.--Amadscientist (talk) 23:46, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Bot

People may have noticed User:DpmukBOT editing this page. Despite it's name it's not currently a bot because I currently manually check all it's edits before they're committed. Before it truly becomes a bot it needs to go through WP:BRFA and before it does so I'd like to make sue I've got it doing as many small, easy to code, tasks as possible. As such I'd appreciate comments at User:DpmukBOT/tasks. Dpmuk (talk) 02:58, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

BRFA submitted. Feel free to comment there. The bot should essentially do most of the tasks User:VWBot was previously doing. Specifically it should:
  • Create new daily pages and move pages to old.
  • Add pages tagged for {{copyvio}} but that have not been added to the listing.
  • Add pages tagged for {{close paraphrase}} and {{copypaste}} - see User:DpmukBOT/tasks for a specific case when it won't.
  • Add/remove the adminbacklog template from WP:CP.
  • Relist pages that are no longer at WP:CP but which are still tagged. It will just treat these as new listing which isn't ideal but is better than nothing. I hope to make this work better in the future.

Dpmuk (talk) 17:29, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

Speed internet — Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.78.72.7 (talk) 19:02, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

copyvio template UI issue

There's an issue with Template:Copyvio that is leading to some confusion. When an article's text is replaced with this template, the template will display a link to a report from Duplication Detector, BUT the report will be a comparison of the website copied from and the output of the template, NOT the article text itself. The result is that Duplication Detector will say that at most, the article title has been copied and nothing else. A user just noted on my talk page that an article about his organization had been flagged as a copyvio and he didn't understand why because the duplication detector indicated no infringement for this reason. Is there a way to either not show the duplication detector link or to show a link comparing the edit before the tag was edited and the website? GabrielF (talk) 16:29, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

Having looked at the article in question the reason for this is that you've also removed all the text from the page. The tag is intended to be used with leaving the text in place as the tag takes care of blanking the text. I expect this is a problem with the instructions as I've seen this happen a few time. I'll try to have a look at the template code at some point in the next few days and see if we can't come up with something more sensible.
Although it doesn't apply in this case the other reason this can happen is if the source page is in a format the duplication detector can't deal with. Google books in the most common one I've come across. It may be worth putting a note on the template to say the the detector won't always work and if it's not showing anything a manual inspection may be necessary. I'll wait and see what other copyright regulars reply before doing anything as others may have better ideas. Dpmuk (talk) 16:59, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
Thanks for the information. I hadn't realized that when adding the template you weren't supposed to also remove the text. The instructions at WP:CP#Suspected or complicated infringement does say "Replace the text with one of the following:" (bold in original). GabrielF (talk) 17:04, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
That's a very good point - I suspect no one's got round to updating that. As it happens quite regularly, and I can see it happening no matter what directions are given, I think the answer here is to update the template. Having just refreshed my memory of a few template bits it should definitely be possible to get the duplication detector to automatically use the revision before the tag was placed so making it irrelevant whether the text was removed or not. I'm busy right now but I'll try to update the template in the next couple of days. As it will require changes to how the template is subst'd it won't affect tags already placed but should make it more usable for future taggings. Dpmuk (talk) 17:09, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
Many thanks. Would it be a good idea for me to change the instructions at WP:CP? GabrielF (talk) 17:12, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
I've just updated it as that's a much quicker and easier task than playing with the template. Feel free to change my updated wording - I'm not the best at writing bits like that. Dpmuk (talk) 06:47, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

Actually, the template was forced to blank the text because people used it improperly and text would continue to be published. For a long time, we thought that this was sufficient, but it was pointed out to us (long ago and far away; diffs if I must, but I'm not searching for them at the moment due to lack of time :D) that some of the websites that mirror us would still be copying the copyrighted text if we allowed to the template to do the blanking even though it wasn't visible on our page. For that reason, we put back the request to replace the material. The duplication detector report is useless when the copyvio template is done correctly, though sometimes handy if it isn't. What would be ideal - and for all I know may be impossible - is to get it to link to the last version prior to the placement of the template. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:25, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

It's occurred to me that what might be useful is to simply list the duplication detector tool on the template and explain how to use it on the earlier text. That could be helpful anyway, as dup det is of limited usefulness when close paraphrasing is the issue. We could perhaps slip it into a collapse box to keep that monster of a template from getting any larger? What do you guys think? --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:27, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
I'd forgotten about the conversation as I was only somewhat aware of it (I think it happened just as I started out in copyright work). My point of view on it is if it's OK to keep copyright versions in the history (and I know there's a legal opinion on this somewhere) then it's OK to keep it 'under' the template. If other sites copy from us without checking that then that's there problem, not ours. Personally I think the extra convenience to us outweighs any possible problems for other sites - they're not our responsibility. After all as things stand we don't stop them copying past versions, possibly with copyvios (well we can now with RevDel but we didn't before). That said getting the template to link to the previous version should definitely be possible, I'll work on it later. Even once that's done I think we should update the text to make it clear duplication detector may not work. Dpmuk (talk) 16:47, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
OK this isn't as easy as I thought. I'd assumed that substing the REVISIONID magic word would give you the revision ID of either the version you've just created or the previous version. Unfortunately it does neither and gives you an empty string. Bugzilla suggests that the id of the revision you've just made isn't possible due to how revisions are stored (the revision ID isn't known to after the revision is saved). There was some discussion of being able to provide the previous revision id but it would appear this functionality was never implemented. Off to think of other solutions! (I can think of one but that requires my toolserver account to have been reactivated). Dpmuk (talk) 18:36, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
Right I think I have something that works. It uses the API and gets the wikitext and compares that rather than the raw HTML. As we are only interested in the actual text (not any formatting) I don't think this should be a problem but feel free to revert my changes to the template if it does much things up. Dpmuk (talk) 20:22, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
The duplication detector change also works for current lisitings given how I've implemented it. I've also boldy changed the template so the links in the bottom right are always to the day the tag was added and to add a (listing) link in the top section that will jump straight to the listing at WP:CP. The latter will only work for new listing due to the fact that I've only just changed {{Article-cv}} (and it also works for Berkshire School which I was using as a test case and where I manually added the change to it's WP:CP listing). Dpmuk (talk) 21:38, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

On a related note do we want an editfilter that detects people adding the copyvio template without removing anything? I don't think it would be too expensive in edit filter terms although not having done anything with edit filters before I'd want to check first. On the positive side it would ensure the text is removed, on the negative side it might make people give up on tagging. Dpmuk (talk) 21:07, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

I've also asked User:Dcoetzee whether he'd mind adding a message to the top of duplication detector reports to the effect that it shouldn't be relied upon and manual inspection may still be necessary. I've fixed the problem in this instance but I know there's other cases (e.g. when the source is google books) when something similar would happen and there's nothing we can do about that. Dpmuk (talk) 21:48, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
And he's already made the change! Dpmuk (talk) 21:59, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

advice for handling copyright donation in process

User:Cberedo (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) created a number of articles about the presidents of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union. These articles were copied from the website of the Kheel Center at Cornell University[43], but are of very good quality and about notable topics (the ILGWU was very important in American labor history). I requested that one article be speedied, but then I noticed that the username corresponded with an employee listed on the Center's website and I left the user a message indicating that, while these articles would be very appropriate for WIkipedia, we couldn't accept them unless the content was donated or released under a compatible license. Cberedo left me a message on my talk page indicating that she does work for the Kheel Center and that she was in the process of working with her organization to have these materials donated. She requested that the articles not be deleted while that process was underway. Is there any way for us to keep the articles, but tag them to say that the donation is in process? Would she need to send an email to OTRS from her Cornell account or something to confirm that they are working on a donation? This isn't a case where material is being copied from a promotional website and there are concerns about neutrality, these bios appear to have been compiled by an archivist for the purpose of helping scholars understand and use an archival collection.

Thanks, GabrielF (talk) 16:47, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

I think OTRS is the best route forward, but, depending on time-scales, they may end up deleted and undeleted anyway. Rich Farmbrough, 17:28, 24 February 2012 (UTC).
The best way to deal with these is probably to tag them with {{copyvio}} and list them at WP:CP. As we don't have confirmed permission we have to err on the side of caution and blank the articles. This will give the user at least 7 days to sort out permissions before deletion. If permission seems likely to be forthcoming then they will often be relisted rather than deleted so they may have longer still. Tagging for copyvio should also avoid G12 taggings. The quickest way to sort permission would be to have something posted to the website saying it's released under a compatible license. OTRS will also work but likely take longer. I'd also make sure they know that they can't just "donate to wikipedia" and that they have release the text under a compatible license. I'd point them at WP:DCM if you haven't already and especially the section on "Granting us permission to copy material already online". Dpmuk (talk) 18:01, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
I agree and would tag the article talk page {{OTRS pending}} to help avoid premature deletion. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 14:31, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

Categories as de-facto galleries: Revision deletion?

Two categories now have appropriate wiki-code to stop them from serving as galleries, thus respecting WP fair-use policy and (I would like to think) complying with copyright law.

However, the two categories' histories each display a gallery [44] [45], so trespassing against our fair-use policy and possibly violating copyright law.

Thus, I think that a revision deletion is needed. (Two admins, who did not identify themselves as copyright experts, denied this request on my user page.)

N.B.: The 2 categories are new, and so the deletions would only delete a couple humble edits by this humble editor.

Thanks,  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 21:10, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

I've discussed this before with others wiser than myself, and encountered no great objections to my own cleanup philospohy, which is that so long as the copyrighted work has been removed "from public display" and noted as such, we are generally in the clear. The main value of revdeletion is to be sure that no-one goes into the article history and inadvertently (or vertently) restores copyvio material, or when something has been slowly modified into a derivative work and horrific destruction of every good-faith edit since the original copyvio is absolutely necessary. In the cases you mention, the galleries are no longer visible to the public, and in any case the gallery display is a violation of our own NFCC policy (an interpretation of a WMF resolution), not necessarily of any copyright laws. In addition, the cat history diffs can be trivially replicated by removing the nogallery magic word and clicking "Show preview", so it's unclear what revdel would accomplish in this case. I'll be the third to decline I suppose, sorry. Franamax (talk) 06:25, 9 March 2012 (UTC)
Thanks for your thoughtful and kind reply, Franamax.
Would you agree that an administrator would be allowed to remove this history (c.2 edits by me) in the spirit of copyright protection and fair use, without being compelled?
Sincerely,  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 15:12, 9 March 2012 (UTC)
I think Franamax is right - it's unnecessary. But it should also be pretty uncontroversial, as would deletion and re-creation. Or am I missing something here? Guettarda (talk) 16:06, 9 March 2012 (UTC)
I have agreed that it is unnecessary, in the sense that it is not demanded by current policies. On the other hand, following discussion, it may be permissible for an administrator to delete the short history of edits by me, in the spirit of fair use (since nobody has objected, and nothing is being removed from content), I would like to think.... It seems that you have a similar position. An administrator could do it....  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 20:14, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

Gi — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.99.178.164 (talk) 19:58, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

Linking to subpages of DGM violates terms of service

The terms of service (tos) of Discipline Global Mobile (DGM, a record company) expressly prohibit links to any page except the DGM homepage. The tos warns that copyright violations will be pursued legally with tenacity. There is discussion at the talk page of WP's article on DGM's founder, Robert Fripp:

Thank you for your attention.

Sincerely,  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 21:15, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

I fail to see how there could be copyright issues with linking to subpages of a web site. Fair use allows you to quote short sections of text from copyrighted works (and a URL is definitely short) and I suppose that they are below the threshold of originality anyway, making them not copyrightable. --Stefan2 (talk) 08:00, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
I do not think this is an area where were we can make statements like "I fail to see..." because it is a legal syn. I suggest we look around for reliable sources that can give us some guidance on this issue. Here is one:
Many copyright experts believe that deep linking (links that bypass a website’s home page) is not copyright infringement -- after all, the author of a novel can’t prevent readers from reading the end first if they so desire, so why should a website owner have the right to determine in what order a user can access a website? ... However, if a commercial website has no linking policy or says that deep links are not allowed, it’s wise to ask for permission before deep linking. Why? Because many websites -- even the listener-friendly National Public Radio -- have asserted rights against deep linkers under both copyright and trademark law principles.

International law is equally murky. For example, in 2002, a Danish court prevented a website from deep linking to a newspaper site. But in 2003, Germany weighed in on the issue when its federal court ruled that deep linking was not a violation of German copyright law. Subsequently, an Indian and a Danish court both separately ruled against the practice of deep linking in 2006.
-PBS (talk) 09:46, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
International law is nice, but in the US, the courts have explicitly sided with those who use links; even "deep" links: Washington Post v. Total News, Ticketmaster v. Microsoft, Kelly v. Arriba Soft, Perfect 10 v. Google. Since US law governs our usage and usage OUTSIDE the US is covered by our WP:General Disclaimer, I think it is pretty safe to say that a reference usage is perfectly acceptable. Moreover, just about EVERY reference guide states you should cite the FULL URL of the source of your information, not merely the main page of a website.
I fail to see how WP:SYN applies.
Given that this is the fourth or fifth discussion that Kiefer has started, I believe there may be some issue of canvassing. Let's consolidate this into one discussion instead of having it all over the place. Buffs (talk) 09:56, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
The point being that now you are discussing it on case law which is much better than saying "I fail to see...". The problem with the paragraph "I fail to see... Fair use allows" is that it is advancing a position without using a legal expert to advance the position for you. -- PBS (talk) 10:32, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
@Buffs, Let us wish that your understanding of copyright is superior to your understanding of WP:Canvas, which explicitly labels the leaving of a handful of neutrally worded notices as appropriate. The link to the discussion page at Robert Fripp was provided, and experienced editors know that (at the time) it iswas best to continue the discussion at the original place (before discussion was closed there, to be continued here 12:55, 22 February 2012 (UTC)).  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 10:11, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
Snide comments aren't needed. Starting the same discussion in 4 places is canvassing. You've now stopped discussions elsewhere and redirected them here, ergo, any canvassing problems have been thoroughly eliminated. Have a good day.
@PBS, "I fail to see..." indicates that the person doesn't understand your point of view. By definition, that's confusion, not synthesis. Buffs (talk) 18:52, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
As I suggested, you don't understand WP:Canvass.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 18:55, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

I think this is probably the best place to discuss the concept in a general way and let the discussion here be used for the more specific one. Here is another paper.

The Ticketmaster v. Microsoft Case ...

There was an out of court settlement to this lawsuit in February 1999. Although the terms of the settlement were not disclosed Microsoft did agree to link to Ticketmaster's home page instead of to its sub-pages. The settlement was actually a disappointment for those searching for a firm legal precedent about controversial linking activities. As a result, at least in the United States there are curently no unambiguous legal guidelines on the practice of deep linking. ...

This article (Web Site Linking: Right or Privilege)also includes a section titled "Ethical Dimensions of Linking" which is worth a read and perhaps should be discussed further

In our view, a compelling case [(Locke's "labor-desert" theory)] can be put forward that a Web site should be considered as the proprietary and private property of its author and owner. ... In short, property rights are required as a return for the laborers' painful and strenuous work. ... Likewise, the utilitarian argument that ownership rights are justified ... Part of exercising that control is ensuring that visitors are exposed to the homepage so that advertising revenues will not be compromised.

--PBS (talk) 10:32, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

Following Buff's and PBS's suggestions, I archived the discussion at the talk page of Robert Fripp.
I agree with your comments and recognize that the creation of those pages required extensive labour, which should be respected (and, as usual, this position is better articulated through virtue ethics than through utilitarian or Lockean British-schoolboy ethics).
I registered with DGM and asked for Wikipedia to have permission to link to its pages, only when illustrating or documenting an assertion in an article related to DGM or Fripp, etc.
Thanks,  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 10:46, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
The article is from 1999, which means that 13 years of development are missing.
For the 1997 Ticketmaster case, it means it is simply irrelevant, as we actually do have precedents now. Ticketmaster tried it again later, this time against Tickets.com, and the court clearly said that URL is not subject to copyright (see deep linking). And then the same thing was said again in other cases. So this issue seems to be quite clear now: deep linking is considered fair use. See the Copyright aspects of hyperlinking and framing for more details. So, we don't need to ask DGM for permission. The fact that in 2012, we have multi-billion-dollar companies making products that build their success on deep-linking, proves that deep-linking is not illegal. Google offers deep links to billions of web pages (including the DGM subpages), and I am sure they don't read ToS for each one of them and ask them for permission. Because they don't have to. It's fair use. If it wasn't, they would have been sued already.
The ethical considerations are outdated, too. In the days of cloud computing, having ToS saying that deep linking will be prosecuted is absent-minded to put it very mildly, as you will violate the ToS automatically, in thousand ways, when you use modern Internet services and modern technology that are the norm in 2012. Furthermore, there was no Wikipedia in 1999, the concept of sharing common knowledge for the benefit of mankind was not known (and therefore fully considered) then. And so on. There is nothing ethical about this "no deep linking" requirement in 2012. It is deeply immoral and dangerously inhuman, if the punishments suggested in the ToS are really enforced. I find the DGM ToS highly unethical, confused and backward-looking.
So I think we should really focus on a single thing: is deep-linking in the US legal or not regardless of what the website owner wants? If it is (and the court rulings from this millenium suggest that it indeed is), than there is no need to ask DGM or anyone else for permission, and then I would not ask them even as an act of courtesy, for the reasons explained above—as a matter of principle.—J. M. (talk) 22:10, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
Hi J.M.
That seems a bit below your normally high standards. Would you please remove the abuse of DGM and soapboxing?  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 22:39, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
No. First, I wasn't interested in bringing ethical issues into this discussion, as I consider them irrelevant in this case. but they were brought here (i.e. considered relevant) by other people. They explained their opinion on the ethical issues, and so I did exactly the same thing, to offer my point of view. Second, I can't see anything that could abuse DGM in my comment. You said you see the requirement ethical and explained why, I said I consider it unethical and explained why.—J. M. (talk) 22:59, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
Or do you mean the last sentence of the third paragraph? If that's the only thing you mean by the "abuse of DGM", then I'm making a small edit to make it 100% relevant to this discussion, and that's it.—J. M. (talk) 23:10, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
You at least removed the falsehood that "DGM views itself as 'the ethical company'"; in reality, DGM announced "an aim" to be "a model of ethical business" in a troubled industry. Your judgmental evaluations of DGM's ToS are at best superfluous.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 12:22, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
I concur with Buffs as to law: the cases summarised on the relevant articles cited above show that deeplinking with images of/from the site being linked to are allowable - all that is under discussion here is linking to the URL. I also agree with JM as to practicalities: deep linking is normal practice, unavoidable in many web functions and is how the web works the design purposes of the Web is to allow authors to link to any published document on another site (from Deep linking). Babakathy (talk) 14:58, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
Are you saying that I was wrong to comply with the ToS and to ask for permission to link from Wikipedia? Following Jimbo Wales's and the WMF's misuse of Wikipedia in protesting SOPA, I thought Wikipedia was making some token moves to respect others' copyright and property rights.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 15:15, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
"The WMF's misuse"? First time I've seen the WMF accused of misuse for following community consensus, but...okay. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:08, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
The majority of the community differs from the consensus of the community. Consensual decision-making is practiced by many Societies of Friends ("Quakers") and other intentional communities.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 21:03, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
So you would have read consensus here differently than the three administrators who closed it, I gather, and would have preferred that the WMF second-guess them as well. It seems the Wikimedia Foundation is in a rather tough spot. :/ The community is not happy that they disagreed with and would not implement WP:ACTRIAL, and you're accusing them of misusing Wikipedia for following what they were asked to do by three administrators in good standing closing out an extremely well advertised and attended community discussion. The RFC that User:Aaron Brenneman is proposing to draw together could be helpful to surface different ideas of what the WMF is supposed to do when the community wants to take action. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 14:40, 25 February 2012 (UTC)


break for convenience

I did not say anything about asking for permission to link. But since you ask, I think it is not straightforward as while it is a courtesy to do so, it is also a bit of a problem if they say no. (and how practical is this, does someone have to ask seperately each time we link?)

More generally, can we please stick to the merits of this issue, which will apply elsewhere, and avoid snide comments about DGM, WMF and so on. They make this discussion uncivil when it need not be so.Babakathy (talk) 15:47, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
I don't believe that this reference has been raised yet; forgive me if I'm wrong:
While I'm all about respecting copyright, there's a couple of things to think about: first, the person who would be liable for violating a site's terms of service is the person who violated the site's terms of service--that is, the editor who found and added the link originally. Our readers and reusers, who found the link on Wikipedia, will have entered into no such agreement with the site. Second, links are easily removed on a cease & desist request. Third, there is no universal presumption that deep linking is disallowed. NOLO notes at the Stanford website that, for instance, Amazon welcomes deep linking. I would not myself knowingly violate a commercial website's deep linking prohibition, and I would never counsel anybody to do so. But I would not support a blanket prohibition against deep linking. It is a useful practice, widely accepted, with little precedent against it in the US, which governs us collectively. It might be worth noting somewhere that the legality of deep linking is not entirely settled, that users are responsible for the links they add under the laws of their own jurisdictions, and that if they know a site discourages deep linking, they should take this into account. I'm not sure that many of our editors understand that they are personally liable for what they do here, even if what they do is within our policy. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:08, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
The legal issue seems clear, the ToS of DGM is a matter for users of the site (and if someone utters a link, then a non-user would be able to link with impunity). The policy issue is another matter, and one we could perhaps address by looking at and respecting the NOINDEX requirements of web sites, the alternative being individual site negotiation (or a bit of both). Technically, if DGM would like to send me a large amount of money I will show them how to make the site un-linkable. Rich Farmbrough, 13:46, 24 February 2012 (UTC).
I don;t think this is a DGM policy, it's just some cut and paste legal terms. See this search. Like those ToS that injunct against using cancelbots and make us ROFL. Rich Farmbrough, 13:54, 24 February 2012 (UTC).
I would summarize this discussion. The community views the legal warning of prosecution as lacking credibility, under the current U.S. law . If there were a problem of legal liability, the editor adding the link would be most responsible; other editors would hardly be liable. The decision of whether or not to add a link to a particular website is best decided on the individual article's talk page or on the talk page of a closely related project. An individual editor is free to ask the website for permission to deep-link (when this is prohibited by the ToS); a few have emphasized that politely requesting permission is not required by WP policy and some have further raised the concern that such requests may set an unwanted precedent.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 15:41, 25 February 2012 (UTC)
I think you've got it. It's just as credible as saying "If you violate these terms of service, we will sue you, take your house, kill your dog, and eat your children." Likewise, if it isn't necessary to ask permission, then you don't need to do so. Asking is a mere pleasantry. Buffs (talk) 15:04, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

My thoughts:

  • As a legal matter, whether a complaint by a web-site manager claiming that a link is a WP:COPYVIO has any legal merit falls under WP:OFFICE and it's not productive to discuss it here, except perhaps as preliminary discussion to see if the claim is void on its face or if it has enough merit that a legal opinion is required.
  • As a matter of what does the English Wikipedia want to do regarding deep linking against the explicit wishes of a web site operator when deep linking is not a violation of the law, that's something that should be discussed on the Copyright policy talk pages and probably linked to from WP:CENT.
  • As far as the use of a link on a specific article page where neither law nor Wikipedia policy prohibited it, that's up to the editors of the page in question. Of course, all other policies and guidelines still apply: Having a link to DGM on a page where that link serves no useful purpose should be edited away.
davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 20:45, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Thank you all for your comments. Sincerely,  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 21:05, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

List copyright issues

I may have screwed up: I created Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Core Collection albums in The Penguin Guide to Jazz because I believe the list reproduction to be a copyright violation, and then remembered the existence of this board. Should I let the AFD run its course? Withdraw it and list here?—Kww(talk) 01:45, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

Actually, it looks like a speedy to me. CSD or blank the copyvio parts and list here. The AFD seems unnecessary. Franamax (talk) 03:12, 3 March 2012 (UTC)
I left a longer response at the AfD, but strictly speaking, this is not a list reproduction (i.e., there was no list (by Penguin or otherwise) until I created one here). -- Gyrofrog (talk) 15:08, 5 March 2012 (UTC)
I am very much afraid that this list is likely to constitute a derivative work. :/ What a reference considers "core" is extremely creative, and even though you haven't copied over a list, it seems to me that transforming their work into a list could easily be "a work based upon one or more pre-existing works, such as a translation, musical arrangement, dramatization, fictionalization, motion picture version, sound recording, art reproduction, abridgment, condensation, or any other form in which a work may be recast, transformed, or adapted".17 U.S.C. § 101 No matter how we shake it, this isn't fact, but opinion. If this were listed at CP, I would delete the list, with true regret, on that basis. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:55, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Question

I recently removed material from Olive oil and Mediterranean diet which looked like possible copyvio from here. I then left a message on the talk page of the editor, who says he is the author of said material (username fits author name). As I am not well versed in this procedures of this area, especially when the user reports he is the author of the material, I wanted going to bring it up to you all to see what the proper next step is (restore material, get more information, etc). Any help is appreciated. Yobol (talk) 16:56, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

If someone claims to own off-site material which is presumed to be copyrighted, they need to go through one of the routes listed at Wikipedia:Donating copyrighted materials. The simplest is if they just put a CC-BY-SA 3.0 "free" license notice on the document in question, or they can go through the WP:OTRS system to verify their identity, ownership, and intent to freely license the work. So that's the first step BUT this looks like a doctoral thesis to me, which I believe we consider as original research, so the editor should be warned it will likely not be permitted in any case, unless they provide the underlying sources for their statements. A doctoral thesis is not peer-reviewed per se, i.e. it is reviewed by the examination board, but not published in a journal. The doctoral thesis itself, to my knowledge, does not constitute a reliable source - though text excerpted from the thesis (and donated through OTRS) may be acceptable if it cites the underlying sources and specifically not the thesis itself. Hope that helps... Franamax (talk) 06:10, 9 March 2012 (UTC)
Thank you for the response. The text in question does cite the underlying medical literature, and I have directed the editor in question to this thread so they can ask more questions if needed. Yobol (talk) 15:08, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

I am the author of the material removed, as mentioned above. I am new in wikipedia and I have recently received an answer to my feedback, raising up the issue of conflict of interest. I would like to ask for assistance on this issue which I consider very important. My contribution to wikipedia, is as mentioned above. I have used some paragraphs from my doctoral thesis enriched with more information on the subject of olive oil and Mediterranean diet. My doctoral thesis, is supported by 3 original, peer-reviewed scientific publications, as it is done in all biomedical research field nowadays. So, it is indeed peer-reviewed, otherwise it would not be a thesis. I have no interest in any kind of publicity in wikipedia. I have noticed that information on this novel area of nutrigenomics is missing from the above wikipedia articles and this is the only reason I decided to add a part on it. All my contributions were written by myself and I used scientific peer-reviewed publications to cite all the other information. If I have misunderstood the scope of wikipedia's contribution, please let me know. I would like to re-write my contribution but the main idea and information will be the same, because there is no other scientific evidence on this field. Is this ok with wikipedia's good practice rules?Thank you!ValentiniK (talk) 09:32, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Hi. :) Thanks for your interest in improving this article. There are two issues to consider here. First, unless you rewrite your contribution in completely original language, you will still need to verify permission in accordance with Wikipedia:Donating copyrighted materials. We don't have any way currently to connect individual accounts with real life identities, so we have to use external processes to make sure that copyright license is legal. It isn't that we doubt you; it's that with legal issues, everything has to be done just so. :)
The second question, as you suggest, is the reliability of your research. There is no reason that we cannot accept your research as long as it is verified by reliable sources (see WP:IRS). We do have policies against "original research" (see WP:NOR), but that generally refers to primary research that is not backed by reliable sources or "synthesis" of sources to draw conclusions that they do not directly support. Every content creator on Wikipedia engages in research; that you did it for publication elsewhere first doesn't matter. :) (See WP:SELFCITE.) As long as you either verify license through the method above or put your research in new language, you should generally be okay.
The final question to consider, though, is citation. If your doctoral thesis is published in a reliable source (as you seem to suggest), you may cite it directly, although doing too much of that is likely to lead to people thinking you're here to promote yourself. If you are referring to your own published conclusions (what would constitute "original research" on Wikipedia), you would want to cite your publication (sparingly) to do so. Sparingly helps prevent people misunderstanding you and thinking you are here to promote yourself but also helps avoid putting "undue weight" on your own views. We try to represent views even-handedly (see WP:UNDUE). If, however, you are bringing in information from sources you read and referenced in your own work, you should probably cite those sources directly.
Again, thanks much for contributing! Expert help is always welcome, although there are best practices to engage in to avoid misunderstandings. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:45, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
  1. ^ A Century of Struggle: Socialist Party USA, 1901-2001. New York: Socialist Party USA, n.d. [2001]. http://www.socialistparty-usa.org/literature/spusa-history.pdf
  2. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference SPRI was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference Drucker was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  4. ^ Busky 2000, pp. 164.
  5. ^ Winger, Richard. "Institutional Obstacles to a Multiparty System," in Multiparty Politics in America, Paul S. Herrnson and John C. Green, eds. (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1997)
  6. ^ Ansolabehere, Stephen and Gerber, Alan. "The Effects of Filing Fees and Petition Requirements on U.S. House Elections," Legislative Studies Quarterly 21 no. 2 (1996)
  7. ^ Fitts, Michael A. "Back to the Future: Enduring Dilemmas Revealed in the Supreme Court's Treatment of Political Parties", in The U.S. Supreme Court and the Electoral Process (2nd ed.) David K. Ryden, ed. Washington: Georgetown University Press, 2002 ISBN 9780878408863 pp. 103-105 and passim
  8. ^ Minutes of October 2006 Socialist Party National Committee meeting.
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