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Copyright issues by User:DocOfSoc

As mentioned here [1]. Likely all their edits need going through. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 02:05, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

Well, Doc James, the good news is that [2] was added in 2011, while the putative source was published in 2014. This is one of the complicating factors of doing copyright cleanup - quite often, content is copied from Wikipedia and not the other way around, even when published in reliable sources. I always check the date, first thing. If the date isn't determinative (with websites there generally is no date), I'll look for others tells - does Wayback offer proof one way or the other? (If Wayback shows the page existed before the content, the discussion is over. If Wayback doesn't, it doesn't prove one way or another, since the page may not have been archived then or might have moved from another page in that or another domain). My next step is to look at language - does the source use only the language added by one editors, or does it incorporate language from multiple editors? If multiple editors have contributed to the shared text stream, it's far more likely that the content developed here. I have found backwards copying in books, magazines and even government websites. A lot of people think Wikipedia is public domain, and some people honestly just don't care. I'll put the backwards copy tag for this one and then check the other. With Merck, backwards seems less likely. But I always check. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 10:25, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

Yes google had it mistagged as being from 2008. So my apologies.

This other edit was however a concern [3].

Merck was used as the ref and they would not be copying from us [4] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 11:13, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

Hmm, I'd just started looking at this, not in the least surprised to see that Moonriddengirl is miles ahead of me. I'm afraid there may be good cause for concern here: I found this edit in 2010 apparently copied from this 2006 source and this 2010 edit with material straight from this 2004 book. Looking further ... Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 11:56, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

User:Doc James, very, very rarely it happens that we cite a source that later copies content from us. I noted the instances where I've been this below. I'm sorry it took me so long - the reason we have the backlog at CCI that we do is that this is slow and hard work. :/ With what Justlettersandnumbers has found, I have little doubt that a CCI is needed. I've found issues after the 2010 warning, and he has found issues from before. I don't know if the promised copyright review ever happened (have no time to look), but evidently there are ongoing issues. Again, though, I'm out of time. If Justlettersandnumbers doesn't push this over to CCI first, I'll do it when I have time. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:04, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

Having edit-conflicted, I'm going to paste what I had originally written so I don't lose it. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 11:58, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

Okay, the Merck Manual is, as you would expect, does not seem to be the culprit there. I generally take it as enough of a "tell" if the person cites the sources that the source had it first. It's pretty rare that this isn't the case, although I've run into it once or twice where the source is some musicians biography, for instance, and they evidently find and like the Wikipedia article, so copy it back. It is a small amount of text, but should be repaired. Information taken from external sources needs to be written in original language structure, unless reproduced in brief and clearly marked quotations. There is an exception where content is purely formulaic, but the threshold is deliberately set low, so this is not an exception you encounter often.

There were copyright issues with this user in the past (discussion read and removed from the user talk here).

I'll list some examples of issues I see that follow on that copyright warning. These may not be the sole instances of copying in those articles - they are examples. Bolding is added to illustrate issues of literal copy-pasting; where bolding does not exist, there may still be issues of close paraphrasing.

Source	Article
Since the time of the Second Vatican Council, the trend has been for Catholics to receive Confirmation later and later. Forty years ago, most Catholics were confirmed in the fifth or sixth grade. Thirty years ago, most were confirmed in seventh or eighth grade. In the last twenty years, Confirmation has moved to ninth and tenth grade.	Since the time of the Second Vatican Council, the trend has been for Catholics to receive Confirmation later and later. Forty years ago, most Catholics were confirmed in the fifth or sixth grade. Thirty years ago, most were confirmed in seventh or eighth grade. In the last twenty years, Confirmation has moved to ninth and tenth grade.
Source	Article
Originally, the Second District was an immensely valuable line, serving manufacturing and agricultural facilities through the San Gabriel Valley. However, longer trains always had difficulty climbing and descending the steep 2.2% grade at Arroyo Seco, between Pasadena and Los Angeles. Helper locomotives were often needed, making for inefficient operation. The still-used Third District opened in 1888, just a year after the Second District, and quickly took most long-distance freight traffic along its rails. The Second District and the Pasadena Depot became famous by the numerous transcontinental passenger trains that served it. At one point, up to 26 passenger trains went through Pasadena daily. To avoid the press in Los Angeles, many actors and other celebrities opted to make Pasadena their home train station, bringing to it an atmosphere and legacy of glitz and glamour.	Originally, the Second District was an invaluable line; it served manufacturing and agricultural businesses throughout the entire San Gabriel Valley. Unfortunately, the longer trains had great difficulty climbing the precipitous 2.2% grade at Arroyo Seco, between Pasadena and Los Angeles. Additional locomotives were often necessary, causing a more costly and less efficient operation. The still-used Third District opened in 1888, just a year after the Second District, and rapidly took over most of longer freight trains more efficaciously. The Second District and the Pasadena Depot became well known by the many transcontinental passenger trains that it served. Historically, up to 26 passenger trains went through Pasadena every day. In order to avoid the media in Los Angeles, many celebrities chose to use Pasadena as their main train station, bringing to it an ambience and legacy of the glamour of old Hollywood.
source	article
Julius Orton, a seventh generation descendant of Thomas.... serve as a guard for a pack train crossing the plains for Placerville, a booming California gold mining town. Finding no gold, Julius moved to Soquel, a lumber town near Santa Cruz, where he worked as a laborer and eventually developed his own herd of cattle. In 1859, accompanied by his wife and two small daughters, and driving a small herd of cattle, he walked more than 200 miles from the coast to a homestead along the Tule River southwest of Lindsay. Julius Orton became a part of Lindsay history in the 1880's when he took up a second 160 acre homestead on land adjacent to the property of Lewis and John Keeley, brothers who had homesteaded a few miles southwest of Lindsay in the mid 1870's. The "meat" of all this is that Julius Orton is credited with planting the first orange trees in the Lindsay district on his homestead, giving rise to the motto, "Central California's Citrus Center."	Julius Orton, a seventh generation descendant of Thomas, served as security for a pack train headed for Placerville, a booming California gold mining town, motivated by his futile search for gold. In 1859, with his wife and two small daughters, and driving a small herd of cattle, walked more than 200 miles from the coast near Sacramento, to a homestead along the Tule River, southwest of Lindsay. In the 1880s, Julius Orton homesteaded another (160 acre) piece of land bordering on the property of pioneers Lewis and John Keeley, brothers who had taken on a homestead just a few miles southwest of Lindsay in the mid 1870's
source	article
Media outlets define the idea of beauty. The size zero woman in a barely-there outfit with long, flowing hair appears on every ad page of every magazine. Close your eyes and you can picture her because her image has been burned into your brain.	Media outlets define the idea of beauty. The size zero woman in a barely-there outfit with long, flowing hair appears on every ad page of every magazine. Close your eyes and you can picture her because her image has been burned into your brain.
source	article
Rosemead spokeswoman Aileen Flores said city officials last month dedicated a future park site in Imperial's honor. Jay Imperial Park will eventually be situated in the Southern California Edison right of way near Garvalia Avenue and San Gabriel Boulevard. Construction on the park could began in as soon as six months.	Rosemead spokeswoman Aileen Flores said that in June 2011, city officials dedicated a future park site to honor six-time Mayor, the late Jay Imperial. Jay Imperial Park will be situated in the Southern California Edison right of way near Garvalia Avenue and San Gabriel Boulevard. Construction on the park will begin in 2012

This edit was entirely inappropriate, reproducing whole sources. I've flagged one specific later copy-paste issue in that article from above, but I suspect the whole thing is tainted. :( I have not checked older edits to see if the promised copyright review was conducted.

To request a contributor copyright review, you'd file at WP:CCI. Generally we look for evidence of this kind of activity in 5 or more articles (rough guide - if I see three articles of egregious copy-pasting, I'm more likely to open a CCI than if I see 5 instances of sentence fragment copying). CCI has a huge backlog of people with demonstrable, major issues, so we try not to open them for minor ones. They can and do take years to complete. We simply lack resources. :/

That said, I'm concerned enough that I will copy this to WP:CCI for somebody else to consider further; I am seriously out of time. I have only cleaned one of the articles above, and I wouldn't mark it off the list as I only checked one edit to it: Rosemead, California. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 11:58, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

CCI requested. I didn't copy this whole conversation over, just linked to it. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 14:43, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

Meta RfCs on two new global groups

Hello all,

There are currently requests for comment open on meta to create two new global groups. The first is a group for members of the OTRS permissions queue, which would grant them autopatrolled rights on all wikis except those who opt-out. That proposal can be found at m:Requests for comment/Creation of a global OTRS-permissions user group. The second is a group for Wikimedia Commons admins and OTRS agents to view deleted file pages through the 'viewdeletedfile' right on all wikis except those who opt-out. The second proposal can be found at m:Requests for comment/Global file deletion review.

We would like to hear what you think on both proposals. Both are in English; if you wanted to translate them into your native language that would also be appreciated.

It is possible for individual projects to opt-out, so that users in those groups do not have any additional rights on those projects. To do this please start a local discussion, and if there is consensus you can request to opt-out of either or both at m:Stewards' noticeboard.

Thanks and regards, Ajraddatz (talk) 18:05, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

Suspected copyvios at Services marketing

Hi, the article Services marketing was tagged for copy-editing; I came across it whilst vetting articles for a GOCE drive event. I noticed the text has a high standard of written English and a dearth of references, so i searched using Google. The website http://www.managementstudyguide.com appears to be the source of the bulk of the article, particularly the pages http://www.managementstudyguide.com/services-marketing.htm and http://www.managementstudyguide.com/seven-p-of-services-marketing.htm, amongst others. The website claims copyright of the material but I'm uncertain whether it originated there, so i've tagged the article with {{copypaste}} and reported my concerns here, per WP:COPYVIO. Thanks for your time. Cheers, Baffle gab1978 (talk) 06:12, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Hi, Baffle gab1978. So sorry for the delay. :) The first thing I do in such cases is snag a distinctive phrase that is used in both the suspected source and the article and look at the history to see if all of the suspected copied content was added in one edit. If so, copyvio is highly likely. If not, backwards copy is more likely the case. In this case, I looked for the words "highly competitive scenario" and found it was introduced in September 2012. This is not a good sign - a massive chunk of text dropped in by an IP. Formatting errors in that edit are consistent with copy-pasting. Next step, check the date of the suspected source. 2011. If Wayback didn't work, I'd look for the first significant change after that copy-paste to evaluate whether the change brought the content closer to the suspected source (indicative of backwards copying) or further away (indicative of copyvio). The coffin nail in this case would be the removal on the day of the text dump of the table at the bottom of this page: [5]. This happened within minutes of the text dump. For a backwardscopy, they would have had to have been quick! I'll revert. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:50, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

Admin keeps delete scripts altough it is free to use....

I have this strange issue and although I have some experience in writing and publishing I am new in wikipedia and I am very pondering for this issue which is happening in our local wikipedia in Greece. I hope my English are enough to clearly describe to you the right picture of the issue, otherwise feel free to ask me and I will try to clarify. It is important to know that all active admins in Greek wikipedia are more or less about 10 people, which they know each other most of them. I am trying to make some improvements and corrections in Greek topic for EEZ - Exclusive Economic Zone using strictly the United Nation web page and United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea which is there too, because many sources of the topic are newspaper link which are not much accurate. I am trying to make a strict translation without adding wording which may lead in change important meaning of the Convention. This is something that most of scientist do here concerning this Convention and if the y want later they are adding their private opinion. Some of them are writing book as in our case this book here: https://www.academia.edu/3645806/%CE%97_%CF%80%CE%B5%CF%81%CE%B9%CE%B2%CE%B1%CE%BB%CE%BB%CE%BF%CE%BD%CF%84%CE%B9%CE%BA%CE%AE_%CE%B4%CE%B9%CE%AC%CF%83%CF%84%CE%B1%CF%83%CE%B7_%CF%84%CF%89%CE%BD_%CF%83%CF%85%CE%BC%CE%B2%CE%AC%CF%83%CE%B5%CF%89%CE%BD_%CE%B5%CE%BE%CE%B5%CF%81%CE%B5%CF%8D%CE%BD%CE%B7%CF%83%CE%B7%CF%82_%CF%84%CF%89%CE%BD_%CF%80%CF%8C%CF%81%CF%89%CE%BD_%CF%84%CE%BF%CF%85_%CE%B4%CE%B9%CE%B5%CE%B8%CE%BD%CE%BF%CF%8D%CF%82_%CE%B2%CF%85%CE%B8%CE%BF%CF%8D

Although I use the original source from UN and I did refer the source I used in every paragraph (altough it is the same source) the admins keep say that the later book (the one with the url above) is protected with copyright and I cannot use the specific text, although that the translation is not exactly the same but in tree sentences you can understand how similar the translation of the same paragraph can be!

The original text that is used translated is here: ".... In 1945, President Harry S Truman, responding in part to pressure from domestic oil interests, unilaterally extended United States jurisdiction over all natural resources on that nation's continental shelf - oil, gas, minerals, etc. This was the first major challenge to the freedom-of-the-seas doctrine. Other nations soon followed suit...." (http://www.un.org/depts/los/convention_agreements/convention_historical_perspective.htm#Historical%20Perspective)

This is the original text from Convention which is used and it is free to use but admin keeps saying that is not allowed to use since that it is used in a later Greek book! How someone can take a free text and make it copyright and nobody else can use it?

So the admin keeps telling that this is copyright violation and delete all data and maps I enter. How this can be resolved? Any assistance will be highly appreciated.

The link of the topic is here: https://el.wikipedia.org/wiki/%CE%91%CF%80%CE%BF%CE%BA%CE%BB%CE%B5%CE%B9%CF%83%CF%84%CE%B9%CE%BA%CE%AE_%CE%9F%CE%B9%CE%BA%CE%BF%CE%BD%CE%BF%CE%BC%CE%B9%CE%BA%CE%AE_%CE%96%CF%8E%CE%BD%CE%B7

Compugraphs (talk) 18:39, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

I'm not sure there is much we can do to help - this is the English-language Wikipedia, and we have no authority over the Greek-language one. AndyTheGrump (talk) 21:41, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

Compugraphs, I'm not sure why you think that the original is free to use? The United Nations copyrights its content- see at the bottom of the page you link: "Copyright © 2012 United Nations - Office of Legal Affairs". It would be lovely if they would release their material in the public domain, but they don't. :/ Perhaps I am misunderstanding your issue, though; why do you believe the source material is free? --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:59, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for your time. About the permission for the original I have contacted UN and I have been told to use it just add a disclaimer stating that “This is not an official UN translation." So there is no problem to use, the problem is that because somebody else translated and uploaded as their paper at academia.edu the wikipedia admin claims that this paragraphs belongs to them so although my translation is not exactly the same with the paper uploaded in academia.edu the admin keeps saying that it similar and cannot be used, in other words to explain it straitfully the paper uses context from US without stating that (so they do copyright violation) and when somebody else tranlsalte the same paragraph from UN the admin (who in my opinion he is not so much stupid as he wants to look) delete all article because does not accept that the master documents is UN (which anyway is older date) and we do have the permisiion fron them to use it... I hope I gave you the picture of what is going on.. Regarding the authorisation, I do not thing that needs special permission for the Greece wikipedia as long as somebody can understand the language, my self with the same login I can edit any topic in any language....Compugraphs (talk) 14:36, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

Again, nothing we say here has any authority over the Greek-language Wikipedia. AndyTheGrump (talk) 16:15, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

Question concerning the use of RevDel

Dear copyright experts: I came across an article, Dhianpur, to which a large copied section had been added. I removed it, but is there a need to redact the revisions which contain the copied text? I read the information on the project page here, but it has nested "unless" statements which aren't clear to me. Are there other conditions besides request by the copyright holder under which copyvio revisions should be hidden, or is my task done by reverting to a non-offending version? —Anne Delong (talk) 12:26, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

Hello, Anne Delong. :) Technically, your task is done with removal. That may not be best practice, but you are not required (inasmuch as any of this is required :)) to do anything more. In a recent post at m:Wikilegal/Copyright Status of Wikipedia Page Histories, one of the WMF's legal interns opined that there would be little risk to admins in removing but not deleting copyvios:

Even if direct infringement is found, however, it is unlikely that the editor and administrator flagging and removing copyright issues in the current article, but not necessarily in previous versions of the article, will be held liable for contributory infringement. Under contributory infringement, one who, (1) with knowledge, (2) induces, causes, or materially contributes to (3) copyright infringement, (4) but does not commit or participate in the infringing act may be held liable contributorily (5) if he or she had knowledge, or reason to know, of the infringement. The editor and administrator flagging and removing a copyright issue in a Wikipedia article are not likely to be held responsible for contributory infringement because they are likely not engaged in inducing, causing, or materially contributing to the infringement during the general course of removing or flagging content. Rather, in this capacity, the editor and administrator are working towards taking down instances of possible infringement they see and therefore are not actually contributing to the infringing activity.

(citation omitted; please note that this is not legal advice. Wikimedia Foundation attorneys can only advise the WMF. It is the perspective of a WMF legal intern, and it has been edited subsequently by an unknown IP, although not in that section.)

Beyond the minimum, use of revdeletion to hide copyright infringing content is varied according to who applies it. My own rule of thumb: I revdelete if (a) the content is extensive, (b) the content has been restored or is likely to be (inadvertently or intentionally), and/or (c) the content is recent. With recent, extensive copyvios, there is little cost to revdeletion, so the advantages of removing the content from history outweigh the disadvantages. The more edits there have been since the content was added, the more cost there is to revdeletion. The main cost, of course, is that people can no longer easily trace the evolution of the article. While license compliance is met by retaining the list of usernames, there are many reasons that transparency is useful, including in helping to track future problems by other editors. That said, revdeletion can be undone as easily as it is done, so it's not quite the same problem that selective deletion used to be. The RevDeletion policy defers to WP:CP, which refers to it briefly at Wikipedia:Copyright problems/Advice for admins. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:40, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

Well, given that the page in question is pretty simple, the one later editor did not edit the same section as contained the copied text, and the copyrighted addition was extensive and rather far from following other Wikipedia policies as well, would this be a good article for me to try out the revision deletion process, which I haven't done before? —Anne Delong (talk) 13:01, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

If the copyrighted addition was extensive, Anne Delong, and there's only one subsequent editor it sounds ideal. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 13:12, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

Okay, Moonriddengirl, I have done it; it seemed relatively simple in that case, but can you please take a look and confirm that I have done it correctly? I didn't see a reason to hide the usernames or IP address, and there don't appear to have been any edit summaries. —Anne Delong (talk) 14:05, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

Yes, you did it perfectly, Anne Delong. :) We don't generally hide edit summaries because they don't usually include the copyvio. We could hide usernames or IP addresses of people when all content they added was removed (so, not editors who added material in the middle, for instance, when that material is retained), but, as you say, there's no reason. The only reason I could ever imagine hiding that even for the person who added the copyvio and whose content was entirely removed would be if the username was a violation of policy or if it was an established editor who had accidentally edited logged out - some other rationale that permitted it under WP:REVDELETE. I've never seen a case like that. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 11:56, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

How to fix my mistaken move of copyvio edits

Dear copyright experts: I came across an old AfC draft that had been edited by several people and then copy-pasted into mainspace, not by its originator. I decided to history-merge the two pages, which I did (Artis (non-profit company); HOWEVER, I was careless enough not to notice that there were five edits relating to an old copyvio version which I should have left behind when I did the merge. Now the copyvio is in the history of the mainspace article (sigh). I thought I could just use WP:REVDEL to make these invisible. Is that okay? Or, since they were intended to be deleted, should I delete the page and restore all but those five? Or, should I delete the page, move the five offending edits back where I got them, delete them there, and restore the mainspace page without them? (messy) I promise to pay more attention in the future. —Anne Delong (talk) 16:43, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

Just delete and restore without problematic edits, or otherwise I can do it for you.--Ymblanter (talk) 11:07, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

Okay, I did that. I just wanted to make sure after reading on the revdel page that delete and partial restoration is no longer the preferred method in some situations. Thanks. —Anne Delong (talk) 02:58, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

Expanding plagiarism detection

I am looking at expanding the copy and paste detection bot globally. Am looking at hiring staff to help. They will not only collect data on the size of the issue for publication but also edit Wikipedia. Are people here okay with that? Please join the discussion here. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 07:51, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

Hi, User:Doc James. Have you talked to your attorney about liability issues in hiring paid staff to edit Wikipedia, particularly in connection to copyright cleanup? I'm not sure if there will be any, but I think you might find it worth exploring. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:04, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

What liability do you see? It involves looking at edits and reverting some of them that are two similar to published work. I do it all the time. Why would liability be different for paid and unpaid people? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:11, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

I do it all the time, too, User:Doc James, but I am not paid to do it. I am responsible for myself and not a professional. If I were going to hire somebody to assess copyright, I'd talk to a lawyer first, to be sure that I was not incurring risks if that person makes the wrong call. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 17:53, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

What do other publishers do? They have people who check for copyright issues. As do schools. If a teacher uses Turnitin are they at some sort of liability? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:46, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

I doubt schools are at liability, as they do not publish. Many publishers have insurance. Again, I'm not saying you are at increased liability, merely suggesting that if I were hiring somebody to assess copyright, I'd check. This is an area where I'd rather be safe than sorry. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 11:33, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

Advice needed

Not sure this is the right place, but I'd appreciate the advice of someone knowledgeable about CC and related copyright issues in this discussion. Many thanks! --Randykitty (talk) 12:46, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

Problematic new article

I'm not sure of how to deal with this: there is a new article with an unusual name, A47: Airflow Over Airplane Wing; its creator has made no other edits on WP and an article with the same name was deleted from Wikibooks earlier this month due to copyright violations (see here). YSSYguy (talk) 01:31, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

• I picked 5 sentences at random from that article and they returned exact copies from 5 different sources. I think a CP blank is in order here. Crow^Caw 01:40, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

I have tagged the article for speedy deletion as a copyright violation. AndyTheGrump (talk) 14:56, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

Third set of eyes pls

Resolved

- by admin - copyvio deleted from history.

My concern is with Lawrence Weiskrantz.... is it acceptable to copy and paste so much material that basically now makes up the bulk of the article? I think not but the edit was re-established by a third party because they are now using quotes and a link to the copyrighted page. I am concerned about this... pls See Lawrence Weiskrantz - Violation Suspected 80.2% for the text involved (WP:Fairuse and WP:PD). -- Moxy (talk) 03:44, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

2005 copyvio at Saint-Antonin-Noble-Val?

It looks as if someone copy-and-pasted most of the "history" section of this, in 2005. See Talk:Saint-Antonin-Noble-Val. PamD 23:38, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

I think that is a near-certainty. I've removed that section. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 00:46, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

Copyvio tools

User:Dcoetzee, the author of the contribution surveyor and duplication detector (I consider this superseded by [6]) tools, has been globally permabanned by the WMF. In the medium term, we should find a new maintainer for them. I have my own contribution surveyor, but it will not be a replacement (I cannot run it with my current hosting setup on Google App Engine, for a start). MER-C 03:23, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

I was unfamiliar with Earwig's latest innovation! Do we have any idea how much maintenance this thing needs? We could start recruiting from bot maintainers as necessary. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 11:11, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

I downloaded the source code for the current version of the contribution surveyor. The source code is clear enough and the documentation is excellent; I think it should be easy for anyone with moderate knowledge of PHP, SQL, and the Tool Labs platform to understand and modify. As for the actual time required for maintenance, that depends mostly on how often and how drastically the Tool Labs and MediaWiki interfaces are changed. I know the latter is extremely stable, but don't have much experience with the former. If it's also stable then, barring community requests for new features, there should be very little need for maintenance in the forseeable future. —Psychonaut (talk) 11:27, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

Labs is notoriously unstable. I'm also a little concerned about the WMF Office nuking the tools with the account. MER-C 13:16, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

I do not believe that will happen. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 13:43, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

In that case, the tool may continue to run fine for months or years before encountering any problems. I'm a competent enough programmer, but I don't normally work with PHP and SQL, so while I could fix (or at least diagnose) the contribution surveyor in an emergency, I don't want to be named as the official maintainer. Where does one normally look for people willing to maintain such tools? —Psychonaut (talk) 14:29, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

Incidentally, I note User:Dcoetzee was globally permabanned at the same time as User:Demiurge1000. Is there some connection here? —Psychonaut (talk) 14:29, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

I pinged Dcoetzee a few months back when the DD tool looked to be behaving oddly. He said then that he hadn't touched it in quite a long time, so as long as the tool is allowed to run, it should hopefully do so without much intervention. He did also say that it can essentially run anywhere, even on a home PC/Server properly equipped, so there's options there too. Crow^Caw 19:29, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

• Of course, as soon as I say that, it appears to be down. Crow^Caw 21:28, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

• That's not good. I'll look into that. :/ --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 13:46, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

• Just a note for everyone: I've taken over the tools to make sure they keep running at least. Hopefully we can find somone who can maintain them more long term but I've got dupe detector back up and running for now and can certainly make sure they keep 'going'. Jalexander--WMF 21:59, 10 December 2014 (UTC)
  • That's great news; thanks! —Psychonaut (talk) 22:48, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

I think it would be useful if the page contained a section with a brief description of the tools available and either links to the tools themselves or a link to Wikipedia:Wikimedia Labs/Toolserver replacements so that editors who become interested in copyright problems can be informed that such tool exist, and also to act as a news feature for editors who suddenly find that a tool they rely on no longer works. If such a section exists on another page then a prominent mention on the page of such a section on another page would help spread the information. Thoughts?-- PBS (talk) 13:18, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

The contribution surveyor seems to have been down for some days now. Is there any hope it could be resuscitated? Jalexander, can you help perhaps? We are well stuck without it. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 23:25, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

The Hateful Eight

On January 6th, editor 93.146.99.156 added the entire plot text as distributed by The Weinstein Company to The Hateful Eight#Plot. The editor added some (incorrect) internal links, removed the first four words, and moved one comma, but that's it. You can find this plot text, for example, here and here. After the editor did this, the Plot section has barely been changed. --82.136.210.153 (talk) 16:48, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for noticing that, 82.136.210.153. I think the situation was a bit worse than you thought – I counted five separate copyvios by (I think) five different editors, going back to this one from here or somewhere similar (I'd give all the diffs, but the Blamer is now down again). I've removed the section and put a warning template on the talk page. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 00:38, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

Copyright concerns

We have expanded EranBot as a pilot to look at a wider range of topics (all of English Wikipedia).

We have the output tagged by WikiProject. The hope is to eventually make the list sortable with a drop down box to specific WikiProjects.

We are also looking at methods to make it easier to indicate which have been dealt with and will need to figure out some auto archiving of concerns once they are addressed.

Still a work in progress. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:09, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

Anything that helps to stem the flow of copyvios must be good, Doc James. This may be a dumb question, but has anythng been done to prevent this from overlapping with the work of CorenSearchBot? Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 00:42, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

CorenSearchBot only does new pages. This does individual edits. So no real overlap. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 09:32, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

WP:LINKVIO in image descriptions

My issue is copyvio links in iamages. If you see [7] realhistoryww.com/ is linked in a number of images. I've looked at this website and it has quite a few full copies of newspaper articles, articles from the BBC website, etc, so as I understand it we should have no links to it. Thanks Dougweller (talk) 12:18, 8 January 2015 (UTC) This comment by Dougweller moved here from Wikipedia:Copyright problems/2015 January 8. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 23:54, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

If you decide to remove a source because the source violates WP:LINKVIO, also keep in mind that we have WP:NFCC#10a which must be satisfied. Also, if the source violates WP:LINKVIO, then we do not necessarily have evidence that WP:NFCC#4 is satisfied. If a free file uses that website as source, then there is probably not a problem with WP:LINKVIO.

It might be an idea to discuss the matter at WT:NFC. --Stefan2 (talk) 01:07, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

Possible copyvio at Tai Mo Shan

It seems that in December 2003, user Olivier created Tai Mo Shan "based on information provided by the Hong Kong Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department (AFCD) [of the Government of Hong Kong], under the provision that the re-dissemination or reproduction is for non-commercial use". (The article has been significantly expanded since then, but a lot of the original text remains.) Would this be a copyright violation (since Wikipedia doesn't allow non-commercial)? I'm not sure if it was a copy-paste, given that the department's current page bears little resemblance to it; but the attribution implies that some content was reproduced. (The earliest revision is reminiscent of an advertisement encouraging people to visit.) Jc86035 (talk • contributions) 10:22, 7 February 2015 (UTC)

Yes, I created the Tai Mo Shan article in 2003 by cut-and-pasting what was described as free material (here is the archived source material, which also includes a link to the original copyright notice, and here is the first version of the Wikipedia article). At that time, I had added the following notice at the bottom of the article: "Initial text based on information provided by the Hong Kong Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department (AFCD), under the provision that the re-dissemination or reproduction is for non-commercial use.[8]". This notice had remained there for 11 years, until someone raised a potential issue, and the article, together with the notice were blanked.

The Tai Mo Shan article has evolved a lot, and was edited 197 times before the blanking. Very little of the original source material remains. The corresponding Hong Kong Government's article has also evolved a lot and bears no ressemblance to the original.

Any trace of the original source article could easily be removed from the current Wikipedia article. That would probably amount to the removal or rephrasing of 5 or 6 sentences. I can do that if needed. Olivier (talk) 01:04, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

It is an understandable confusion, Olivier - one many people have made. I'm happy to hear that you're willing to help with correcting this issue. Rewrites are done in a temporary space - in this case, at this one. Please be careful for potentially derivative material, as much of the original is still incorporated in the current version of the article. :) For instance, almost the entire "Geology" section is still in the article in either verbatim or close paraphrase form. All of the "Vegetation cover" and (very brief!) "Wildlife" sections are still there. A couple of sentences from "Places of interest" and some close following from the "Location" section may still be found in the lead. We need to avoid creating a derivative work. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 01:39, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

I have created a reworked temp version. Please let me know if you consider it as OK. Thank you.Olivier (talk) 02:36, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

I think we might have problems regarding just simply removing the source's content, as we would have to hide all previous revisions of the article, and the contributors might not be attributed correctly. It would be safer to just rewrite the article entirely. Jc86035 (talk • contributions) Use {{ping|Jc86035}} to reply to me 08:42, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

I find that I did not, as I had meant to, leave a note of explanation here after listing the article, to make clear that I had done so without any knowledge of what our licencing requirements were in long-ago 2003 - I'm sorry about that. Despite the long edit history, the article still contained substantial remains of the source text; the new temp version seems to be fine. Jc86035, if the admin who moves the temp version into place decides to rev-delete the history, it will surely be done in such a way that attribution is preserved (as usual!), so I don't think that is a concern. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 11:55, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

Note: here is a link to the temp version. Feel free to improve it. Thank you. Olivier (talk) 14:41, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

I have put the rewrite in place. Thank you, Olivier. Jc86035, fortunately all we need for attribution is a list of authors. We can hide the text without compromising that. In this case, however, I'm not sure we need to do that. We do not always remove copyright issues from the histories of articles. Given the proportion here, I don't know that it's necessary. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 15:09, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

EPA

Are EPA documents, I.e this onein the public domain? If not there is a problem since 2006 at Onsite sewage facility.TMCk (talk) 23:07, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

Hello, .TMCk. Works produced by employees of the U.S. federal government in the course of their duties are public domain. Sometimes, the federal government does contract people to write material, and that material may be copyrighted, but this seems to be two federal employees, so I believe we're okay. :) If it doesn't, it should have attribution indicating content is copied, though. I'll take a look, and if it doesn't, I'll add it. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 15:21, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

Four Continents Figure Skating Championships

I've just taken a look at the 2015 Four Continents Figure Skating Championships page after editing some few hours ago and I noticed that the newly added prose in the recap section seemed familiar. A quick Google search confirms that the text has mostly been copied from the official ISU website, which I read earlier in the day. The text was added by 122.106.242.42 (talk · contribs). When I checked their prior contributions, I noticed that they have added similar prose sections to the 2014 Four Continents Figure Skating Championships and 2013 Four Continents Figure Skating Championships. I haven't check them against the ISU website yet, but I fear they too are copyright violations. At the very least, the prose and quotes are not attributed to any sources. I was just wondering if removing the prose and placing {{Cclean}} on the talk page was the best course of action? I was planning on warning the IP with {{uw-copyright}} too. Any advice would be appreciated. - JuneGloom07 Talk 01:29, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

Hi, User:JuneGloom07. That's an excellent approach. :) Thank you for being mindful of these issues! -Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:26, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

Thanks User:Moonriddengirl. I think I was just being overly cautious. I usually come across copyrighted television episode summaries, not big chunks of text like that. - JuneGloom07 Talk 21:57, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

Categorization of Wikipedians by copyright license

There's discussion at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2015 February 4#Category:Creative Communism License about renaming some categories for Wikipedians. The discussion would benefit from advice from someone knowledgeable about copyright. Or, if there's a better place to find an editor with that expertise please let me know. DexDor (talk) 07:28, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

Tudor Hall School, Banbury

Hopefully this is the correct place to put this. I was looking at the article Tudor Hall School, Banbury and the style of it felt too promotional. I got suspicious, so took at look at the school's website and found that the pastoral, sports, and extra curricular sections have been copy-and-pasted from there into the article. Other bits of the article may have been pasted as well, I didn't check thoroughly. --82.4.111.110 (talk) 18:02, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

FYI about Duplication Detector and Contribution Surveyor

Hey all, Just a note that I switched Duplication Detector and Contribution Surveyor to an upgraded version of the operating system (Ubuntu) and code engine (PHP) it runs on. This should have no effect on any use of the tool, however if you DO notice issues please let me know so that I can revert until I have time to troubleshoot. Jalexander--WMF 23:39, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Article: Batter board.

The one sentence body of this stub article, Batter board, is taken word for word from the referenced link, a building construction glossary: http://www.oldhouseweb.com/how-to-advice/backhand-to-butt-joint.shtml. I tagged the page with a copy-paste template and notified the originating editor, the one who entered it. This seems not to be the first time the editor has done this. This is the first time I've dealt with a copyright violation. If I have botched the operation, please let me know. Thank you, Wordreader (talk) 18:19, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

Hi, Wordreader. :) Thanks so much for noticing this problem! The copy-paste template is a fine one for articles that are heavily monitored, but it is not listed for admin review anywhere. When an entire article is corrupt, it's probably better to do {{copyvio}} or even {{Db-g12}}. I went ahead and speedied this one because there is literally nothing salvageable about it. I'm going to run a check on this guy's other edits. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 19:45, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

Really good find there, Wordreader. I've removed lingering copyvios from several sources and found that content on that website was on some occasions apparently copied from books. :/ --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 20:42, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

Thank you, Moonriddengirl, for the tips and the very prompt action. Carry on! Wordreader (talk) 23:59, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

Figaro-Polka

This article states "Based on original text by Peter Kemp, The Johann Strauss Society of Great Britain. Used with permission". There is no citation of where the original text comes from, or any evidence of permission having been sought or given. The article has no in-line citations, and doesn't seem to have been significantly edited since 2004. It seems to me therefore to contravene WP:COPYVIO - am I right? Thanks, --Smerus (talk) 11:22, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

PS the same seems also to apply to Man lebt nur einmal! and maybe to other articles by the same editor (? User_talk:Arthur_Oon).--Smerus (talk) 11:26, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

Okay that was an unusual one, Smerus. Attribution is given per Template:Peter_Kemp, with a note on the talk page of that template explaining that the author gave permission to the WMF with credit in that fashion. The note was created by User:Michael Snow, who is current an Advisor to and was formerly a member of the Board and used his law degree to help out the WMF in those days. I've located the OTRS ticket where permission was given and added it to the talk page of the template in question. It's not the way we process permissions these days, but in 2005 processes had not yet been codified. :) The specific language was a requirement of the copyright holder, so I would not wish to replace it with our current text. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 14:13, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

Many thanks for this explanation. The templated articles as they stand are not very encyclopaedic (rather WP:ESSAY and with a lot of WP:OR and opinion) so I may get round some time to cutting them down to size and adding some other refs if I can find them, (whilst retaining the template). Best, --Smerus (talk) 20:18, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

Lightweight Telephony Protocol

At the bottom of Lightweight Telephony Protocol is a manually-entered copyright notice (permalink). I'm not familiar with the finer points of Wikipedia's copyright policies, but this looked a little strange to me. —danhash (talk) 00:30, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

• Looks like a foundational copyvio of [9]. The free-to-reuse-if disclaimer that accompanies it does not allow the full freedom of re-use that we require, so would not be applicable here anyway. Crow^Caw 23:29, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

I've nominated that as a G12. There've been no substantive edits by anyone else in eight years ... Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 00:11, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks! —danhash (talk) 23:53, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

Bollywoodhungama

http://www.bollywoodhungama.com/ad_overlay.php Does any contributor with copyright knowledge of this site? I have had a cursory look around it but found no copyright status. I have recently removed a couple of what were in my opinion clear copyright violations from this page Kashish Singh and one contributor is seemingly insistent in posted one. They are all on wiki, commons and I have no edits there. This is the current inserted photo. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kashish-Singh-at-the-launch-of-Blenders-Pride-Tour-2013.jpg Govindaharihari (talk) 15:15, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Did you check the bottom of the page? It says, "Copyright © 2015 Hungama Digital Media Entertainment Pvt. Ltd. All Rights Reserved." So anything from that site should be presumed non-free unless otherwise stated. (Though they do sometimes release photos under a CC-BY licence; you can upload these images to Commons and tag them with Commons:Template:Cc-by-3.0-BollywoodHungama.) —Psychonaut (talk) 15:19, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

I will go check, I appreciate your help. If you edit commons, could you let them know? Govindaharihari (talk) 15:22, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

• I tageed the image as a copyright violation, and left a non-template message for the user. Apart from Govindaharihari's messages today, the rest of the user's page is all bot and templates, so hopefully a more personal touch will register. Crow^Caw 22:04, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

• The picture is licensed for use on Commons. BollywoodHungama has released under CC-BY-3.0 all images "at sets, parties, and press meetings, and not screen-caps or photos copyrighted by other sites." So it is ok to use in the article. Crow^Caw 22:13, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Copy and paste detection bot

The new and improved copy and detection bot that we at WP:MED have been using for nearly a year is nearly ready to be expanded to other topic areas.

It can be found here [10]. If you install the common.js code it will give you buttons to click to indicate follow up of the concerns.

Additionally one can sort the edits in question by WikiProject. We are working to set up auto-archiving such that once concerns are dealt with they will be removed from the main list.

We also want to have automatic compilation of data such as the frequency of true positives and false positives generated by the bot. A blacklist of sites that are know mirrors of Wikipedia is here [11]. As this list is improved / expanded the accuracy of the bot will improve. Many thanks to User:ערן for his amazing work.

Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 09:00, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

Copy and paste detection tool generating concerning diffs here [12] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 11:57, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

I've been poking around at this, User:Doc James, and it's really working well. I wish we had more manpower to work on it, because it's really much, much easier than WP:SCV and arguably just as important - certainly beneficial in helping avoid WP:CCIs. . --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 00:01, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

Manually raised issue

I have raised a new issue at Wikipedia:Copyright problems/2015 April 11 but am not sure that it is going to get serviced. Am I right in thinking that entries here are automated from page tagging? The issue concerns the reference desk and I don't really want to tag that page. SpinningSpark 16:55, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

It'll get looked at, but only after the usual seven days have elapsed. I've made a comment there. In the future, your best bet is to ask someone who frequents the page. FYI: entries here are not automated. MER-C 03:00, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Serial backwards copyist selling WP article-based books on Google and listing himself as author

The link to the "author" is here. This person has several e-books available on Google which are nothing but HTML lifts of WP articles. There is an attribution in the books that they are GNU Free Licensed and taken from Wikipedia, but I think I take issue with the claiming of authorship of all these different books by this one person, which is definitely not true. Additionally, because of the direct lifting, all the pictures including material we have as fair use, are being reproduced for profit (and thus used without permission. The Art of Movies in particular may be reproducing images from the various articles on Bishojo, etc, which may be non-free. These are all fairly sizable 1000+ page items, so I can't really sift them myself. MSJapan (talk) 06:28, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

I looked at this book by that "author" about health and drugs. Although it admits that material was taken from Wikipedia, not only the text, photos, and illustrations are there, but even whole intact footers are thrown in for good measure. https://books.google.com/books?id=8jF-AwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=inauthor:%22Nicolae+Sfetcu%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=VKYRVZzEIoeMNrf4gpgJ&ved=0CB4Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false I know that WP does not protect it's text or the photos and illustrations that are donated to the site, but does it protect it's graphic design and user interface? Thank you, Wordreader (talk) 18:08, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

When you add copyrightable content to Wikipedia, you are allowing anyone in the world to use it, provided that they follow the terms of Wikipedia's copyright - which have always included attribution to the individual authors. I didn't see any interface issues with the linked book (including footers is normal, and the text of the specific footers is wiki-content). עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 11:19, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

OpenHistory as source

As Wgolf mentioned, OpenHistory is used as a source for 60 articles. The copyright of OpenHistory states

"You may copy and distribute the Document in any medium, either commercially or noncommercially, provided that this License, the copyright notices, and the license notice saying this License applies to the Document are reproduced in all copies, and that you add no other conditions whatsoever to those of this License"

I don't think we use a "GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation", and I'm not sure if Wikipedia's terms count as added conditions, but if it is, should this not be removed from the articles it's used in? (Eg OpenHistory page [13]) Thanks, 1Potato2Potato3Potato4 (talk) 07:22, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

Hello. Did you read the documentation on {{OpenHistory}}? Once upon a time, Wikipedia used GFDL, a GNU Free Documentation License. So new articles (after 2009) may not pull text from OpenHistory. Prior articles should be fine. Killiondude (talk) 00:17, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

Administritive note: I have transfered the discussion to here from Wikipedia:Village pump (policy), as this is the place for discussing copyright-related questions. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 06:09, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

I hadn't seen that, thanks for telling me Killiondude. Best, 1Potato2Potato3Potato4 (talk) 17:27, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

Copyright editnotice

At The Age of Adaline I've just removed the third copyvio plot summary in about as many days. There's already a {{Copyvio plot}} template on the talk page which doesn't seem to be a sufficient deterrent. I looked around and found {{Copyright editnotice}}, but that doesn't seem to be correctly formatted as an edit notice (it appears as a permanent banner on the page). Would this be a useful addition to our arsenal, and if so could some kind admin or template editor fix it? Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 09:11, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

I've created an edit notice for the page using {{Plot2}}, Justlettersandnumbers. Many people don't understand that plot descriptions can be copyright protected; I've dealt with editors who would never have considered copying other kinds of content who are genuinely puzzled why it's not okay to take the listing from an online tv guide and copy that. I've had at least one person tell me that they don't understand how X can own the description when the show itself belongs to Y. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 10:32, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

Thank you MRG – it looks as if edit notices are among the innumerable things I don't know enough about. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 10:41, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

Trusted Storage specification

Could I possibly get some assistance from someone with more copyright knowledge than me? We have a page that is a cut&paste from another source. But it has been removed from the other source, and all that is left is a Google cache. But that's enough to show that it was first published at the other site, which does have copyright notices on the site. OTOH, the submitter is quite possibly the same person/organization that submitted to the other site in the first place. And I also have concerns that they actually have control over the other site, making it difficult for them to do either of the normal methods of proving that they have the authority to submit the material. The author says that the material is in the public domain, but I saw no notice of such at the original location of publication. Communication has taken place at the page linked above, on the talk page of the author, and via private email, though I generally try to avoid conducting project business off-wiki. I need someone more experienced to step in and evaluate the situation. Am I possibly off-base calling it a copyright situation? If not, how can we help the author to prove that they have the ability to submit the text as public domain? And none of that gets to the fact that the text in question is IMHO an unencyclopedic wall of text. Sigh. - TexasAndroid (talk) 18:13, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

Given 'the fact that the text in question is IMHO an unencyclopedic wall of text' - an opinion I suspect most experienced Wikipedia contributors will find entirely reasonable - I'd suggest that the appropriate course of action is to avoid putting further effort into trying to figure out the copyright issue, and instead to inform the author that regardless of whether the text is public domain, it doesn't belong in a Wikipedia article. This is an encyclopaedia, not a repository of 'specifications' generated elsewhere. AndyTheGrump (talk) 19:04, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

Possible copyright violations

Moved from Wikipedia:Copyright problems/2015 March 30

 – Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 14:14, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia user Bikeroo has made posts on early association football players, using information copied from the book 'First Elevens: the birth of international football' by Andy Mitchell. As author of this book I believe this is in breach of copyright, even with reference tags - the detailed information is not available elsewhere, and the reproduction of this information goes far beyond 'fair usage'.

Examples include these pages: Alexander Nash, Giulio Cowley Smith. There are others.

This kind of behaviour is detrimental to researchers like myself, whose work is being copied and distributed for free.

Kvaratschelia 13:43, 30 March 2015

Kvaratschelia, I'm sorry this has stayed unanswered for so long. If there is direct copying from your book in those or any other articles you can blank it out by adding {{subst:copyvio|url=''First Elevens: the birth of international football'' by Andy Mitchell}} at the beginning of the copied material and </div> at the end. You'll then need to follow the instructions on the resulting template.

I get only a very limited view of your book using "Look Inside" on Amazon UK. I tried searching there for some phrases from Alexander Nash, but didn't really get any convincing evidence of copying. Just to clarify: do you mean that the editor has used information from your work, or has used the exact text of your work? Because while the latter is a violation of your rights as an author, the former is not, so the distinction is important. Can you give us an example of a passage copied word-for-word from your book? Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 12:39, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for your response but I have to disagree with your definition of copyright and fair usage. You are effectively saying it is OK to lift detailed information from a book, so long as you change the order of the words. I stand by my earlier comments, and add that after challenging Wikipedia user Bikeroo about this behaviour, he/she decided to retire from Wikipedia - an admission of guilt if ever there was one. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kvaratschelia (talk • contribs) 18:38, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

Links to websites infringing copyright

Do links to sources need to be ones that do not infringe copyrights/cause the user to infringe copyrights? For example, the link provided for "The Salmon of Doubt…" by Margulies on fMRI would appear to infringe copyright since the source is normally only available through authorized channels; should the link be removed? I have yet to see where this is directly addressed by existing policies, although I would remove it as a courtesy to Wikipedia (to prevent DMCA notices) and users (to prevent unintentional copyright infringement, at least in the US). In general, do sources need to be legal/legally accessible/not pose a threat to the user? --ChrstphrChvz (talk • contribs) 03:18, 22 May 2015 (UTC)

We should not be linking to sites which are either known or reasonably suspected to be copyright violations. WP:COPYLINK is the relevant portion of policy. VernoWhitney (talk) 13:56, 22 May 2015 (UTC)

Constitution of India

This one has me confused, in part because even our own templates are vague. We've got a bunch of newly created articles sending CorenBot into a frenzy. They're articles on the various amendments and related material on India's constitution. They would seem to fall under Template:PD-India as laws/acts-of-legislature, though that template also includes the caution: This file may not be in the public domain outside India. The creator and year of publication are essential information and must be provided. The constitution itself dates to 1949, with numerous amendments up through 2009. So: is the text of these amendments, which is PD in India, considered PD here or a copyvio? Pinging Hut 8.5 who's also investigated some of these on SCV. Crow^Caw 22:26, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

I haven't really investigated it, if you Google some relevant terms you just get results about Indian copyright law which happen to mention the constitution. Wikisource have the text, although I'm not sure whether they have any of the amendments and there isn't any indication of the work's copyright status. Hut 8.5 06:46, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

"PD or copyvio" is a false dichotomy. If the amendments are under copyright, they can still be reproduced here to the extent that they're the subject of commentary. —Psychonaut (talk) 07:10, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

(edit conflict)I had a quick look at one of these pages created by InfernalH (Ninety-first Amendment of the Constitution of India), and then read Copyright law of India#Government works. Since the the amendment was apparently "passed by Lok Sabha on 16 December 2003" I was reasonably satisfied that it came under the heading "Act of a Legislature", and was thus copyright-exempt (assuming, that is, that our article has that right); the points raised by Crow above now make me doubt my reading. In any case I can see no possible reason for hosting massive extracts from the Indian constitution on Wikipedia, and suggest that they should be removed, and perhaps transferred to Wikisource if appropriate. Shouldn't the articles on the various component parts of the constitution consist of relevant information (history, significance etc) from independent reliable sources rather than large chunks from the primary source? Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 07:23, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

Fair point, Psychonaut. But what we have here is large-scale copying from the source, not specifically identified as such (though attributed in a footer), incorporated into the text of the article. It's not quoted and it's not discussed. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 07:29, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

• Yes, poor word choice on my part. "PD-or-copyright" was where I intended to go, with the next steps dependent upon that resolution. Crow^Caw 16:39, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

India's law here is a little wacky, and I think that template is misleading. [14], to which it links, lists as "government work" works made or published by the government or any department thereof, any legislature, and any court, tribunal or other judicial authority in India. And then it says "In the case of a government work, government shall, in the absence of any agreement to the contrary, be the first owner of the copyright therein." They are not free from copyright. The Indian Copyright Act of 1957 reinforces that; it does permit "reproduction" of any Act of a Legislature but subject to the condition that such Act is reproduced or published together with any commentary thereon or any other original matter. Obviously, this is not quite the same thing as being public domain. However, the question for us (as distinct from the uploader, who may be subject to different laws) is whether it's copyright protected in the U.S. In the U.S., all edicts of government, regardless of the nation that produced them, are public domain. (WP:PD) That said, somebody should fix that template. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 11:33, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

• Thanks MRG! So... given that the text of the various amendments appears in the articles without any "commentary thereon or any other original matter", does that make that text non-freely-released as far as the Indian copyright law is concerned? Do we not require international material to be free both in US and country-of-origin, or is the use of the text fine as it sits? Crow^Caw 16:38, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

• Commons requires PD in origin country and the US. English Wikipedia just requires PD in the US. We do try to respect the copyright laws of other countries - so, for instance, we don't traditionally host content that is copyrighted in countries with which we do not have copyright agreements, but per Wikipedia:Non-U.S. copyrights "While Wikipedia prefers content that is free anywhere in the world, it accepts content that is free in the United States even if it may be under copyright in some other countries." --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 17:38, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

• Sounds good, thanks again! Crow^Caw 19:54, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

Restoration of copyvio at HMS Wild Swan (D62)

This article needs urgent attention. Two editors, Folks at 137 (talk · contribs) and Philipnelson99 (talk · contribs) are re-inserting text copied from [15].Nigel Ish (talk) 17:06, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

Added it to the watchlist, reverted copyvio, warned the second user. I am actually not sure what should be done with the fist user who seems to have 10 years experience.--Ymblanter (talk) 20:04, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

If it was a copyvio in the article (and I don't see any reason to doubt that it was), then presumably it's a copyvio here also. I think that should be removed. Folks at 137, can we assume that if you had reason to believe that this content is not protected by copyright, you'd have said so by now? Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 20:19, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

Philipnelson99 appears to be a newbie and may not have fully understood the consequences of their restoration, so hopefully now they are aware of the implications, they will not repeat it. Folks at 137 claims on my talk page that the copy paste was part of a "work in progress" and would be rewritten, although this excuse may have only applied to the large chunk of commented out text that they originally added and later removed and not to the residual copyvio which you removed. Note that Folks at 137 is also keeping a chunk of commented out text copied from the same source on their talk page, while I also removed a large piece of commented out text from Claude Sclater. I don't know if using this sort of commented out, cut and paste stratchpads is common practice for this editor - if so, it may pose further problems.Nigel Ish (talk) 20:29, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

The commentary by Nigel Ish appears to call into question my honesty and good faith - I strongly object to this. What I've done is to attempt to improve a problem article using information from another website, with appropriate citations. I do not intend to leave the finished article with copyright violations. My method, which appears to have prompted this issue, is to copy/paste source text, use it as a source while rewriting it and deleting the original text as I proceed. Usually, this is done in one edit, but in this case it's a large task, so I "hid" the residue of the original text and committed. The "hiding" was criticised, so in my second go, I cut and pasted the residue to my talk page, out of public view, for later use and to mark progress. So far, so good; a problem had been raised and I thought I'd responded reasonably. After my second edit, Nigel Ish has merely reverted again, referring to a "blatant copy-vio", despite the fact that the article did not, AFAIK, contain copyrighted text. I had written a significant section of new text, using the copyrighted material as a source and deleted the copyrighted material from the article. Simple inspection of the partly amended article would have established this and may have avoided this escalation.

Nigel Ish denigrates my explanation on his talk page as a "claim" and made no obvious attempt to prove/disprove or discuss it. He has portrayed my actions in a bad light and, while I accept that that copyvios must be acted upon, I find the way he has done it is offensive.

Clarification: is it now ok for me to get on with some positive work on the article, or will non copyrighted amends be reverted, once again? Don't intend to be offensive, but I am upset by the clear insults. Folks at 137 (talk) 21:44, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

• Just please don't add copyrighted text into the article, even hidden. Every time you hit save you're essentially acknowledging our TOS, which includes a prohibition on copyrighted stuff. Usually "fix it later" is a perfectly valid approach to article improvement, but copyright is a legal consideration and we are given very little leeway in responding to it. Thanks! Crow^Caw 22:34, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

The article as modified by Folks at 137 included very close paraphrasing of text from the original source even if the commented out text is ignored, which is why I reverted the change completely and didn't just remove the commented out text as I did on the other article. The hidden text on your talkpage remains a copyvio, even though it isn't in article space and should be removed. I will leave it to others to consider whether removal of the offending text is sufficient or some sort of revision deletion is necessary.Nigel Ish (talk) 23:02, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

Cause of death

This article has no references. Much of it reads like a press release and searching for the second paragraph of this section I found it verbatim in this WHO document. I have tagged the article, but do not know how to take care of copyvio's other than deleting them, so I am mentioning the article here. Thanks. μηδείς (talk) 02:51, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

I tried using the duplicate tool, but this google search shows the similarity much more clearly. μηδείς (talk) 03:06, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

Transclusion limit reached!

On the main WP:CP page. New dates will no longer appear at the bottom, and as old dated get moved to the "Older than 5 days" section, it will only get worse! Any help clearing the old days' CP and SCV's will be most appreciated. Pie on request even! Crow^Caw 16:02, 14 June 2015 (UTC)

Downtown Las Vegas

The History section of Downtown Las Vegas sure reads like a copyvio, and sure enough it's very similar to text from the book "Ultimate Handbook Guide to Las Vegas : (United States)." Problem is the material was added June 2014, and the book was published October 2014. Maybe there was an earlier edition? Would a travel book copy from WP without attribution? Kendall-K1 (talk) 14:22, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

• You might be surprised at who copies from Wikipedia (and without attributing us, which is the only thing we ask!). Can you list the details of the publication you have (Title, author/editor, publisher, year, ISBN)? That will make it easier to get the lowdown on what's up. Never mind, I see you did so on the talk page! Thanks for your vigilance! Crow^Caw 16:59, 23 June 2015 (UTC)
• The travel guide is published by SamEnrico, which appears to be a quick "publish your own book by uploading digital content" company. Crow^Caw 17:06, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

Copying between articles

I came across an article which had copied content from another article (which I first mis-identified as an external copyvio, but seems to be the other way around: content forked from Wikipedia). For such cases, is it sufficient to note the revision from which it was taken in an edit summary of the pages the content, or do we have any templates to tag that on the receiving page's talkpage? 92.64.31.85 (talk) 12:02, 26 June 2015 (UTC)

Hi, and thank you for both noticing and wanting to fix that. :) Legally, the edit summary suffices, but we do have templates to use in addition. See Template:Copied. It's a good idea to put it on the talk page of the source article also, especially if the source article is not secure. If content is copied from, say, "Apple", we can be reasonably sure that the article will be with us always and attribution retained. But if content is copied from Obscure topic 1 to Obscure topic 2, we do run a risk that the source article might wind up deleted and the destination article retained. The template at the top of the talk page can help avoid that. :) WP:CWW sets out the usual processes. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:08, 26 June 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, I think NATO will still be with us for the forseable future, so I don't think we have to take too many precautions against accidentally deleting the edit history. 92.64.31.85 (talk) 12:10, 26 June 2015 (UTC)

Attribution question

Dear copyright experts: Some time ago, an editor made a draft copy of Nagla Murli at Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Nagla murli and then added an infobox. I have moved the infobox to the mainspace article, as the only useful edition, leaving an edit summary crediting the editor who created it. Is it necessary to now redirect this draft to the mainspace article to preserve the attribution of the infobox? It's strictly data, with no composition of sentences or design work. Or can the draft just be deleted? —Anne Delong (talk) 17:56, 8 July 2015 (UTC)

You included the name of the editor who added the infobox in the edit you made to the article, so no it isn't necessary to keep the draft for attribution purposes, even if the infobox is complex enough to qualify for copyright protection. Hut 8.5 20:55, 8 July 2015 (UTC)

Thanks.—Anne Delong (talk) 23:12, 8 July 2015 (UTC)

Copyright and Categories

TL;DR : Can a Category violate copyright ?

There's plenty of advice on the copyright of text and of images, but none that I can find on categories.

I picked up St Mary's Church, Haddenham at new page patrol and, by way verifying its notability, added a ref :

Jenkins, Simon (2000). England's Thousand Best Churches. Penguin. ISBN 9780140297959.

Would a category, say Category:Jenkin's 1000 best churches, to include those churches violate his copyright? I'm guessing that creating a Wikipedia:Books probably would.

Similarly, for the Baedeker guides, especially in light of the Baedeker raids? Or Pevsner for Pevsner Architectural Guides?

I'm not 100% sure I want to create the category yet, but I am sure I don't want to unwittingly blunder into copyvio. Thanks. Bazj (talk) 11:36, 14 July 2015 (UTC)

I'm still thinking about this, as it's quite complex. I'll write up a detailed reply shortly, but we might want to take the conversation to WT:CP where other editors/admins experienced in copyright can weigh in. —Darkwind (talk) 17:24, 15 July 2015 (UTC)

copied across from User talk:Darkwind#Copyright and Categories Bazj (talk) 10:54, 16 July 2015 (UTC)

I've since come across a discussion of List copyright issues where Moonriddengirl gave a pretty decisive opinion, but I can see the (slight?) distinction that a List sets out to be complete whereas a Category grows organically. Whether it then invites inadvertent copyvio of the selection... I don't know. Bazj (talk) 10:54, 16 July 2015 (UTC)

• The core of the problem is thus: copyright in a listy-sort of book like England's 1000 Best Churches rests in two creative components: the curation of the list, and what the author says about each list entry. Unlike the famous telephone book case, there is most likely enough creativity in curating, say, a list of "best" churches, to confer copyright protection. The prose describing each entry is also, of course, copyrighted. Whether such a category would infringe upon the copyright inherent in the curated list would (in a court case) depend partially on the intent/method of populating the category.

If we just add pre-existing articles and new ones as they are created through normal process (e.g. let the category grow "organically" as you mentioned), it would probably not be considered an infringement. Marking out that a group of churches has something in common (being listed in the book) is either fair use or different enough in form to not infringe. However, creating such a category with the intent of creating articles for all of the missing churches might be seen to be more infringing as you're again aiming for completion/duplication of the book. —Darkwind (talk) 02:23, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

Hi. :) The best guidance I have on this is at Wikipedia:Copyright in lists.

The longer I am involved with the Wikimedia Foundation, the more complexity I discover in this area. So while I'm quite comfortable saying you should be safe adding a note about an individual church being on said list to the church's article, I am not sure enough about the category issue that I would be willing to take on that risk myself. By the time the category is populated, it is in effect reproducing the list. Might that be judged fair use? Quite possibly. But where a court will land on a copyright question is unpredictable, and we are each legally liable for what we do on Wikipedia. If something like this had already been created and showed up on my talk page, I would want to run screaming. :) What I would probably do is push it off to WP:CFD for consensus on the issue. And I might well reach out to see if there was any possibility of guidance through the m:Wikilegal project. Wikilegal cannot assure an individual legal protection; it isn't legal advice, but a sharing of legal research and opinion. It may help in guiding policy and our individual decisions. In fact, if this issue is not pressing, I'd be happy to ask our lawyers if this is something they could add to their research list. It can take a month or so to get feedback. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 11:23, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

Oh, and ping Bazj, Darkwind. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 11:24, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

Moonriddengirl, Please do. As I said, I'm in the early thinking stage when it comes to this category. Nothing that can't wait a couple of months. Regards, Bazj (talk) 11:56, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

Switching to my work hat. :) Requested, Bazj. I'll ping you when I know something! --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 15:12, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

Hmm. Taking a step back and looking at it from a project perspective, I probably wouldn't do it, because the uncertainty makes for an uncomfortable level of risk. Food for thought, though; we have Category:Michelin Guide starred restaurants for example, which in a complete form would duplicate a Michelin Guide's list properties. I'm not sure if it's the same thing, though, because the Michelin Star(s) is also considered to be an award conferred on the restaurant. —Darkwind (talk) 18:19, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

Excellent example! Diving in to Category:Michelin Guide starred restaurants by country, its 440+ pages show a reasonable distribution (organic growth?) between the countries listed, with a standout sub-cat of Category:Michelin Guide starred restaurants in the Netherlands which has 190 of the 440 pages. Checking a random sample of 3 pages in NL, all 3 were created by the same editor, all 3 cite Michelin in the creation edit-summary. Not so "organic". Bazj (talk) 19:45, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

History merge?

Dear copyright experts: In the case listed here: Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:Appsolutely everything/GetJar, it seems that there has been copying within Wikipedia, but I'm not sure that merging the histories is the right thing to do, because the text in question was previously deleted from the article as too promotional. Can someone who has dealt with this situation before please comment on the page? Thanks.—Anne Delong (talk) 02:58, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

Hi, Anne Delong. :) Sure. I'll head over. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 11:10, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

Mahdisney

Looks like User:Mahdisney is copy-pasting into multiple articles e.g. [16] but there are many more. 82.132.215.107 (talk) 14:05, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for pointing out this problem. :/ I've cleaned up some and explained the issue, and I will look to see what more cleanup work is necessary. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 14:13, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

Extended content

Mahdisney (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log) This report covers contributions to 67 articles from timestamp 2011-01-14 15:35:33 UTC to timestamp 2015-07-15 16:48:03 UTC. Articles 1 through 20 Disney's House of Mouse: Non-creative. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 14:22, 20 July 2015 (UTC) Cinderella Carousel: Y Unattributed split; fixed. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 14:22, 20 July 2015 (UTC) N Iron Man Experience: ? Source is dead, but little content remains. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 14:22, 20 July 2015 (UTC) Seven Dwarfs Mine Train/version 2: No longer an issue. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 14:22, 20 July 2015 (UTC) Hong Kong Disneyland: (9 edits, 9 major, +4290) (+995)(+4290)(+692)(+161)(+172)(+199)(+800)(+161)(+792) N Space Mountain Ghost Galaxy: Y Unattributed split; fixed. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 14:22, 20 July 2015 (UTC) N Mystic Manor: (5 edits, 5 major, +3602) (+1317)(+859)(+318)(+3602)(+345) Tomorrowland: (9 edits, 9 major, +3582) (+815)(+229)(+152)(+620)(+445)(+153)(+620)(+694)(+3582) N Treasure Cove: (3 edits, 3 major, +3326) (+1726)(+3326)(+1058) N Mickey's Soundsational Parade: (15 edits, 15 major, +3272) (+3272)(+795)(+163)(+1399)(+245)(+154)(+304)(+280)(+410)(+199)(+321)(+155)(+1552)(+164)(+402) Ben 10/Generator Rex: Heroes United: (2 edits, 2 major, +2755) (+2755)(+179) N Pixie Hollow (Disney attraction): (1 edits, 1 major, +2437) (+2437) My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (comic book): (5 edits, 5 major, +2233) (+533)(+684)(+247)(+2233)(+200) The Golden Mickeys: (7 edits, 7 major, +2146) (+212)(+1990)(+2146)(+1471)(+603)(+175)(+240) Adventureland (Disney): (16 edits, 16 major, +2142) (+690)(+186)(+152)(+252)(+571)(+164)(+322)(+402)(+286)(+350)(+153)(+649)(+811)(+1262)(+212)(+2142) Mickey's House of Villains: (2 edits, 2 major, +1883) (+1883)(+173) N Toy Soldiers Parachute Drop: (6 edits, 6 major, +1775) (+1589)(+1775)(+945)(+754)(+490)(+150) Pixie Hollow: (2 edits, 2 major, +1739) (+670)(+1739) Jubilation!: (1 edits, 1 major, +1574) (+1574) N Slinky Dog Zigzag Spin: (5 edits, 5 major, +1571) (+1259)(+290)(+1571)(+959)(+238) Articles 21 through 40 Festival of the Lion King: (4 edits, 4 major, +1500) (+1278)(+192)(+192)(+1500) N Big Grizzly Mountain Runaway Mine Cars: (2 edits, 2 major, +1487) (+1080)(+1487) Mystic Point: (1 edits, 1 major, +1403) (+1403) Disney on Parade: (5 edits, 5 major, +1244) (+1244)(+600)(+388)(+668)(+1070) Toon Studio: (1 edits, 1 major, +1167) (+1167) Main Street, U.S.A.: (11 edits, 11 major, +1146) (+963)(+300)(+217)(+675)(+378)(+1146)(+158)(+206)(+238)(+321)(+558) Disney Dreams!: (1 edits, 1 major, +1076) (+1076) Iron Man in other media: (1 edits, 1 major, +1032) (+1032) RC Racer: (2 edits, 2 major, +958) (+958)(+431) 'Let it Snow' Christmas Parade: (1 edits, 1 major, +854) (+854) Marvel Disk Wars: The Avengers: (10 edits, 10 major, +840) (+186)(+185)(+189)(+583)(+471)(+302)(+840)(+177)(+804)(+415) Fantasyland: (11 edits, 11 major, +813) (+221)(+156)(+208)(+813)(+763)(+173)(+363)(+425)(+226)(+164)(+202) Ariel's Grotto: (1 edits, 1 major, +733) (+733) Fantasy in the Sky: (3 edits, 3 major, +611) (+611)(+315)(+547) Haunted Mansion: (2 edits, 2 major, +610) (+610)(+162) World of Color: (2 edits, 2 major, +541) (+238)(+541) Disney Princess: (3 edits, 3 major, +535) (+180)(+535)(+485) The Disney Gallery: (1 edits, 1 major, +532) (+532) Star Tours—The Adventures Continue: (1 edits, 1 major, +524) (+524) Toy Story Playland: (5 edits, 5 major, +522) (+193)(+522)(+185)(+323)(+223) Articles 41 through 60 Star Tours: (1 edits, 1 major, +430) (+430) Disney's Once Upon a Dream Parade: (3 edits, 3 major, +395) (+204)(+363)(+395) Lilo & Stitch (franchise): (1 edits, 1 major, +392) (+392) Disney in the Stars: (2 edits, 2 major, +388) (+221)(+388) Snow White's Scary Adventures: (1 edits, 1 major, +379) (+379) Cars Land: (1 edits, 1 major, +373) (+373) Frozen (franchise): (1 edits, 1 major, +360) (+360) Disney's Nightmare in the Sky: (1 edits, 1 major, +342) (+342) King Arthur Carrousel: (1 edits, 1 major, +328) (+328) Glow in the Park Halloween Parade: (1 edits, 1 major, +303) (+303) Merida (Disney): (2 edits, 2 major, +301) (+301)(+259) List of Hong Kong Disneyland attractions: (2 edits, 2 major, +300) (+300)(+157) Peter Pan's Flight: (1 edits, 1 major, +287) (+287) Seven Dwarfs Mine Train: (2 edits, 2 major, +280) (+280)(+177) Mickey's WaterWorks: (1 edits, 1 major, +253) (+253) Elsa (Disney): (1 edits, 1 major, +226) (+226) Anna (Disney): (1 edits, 1 major, +226) (+226) José Carioca: (1 edits, 1 major, +184) (+184) Jumpin' Jellyfish: (1 edits, 1 major, +179) (+179) Monsters, Inc. (franchise): (1 edits, 1 major, +172) (+172) Articles 61 through 67 Casey Jr, Splash 'N' Soak Station: (1 edits, 1 major, +164) (+164) Buzz Lightyear attractions: (1 edits, 1 major, +162) (+162) Swiss Family Treehouse: (1 edits, 1 major, +161) (+161) Stitch Encounter: (1 edits, 1 major, +160) (+160) N Gaston's Tavern: (1 edits, 1 major, +159) (+159) Storybook Land Canal Boats: (1 edits, 1 major, +156) (+156) List of lands at Disney theme parks: (1 edits, 1 major, +155) (+155) This report generated by Contribution Surveyor at 2015-07-20T14:19:48+00:00 in 0.26 sec.

Restoration of copyvio at Flitfire article

Additional eyes are needed at the Flitfire article. User:Cubgirl4444 is reinserting text copied from [17], despite warning on the article talk page and on their talk page. Just to make things more difficult, the article in question is in the middle of an afd discussion, with the content in question also having been added to (and removed from) the Piper J-3 Cub article. I don't know whether some sort of revdel is needed.Nigel Ish (talk) 17:58, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

Response: first article... nomination for deletion within an hour or two of page creation. Didn't know about a sandbox. Was trying to create a historical article. Nigel Ish claimed he was no longer active user on his user page & then was deleting all my work. It was confusing. I think Newbie's do get a little slack here. Most people who are new don't want to break rules; they just don't understand things at first. No need for everyone to act like the Gestapo. A friendly word will go a lot farther than harsh barking.

P.S. It took me a couple of hours to figure out the "talk" thing. It's not very intuitive & may have appeared that I was ignoring messages, at first. Sending an email would've gotten an immediate response.

Cubgirl4444 (talk) 01:05, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

Special allowance of non-free lyrics on National Anthems

Hello. I've raised the question at the non-free content talk page regarding whether consensus exists to allow an exception to our prohibition against including the complete or extensive quotation of the lyrics of non-free songs in the case of national anthems. Guidance on this is currently somewhat contradictory. If you have an opinion on the matter, your feedback there would be welcome! --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 13:28, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

Biblical names of stars

I deleted the above as a copyvio of a web page with a copyright notice, however as another editor has pointed out to me, the page suggests that it is a transliteration of The Catholic Encyclopedia from 1907. So what is the situation here - should we have an article that is a straight copy from another source (and, indeed, reads like someone's personal opinion)? Should I send it to AfD for further opinion? Black Kite (talk) 23:20, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

@Black Kite: For an original source in the public domain, whether or not to retain text that is a straight copy is an editorial decision not affected by copyright. Relevant editorial guidelines might include Wikipedia:Plagiarism, and lessons learned from the Encyclopaedia Britannica 1911 project. Phrased another way, there are no "copyright" concerns with a public domain source, but there are definitely other editorial reasons we might not want to retain the text as-is. —Darkwind (talk) 17:51, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

More eyes on Metropolitan City of Milan

While checking out two SCV entries that were internal copies of this article, and since I'm just returning from a long absence, I would like to get a sense from others on what they think about the edits performed by an IP on March 22nd. Specifically the amount of fully wikified text and the interval between time stamps. I'm too out of practice to be a good judge. Thanks. MLauba ^(Talk) 22:49, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

Invalid token

Dear copyright experts: I tried to tag the page Draft:Global Management Accounting Principles as a copyright violation of http://www.academia.edu/11433654/TRUST_VALUE_RELEVANCE_INFLUENCE, using Twinkle, but was unable to do so because of "invalid token". Did I do something wrong? or is there something special about this page?—Anne Delong (talk) 01:39, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

@Anne Delong: 99% of the time, an "Invalid token" response from TW is roughly the same as the "we could not process your edit due to a loss of session data" error that occasionally pops up. Reloading the page and trying again almost always fixes the problem. If it's persisting, then there might be some kind of TW bug affecting that page because of its title or page ID or something. —Darkwind (talk) 17:53, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

Darkwind, I tried five or six times with no avail. I guess I should manually tag the page. (unless someone just wants to check it out and delete it...)—Anne Delong (talk) 17:56, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

I looked it over with the help of Earwig's CV tool, and it's definitely a violation. Deleted. —Darkwind (talk) 18:02, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

Thanks.—Anne Delong (talk) 00:33, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

CPC template

Does anyone mind if I update {{CPC}} to be more in line with other administrative board response templates (e.g. {{AIV}}, {{ANEW}}, {{RFPP}} etc.)? Specifically, I'd like to remove the indentation, bullet, and signature, because the current formatting makes it difficult to respond to nested complaints. See history of Wikipedia:Copyright problems/2014 December 21 for an example). —Darkwind (talk) 02:54, 2 August 2015 (UTC)

Personally I'd really rather not remove the signature, since it saves time, Darkwind. I'm all bout cutting down keystrokes where we can. :) But I don't mind if we experiment with removing the indentation and bullet. The bullet especially is window-dressing. Nested complaints are rare, however. Generally it looks more like this. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:05, 2 August 2015 (UTC)

Actually, on further consideration, I don't suppose you have the ability to make an override on a case-by-case basis? In 99% of usage, the indentation and the bullet are keystroke savers and make the pages more readable. We use the same structure at WP:SCV, and it's just clean and easy to place the templates and also to look at the page and see what's done and not done (Wikipedia:Suspected copyright violations/2015-06-22 as a basically random example). While being able to omit the indentation and bullet on need would be nice, most of the time they are a timesaver. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:34, 2 August 2015 (UTC)

@Moonriddengirl: Certainly one could make it overrideable, by way of providing an additional parameter like |indent=no or |sig=no. However, this takes away somewhat from the time/keystroke saving benefits. As for the indent pattern making it easy to see which are and are not done, that's very true, and it works at other boards the same way. The difference is that one gets used to typing ::{{RFPP|p|2 days}} ~~~~ or ::{{AIV|ani}} ~~~~ versus {{subst:CPC|c}}. Admittedly not everyone who works this board is an admin, or even if they are, they may not regularly contribute at these other boards, so if the current template is what people are used to in their workflow, that's fine and I don't want to disrupt that. Rather than change the main template to suit my workflow, I'll probably just fork a copy at another name somewhere without the formatting. —Darkwind (talk) 18:25, 2 August 2015 (UTC)

Also, I forgot to mention the reason I have issue with the signature is because it's written in the template as --~~~~. For people like myself who have put an em-dash or other punctuation at the start of their signature specifically to avoid typing --~~~~ all the time, it ends up looking a bit ridiculous (--—Darkwind (talk) for example). —Darkwind (talk) 18:29, 2 August 2015 (UTC)

It does take away from the time/keystroke savings benefit, true, but it's also for an edge use. :) (That is, assuming the absence of the parameter doesn't break the ordinary function.) The indent is most of the time appropriate for listings. Very seldom do items at CP or SCV get conversation. I think it's probably best not to change it, since the templates have been stable for many years at this point, and making your own copies certainly works. I don't have any issue with removing the "--" from the signature, though, fwiw. The important part to me there is just knowing who did what. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 19:16, 2 August 2015 (UTC)

Prolific user and copying between articles

Please see User talk:XXzoonamiXX#Copying within Wikipedia. I was alerted to on inter-article copy because of the tell-tail failure to copy over a long citation in the references section to support short citations in the copied text. So far so usual. However, as can be seen in User talk:XXzoonamiXX#Copying within Wikipedia, I have added two other other examples of the same text being inserted into multiple articles, these may be (probably are) examples of text originally added to one article by XXzoonamiXX and then added into other articles. Could some other editors, who are more experienced than I am at this sort of thing, have a look and give further guidance to XXzoonamiXX if that is thought necessary. -- PBS (talk) 18:05, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

An opinion about whether something is copyvio

I had added some material to the B'Tselem page from their "About us" website: "B'Tselem is funded by contributions from foundations in Europe and North America that support human rights activity worldwide, and by private individuals in Israel and abroad". I cannot see any copyright notice on the page, it seems weird to me that the "About us" page would be copyrighted, and also the text seems very short to me. But another user flagged it as a copyvio. What is the opinion about this? I have rewritten the text anyway, but I would like to know for the future. Kingsindian ♝♚ 10:38, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

Everything is copyrighted unless the copyright holder explicitly disclaims copyright, you don't need a copyright notice. It is quite possible that the organisation doesn't actually care about us reproducing their "about us" page, but that doesn't make any difference as far as copyright is concerned. The text is short but I think it's long enough to pose a problem and I think you did the right thing by rewording it. Hut 8.5 21:50, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

Am I doing this correctly?

I added several section {{Copypaste}}s to Faith healing. Google Book searches show block of identical text in two sources (this and this). Both look like they are self-published and are not found in worldcat. Both do not show a copyright page in Google Books preview. I don't know how to determine if those books are the sources copied into Wikipedia or if Wikipedia is the source without that copyright information to look through the article history to see what came first. What can I do? –BoBoMisiu (talk) 18:24, 12 September 2015 (UTC)

The second one is definitely copypasted from Wikipedia (the PediaPress as publisher gives it away, their site acknowledges they just rip wiki articles). The first one is harder, but from a skim at a couple other chapters and looking at the article's history at that time, you can see that the first book is also a copypaste of a slew of wikipedia articles as well. That one may be a case of plagiarism on the author's end since I can't find out what the copyright is there. Those cases are tougher, best course of action when you're not sure if to just bring them here like you did now. When in doubt check the publisher's site, the more frequent wiki-rippers at leas acknowledge they are. Wizardman 19:29, 12 September 2015 (UTC)

@Wizardman: thank you. I have seen the Google Book spamming before. –BoBoMisiu (talk) 19:51, 12 September 2015 (UTC)

copyvio / coi issues

The page Tactile imaging is a confusing tangle of possible copyright violations and conflict of interest, and it's a little beyond me. There is significant overlap with this article, complete with awkward language suggestive of a non-native English speaker. The article, along with several other publications with V. Egorov as an author that are cited in Tactile imaging, seems to be the basis for much of the article, so it is probably no coincidence that most of the article has been written by Egorov123. Note that the link above is to a draft in the US National Library of Medicine, much of which is public domain, but the final edited form is published in Current Medical Imaging Reviews. Similarly, many of the figures (File:Figure2TI.png, File:Figure3TI.png File:Figure4TI.png, File:Figure5TI.png , are copies of figures from this article. In Wikipedia Commons the source is given as "own work", which they may well have been originally, but now I presume that the journal owns them. In addition, contributions to other articles by Egorov123 seem closely related to the research interests of V. Egorov. RockMagnetist(talk) 22:06, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

Response from Vladimir Egorov: It seems to me that the expertise of RockMagnetist does not allow him/her to make judgments neither about the scientific description of the innovative technology nor about the published article language. I wrote the page Tactile Imaging based on my scientific knowledge and referenced publications. All used figures are my own. The page is open for improvements. Sometimes, I contribute into the wiki and other pages which have intersections with my scientific interests and I see that the page was written by a post-doc servant with an intellect of a kindergarten children. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:8B:C300:4A00:1C02:6AD7:F0A4:E50D (talk) 18:06, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

Dictionary definition quoting

How many entries from a dictionary can be quoted at one article (or its talk page) before this is a copyright issue? Does it matter if they're quote in full or in part? Does it matter if they're quoted in one or multiple citations? By different editors? In a single edit? In different threads/sections?  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  03:56, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

• The official copyright answer: "It depends". Are the definitions being used to actually define terms for the reader? That potentially runs afoul of transformation, i.e. supersedes the source, which is generally a problem. If they're there to illustrate the particular style that a dictionary uses in its definitions, then there's much more wiggle-room. Are the definitions such that a re-worded in-text explanation is unsuitable? As far as size goes, fewer is always better when using non-free material, likewise with the shortest snippet that gets the point across. Crow^Caw 22:04, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

Copyright on a government website

Dear copyright experts: This old draft User:Kvasconez/sandbox appear to be a copy of an article sponsored by a government department, rather than a policy document or other official publication. Is this copyright?—Anne Delong (talk) 15:35, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

Well it was written by an employee of the Federal Highway Administration, which is part of the US federal government, during the course of that person's official duties (Copyright status of work by the U.S. government), so I'd say it's in the public domain. Hut 8.5 15:46, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

Aye, this one is a work of the US government I'd say. That website appears to host third-party works as well (like this), though. I hope that these websites have a "third party stuff must have a copyright notice if it is copyrighted" policy, there.Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 16:11, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. I deleted it anyway under db-g13, since it wasn't written as an encyclopedia article and had been declined at AfC more than six months ago. It can be revived if the user ever returns to improve it.—Anne Delong (talk) 19:54, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

Text copied from another article?

The long list of errors in the current version of the article Neuromuscular junction disease brought me to this diff by an IP from more than a year ago: [18]. I can see this as being a potential copyright problem on two fronts; first the large amount of text is not properly sourced, and I guess it has been copied from somewhere else within wikipedia without proper attribution. I do not know the proper forum for addressing such a concern, so I am posting it here. Regards, AtHomeIn神戸 (talk) 06:07, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

Keeping this thread alive so it doesn't get archived. AtHomeIn神戸 (talk) 00:43, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

• The text matches a Wikipedia mirror that says it came from Neuromuscular junction, though I can't find the same text in the current article, nor in the version prior to the forking of the disorders article. I know there's a tool out there somewhere that lets one search through all revs of an article, just have to find it... Crow^Caw 21:58, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for your response Crow. I have looked through older versions of the article also but can't come up with anything. I hope somebody else can help. AtHomeIn神戸 (talk) 02:44, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

New template Template:Copyviocore bottom to use instead of </div>

I created this template because finding and removing the correct </div> template once the copyright violation is resolved may be tricky on pages that already had </div> on them when {{subst:copyvio|....}} was placed on the page.

The template expands to </div>. The only reason I made it is so that it "stands out" on a page and is therefore easy to spot and remove once the copyright issue is resolved. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 05:18, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

Plagiarism of World Heritage Encyclopedia

Dear experts,

I was reading the page on Young-adult_fiction when I noticed a lot of unusual citations, such as "(Cart 43)." I did a little googling and found that most of the text was lifted directly from http://community.worldheritage.org/articles/Young_adult_literature, with some minor variation in text up until 15 March 2013 when it was edited to match the source text directly. Unless I'm getting it backwards, and the encyclopedic reference copied Wikipedia first, shouldn't this be fixed post-haste?

Best regards, 2602:306:B8ED:DE0:6D56:DFAA:A791:43F4 (talk) 23:45, 5 November 2015 (UTC)

• This appears to be a case of "copying from Wikipedia" based on the state of the article in late 2012 and early 2013 and, most importantly, a link on http://community.worldheritage.org/articles/Young_adult_literature pointing back to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young%20adult%20Literature?action=history . Even if it is not, http://community.worldheritage.org/articles/Young_adult_literature is "CC BY-SA 3.0"-licensed, which means we don't need to delete the material, only attribute it. Unless someone can find any reason to keep this discussion open, I recommend closing it as unfounded in 24 hours. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 00:05, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

Hathorn

Following the community indef and ban of Billy Hathorn I attempted to start a discussion of (1) what to do about his contributions (2) what to do about the CCI backlog and (3) whether the community wants to ask the Foundation to look into better and more robust ways of dealing with long-term abuse. The discussion got archived before it had really had time to get started, so I'm trying again here. Leaving aside 2 and 3 for now, I believe we need to try to reach a decision on what should be done about Hathorn's contribs. In that brief discussion, Nyttend made this proposal:

I know that it's a huge amount of text, but I'm still in favor of nuking all articles created by him and not significantly edited by others. The first step would be bot deletion of all articles never edited by other users, aside from bot edits and human edits that were marked as minor. This done, the bot could give a full list of articles that had fewer than X non-minor edits by humans (I'll suggest five), and admins could go through the list to check for non-minor edits, marking ones that had been checked and cleared. Once these were done, the bot would give us a list of all other articles created by him, and we'd repeat the delete-or-mark process. Splitting up the process would both make it easier to do (simply by making more-but-smaller chunks of work) and make it so that we got the more-likely-to-be-problematic articles first. The time-related problem at CCI is that you're supposed to check each article individually against the potential sources, if I remember rightly. If we're deleting everything that's not gotten significant contributions from other editors (by which I'm meaning major rewrites, not just significant content additions), we don't need to worry about checking contents: a few seconds would suffice to check virtually all articles, and the exceptions would involve checking just a few diffs. I'd suggest that the bot handle all deletions, including ones that had been checked and cleared for deletion. Two process points: (1) Bot uses an edit summary reading something like "Deleting page created by user with an extensive history of copyright infringement. Page may be recreated by any user", because we don't want to discourage people from creating new articles on the same topics. (2) Bot's userspace has a fully protected page on which admins can leave a list of links, and the bot deletes every article that's linked from this page. This would potentially save us a ton of time (you can check twenty pages and copy/paste their names much faster than you can check them and delete them) as well as ensuring a consistent edit summary. Since the deletions requiring human checking would be bot-performed on human instructions, we wouldn't need to worry about WP:CONTEXTBOT.

There were comments in support from MER-C and Blackmane, and a question from Rich Farmbrough. Are there objections to this, better solutions, or technical or other reasons why it can not now go ahead? I'd like to suggest that it be supplemented with a "Darius Dhlomo" warning tag for all articles that are not summarily deleted, to avoid the possibility of good-faith editors working on corrupt content that will later have to be removed. Pinging Moonriddengirl, Wizardman, Diannaa, Hut 8.5, Psychonaut and Crow for comment. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 23:05, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

"a few seconds would suffice to check virtually all articles" I meant to say "...virtually every article". Of course checking all of them will take a while, but any individual article will be checkable in just a few seconds. Nyttend (talk) 23:23, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

Samba district

I was wondering if someone would mind taking a look at Samba district#Name origin. The entire section looks as if it's been copied and pasted (including citation markers) from somewhere. The entire section is unsourced, so simply removing it per WP:NOR is one possibility; However, I'm not sure if that would be sufficient if it's really a copyvio. -- Marchjuly (talk) 21:45, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

It's awfully written to boot. I'd zap it with a note on the talk page.Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 21:54, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

Power distance

Would I be able to get a second opinion on Power distance? A lot of the writing style seems like an essay, but I can't find any non-mirror matches for the literal snippets that I've searched (e.g. "Hofstede, the famous business anthropologist, developed the controversial cultural dimensions theory.", "In the middle of the last century, Haire, Ghiselli, and Porter"). I'm not sure if anyone has access to any more automated tools to check the article more wholly, as it's quite long.

The vast majority of the article was added in this edit by a user named User:MGMT90018 2015S2 Power distance, which is a little unusual. Looking at the history of the sandbox version beforehand, it seems as if it is a collaborated article (perhaps as part of a college course or something), so it may just need a bit more wikifying, but I wanted to be sure that the article is alright before I spend any major time on cleanup. Thank you. — Sasuke Sarutobi (talk) 14:25, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

I agree it sounds somewhat suspicious. The writing style sounds very much like academic journals, it might be worth checking the texts against the ones it cites as those might not be indexed in general search engines. On the other hand it could just be written by people with an academic background who automatically write like that. Hut 8.5 19:40, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

Hermelin: The Detective Mouse

Hermelin: The Detective Mouse is a newly created article that has been tagged as a possible copyvio by User:CorenSearchBot. The copyvios report shows an 88% match with the website www.prairielightsbooks.com/book/9780385754330. User 90731fly, the article creator, keeps removing the csb template without rewriting the problematic text in their own words. I'm trying to AGF and not bite, but not sure what the best way to proceed in a case like this. Any suggestions would be most appreciated. Thanks in advance. -- Marchjuly (talk) 13:42, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

I've tagged it for G12, for now - seems like the non-copyrighted text is not really worth saving.Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 13:46, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for checking Jo-Jo Eumerous. -- Marchjuly (talk) 13:48, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

Concerns

There is this article which does not meet the basic Wikipedia criteria failing WP:N. One of the major violations is also copyright. I have also listed the sources of copyright in detail. If there is an admin here. Please delete it. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Hari Parbat. It has more than 6 sources of copyright. Markangle11 (talk) 15:51, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

Malicious deletion nomination by Markangle11, please see my comment on the nomination page. Copyvios should be addressed in the normal course. kashmiri ^TALK 19:24, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

Please re-check and read my comments. Markangle11 (talk) 16:39, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

Roberto Gagliardi

I am concerned that some of the text in the article may be copied from [19]. SovalValtos (talk) 19:15, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

I agree, SovalValtos, and I've blanked and listed that page. There seems to be quite a COI problem there too. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 11:25, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Article Blamer seems to be broken

The blamer is a fundamental tool for tracking down copyvio, but for several months (at least) has consistently given wrong results (Example: ask it who added "a typical face-off" to Premier Badminton League and it replies with this diff; the text was actually added two years earlier, with this edit). The maintainers are listed as Cyberpower678, Hedonil, MusikAnimal, Technical 13 and TParis; I'm pretty sure that neither of the last two has been active for some time now. If any of the remaining three has the time, will and energy to see what's gone wrong and fix it, that would be excellent. But if they don't, could we get some help with getting this back on its feet? Jalexander-WMF, I remember that you stepped in when the DupDetector and Contribution Surveyor seemed to be at risk; might you consider looking at this too? Or anyone else with the necessary skills, for that matter. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 10:21, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

I didn't even realize Xtools had it's own article blamer... shows how much I know! Have you tried Flominator's tool? This is what is linked to in MediaWiki:Histlegend — MusikAnimal ^talk 15:39, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, MusikAnimal, I'd forgotten about that. It's kind of a weird interface, but at least it doesn't get the result wrong. The Xtools one always used to work just fine, then went pear-shaped, perhaps a year or so ago. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 17:06, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Xtools is slowly dieing off I guess you could say. The entire suite of tools was rewritten by Hedonil who disappeared in August 2014, and no one has successfully been able to repair any of the broken tools since then (anyone is welcome to try!) — MusikAnimal ^talk 17:13, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Sausmarez Manor

See Talk:Sausmarez Manor#Copyright concerns. I have no direct evidence that the article breaches copyright because the source does not appear onlne, but experience suggests, that a new editor creating an article over 10k in size from a single source is likely to have inadvertently breached copyright, particularly when the wording seems so polished. I am placing this comment here so that there is a record of my concern, in this central repository and in the hope that others will take a look and seen if my concerns are ill-founded. -- PBS (talk) 14:01, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

Copy-paste on Bureau of Diplomatic Security

A large part of Bureau of Diplomatic Security, the "Personnel" section, appears to have been copy-pasted from the Bureau's official website. --AW (talk) 04:11, 27 December 2015 (UTC)

That looks like a website that hosts material from the US government, based on the content and note in the bottom bar. So it'd be public domain text. It needs to be attributed in some way though, both for WP:V purposes and because otherwise it's plagiarism.Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 09:35, 27 December 2015 (UTC)

userspace copyvio?

I have run across a user who has clearly plagiarized in mainspace, and now it appears that he has also done so in userspace, though I can not find a clear rule saying userspace is included. That editor appears to not regard copyright as a serious issue, and has "banned" me from any contact, and I abide by his wishes. Advice? Collect (talk) 08:40, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

Copyright law and policy is the same regardless of namespace, so that one needs to be handled as well.Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 09:38, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

Compare https://livingnewdeal.org/projects/post-office-mural-chardon-oh/ with [20]. That user has been cited and is at WP:CCI for repeated copyvios and plagiarism, and seems to blame me as the "Plagiarism Police" (see [21], [22], [23], [24] etc. ) Gracias. Collect (talk) 14:14, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

Alleged copyright violation in Racial Segregation

Please read its Talk Page, the sections Liberia and Native Americans for the editing and administrative context.

The reverted version that I want to discuss heretobelow is here.

In short, when using the exact wording from the main History of Liberia article, and adding WP:RS sources thereto, with their full attribution and the quotes tag, I was being accused of WP:OR, as presumably these sources did not contain the key "racial segregation" phrase (they did, in fact). While rewording the content, having found even better sources, and quoting directly therefrom as part of the sentence/fragment only, so as to avoid e.g. WP:SYNTH, my edits were administratively reversed for, quote:

Revert copyright violations. The statement on talk page of "verbatim" copying appears to be an admission of copyright violation, though it's is not very clear. But I can tell this material re: Liberia preexists & is indeed b/c part of it is found verbatim at https://laurenkfoster.wordpress.com/2015/02/04/bhm-1-liberia/ 

Now, when asked how to solve the "damned if I do, damned if I don't" (see the Talk below), the further advice given by the same experienced editor was:

To fix such a thing would involve citing sources that do, which in no way necessitates copying and pasting their content. This is all entirely separate from the copyright issue that drew me here. 

I am none the wiser.

1. Did I really commit a copyright violation that may have contributed to the WP:ANI sanctions against me?

2. How does one know if smb's blog content from 2015-02 was copied from the stable Wikipedia article (from which I copied the content in turn, as per above, as previously advised on the Talk Page), and not the other way round?

I hope my query is clear, as it is a somehow complicated to explain. It is also long-term problem for me, as an Wikipedia editor with some experience behind my ears, as I am accused of not being competent therefore by hopping IPs.

Zezen (talk) 15:53, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2016 January 2

Here is a copyright deletion that needs more legal opinions at deletion-review: Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2016 January 2 is a Feist Publications, Inc., v. Rural Telephone Service Co. issue. It involves the choosing of two possible birth dates to display for a single entry in a table of birth dates. Choosing one over the other makes the whole table commentary and makes the whole list copyrightable. The deleter claims that he is a lawyer and has the ability to make the determination. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 00:47, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

I don't think the copyright angle is applicable here. That being said, while this should be relisted for process' sake, the 2nd afd should also be closed as delete per WP:IINFO, and the DRV you started is really a waste of everyone's time. MLauba ^(Talk) 02:23, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

Islamization of the Sudan region

only noticed one sentence, but it *is* word for word. Added this to talk page of article:

"However, large-scale religious conversions did not occur until the reign of Ahmad Bakr (1682–1722), who imported teachers, built mosques, and compelled his subjects to become Muslims." https://books.google.com/books?id=oN5LbDnKCt4C&pg=PA55&lpg=PA55 word for word not sure which came first Elinruby (talk) 06:29, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

haven't really looked into how to determine what to do with these; I am there because it's flagged as needing other help. Noting the issue here so someone else can take a look. Elinruby (talk) 06:35, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

possibly this is taken from wikipedia as I do see the same wording elsewhere also. Fact remains that I am not certain how to be sure of this. Elinruby (talk) 06:44, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

@Elinruby: The Internet Archive might help. If there's an archived version of the potential source of the Wikipedia wording that predates the Wikipedia wording, the Wikipedia wording is a copyvio. If the Wikipedia wording predates any archived version of the potential source, then the copying probably went the other way. -- Rick Block (talk) 05:34, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

Featured article Bruce Kingsbury - text in introduction is partly copied from official citation

Today's featured article Bruce Kingsbury - both the introduction and the main page teaser - use barely changed text from the official citation following his posthumous award of the Vicoria Cross:

Intro:

"On 29 August 1942, during the Battle of Isurava, Kingsbury was one of the few survivors of a platoon that had been overrun by the Japanese. He immediately volunteered to join a different platoon, which had been ordered to counter-attack. Rushing forward and firing his Bren gun from the hip, he cleared a path through the enemy..."

Citation of 1943 (quoted verbatim in the article):

"Private Kingsbury, who was one of the few survivors of a Platoon which had been over-run and severely cut about by the enemy, immediately volunteered to join a different Platoon which had been ordered to counter-attack. He rushed forward firing his Bren Gun from the hip through terrific machine-gun fire and succeeded in clearing a path through the enemy..."

Honestly I don't know the copyright rules here in detail. Probably this official wartime text is in the public domain. But still I think it's at least somewhat improper to use text parts in this way, and neither a role model of NPOV. Or is it consensus that this practice is alright? --KnightMove (talk) 21:49, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

As far as copyright is concerned I don't think there's a problem. The London Gazette, which you've linked to above, is under Crown copyright. As this citation was published more than 50 years ago I think it is in the public domain per Wikipedia:Crown copyright and {{PD-UKGov}}. Hut 8.5 22:19, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

Potential Copyright Violation/Plagiarism in Spearman's Correlation Coefficient article

I was reading "Quantitative Measurement of Scores by Ranks" by Gayatri and Prasad and noticed substantial similarities in the text describing the Spearman's rank correlation coefficient and this wikipedia entry. The text above is a conference paper from the "2011 International Conference on Advancements in Information Technology" and can be accessed HERE. (scroll down to the section on the Spearman CC for the text in question.

The following text from the Gayatri publication is a perfect match with the current wikipedia text:

"In statistics, Spearman's rank correlation coefficient or Spearman's rho, named after Charles Spearman and often denoted by the Greek letter ρ (rho) or as rs, is a non-parametric measure of statistical dependence between two variables. It assesses how well the relationship between two variables can be described using a monotonic function. If there are no repeated data values, a perfect Spearman correlation of +1 or −1 occurs when each of the variables is a perfect monotone function of the other."

The text in question dates from 2011, and the wiki article text is present in the history prior to this date.

216.15.21.56 (talk) 21:18, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

That text was in our article in this revision which predates that paper. Either they copied it from us or both Wikipedia and that paper have it from someone else prior.Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 21:27, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

Is this column in violation of Copyright?

For Rankings of universities in the United Kingdom#Summary of National Rankings, there is a third column stating the number of times the university appears in the top 10 in one of the three league tables. This draws on partial data from one source (Times/Sunday Times Good University Guide) which has a DMCA takedown notice, so is copyright violated? The column does not exactly state what position they are within the top 10 or whether if they are in the top 10 at all for that ranking (the university is included in the table if it is in the top 10 of either of the 3 rankings), only general statements are made regarding if they are in the top 3/5/10 for all 3 league tables or not. EmyRussell (talk) 06:05, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

Copy headwords from a dictionary

Is it okay to copy headwords, those which are red links in WP, from an astronomy dictionary onto a Wikipedia page in order to make a redlist? Iceblock (talk) 20:58, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

Copy a list of words, that is?Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 21:19, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

Jo-Jo Eumerus: Yes, copy a list of words. For example

• Acronical rising, acronical setting
• Active prominence
• Active-region filament
• Advection-dominated flow
• Alignment effect
• Anastigmatic system
• Aperiodic behavior
• Aplanatic system
• Aspheric surface

I took this example from the list at User:Skysmith/Missing topics about Astronomy created by User:Skysmith. Iceblock (talk) 22:55, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

Yes, lists are not copyrightable if they are simply a list of terms or words. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 21:17, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

Thanks a lot, User:Nihonjoe! Iceblock (talk) 21:32, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

Copyright violation

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mt10.jpg - Copy from internet ([25])

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gdp_1960.png - Copy from google bookBanzaku (talk) 10:00, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

• I'll check this one.Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 10:13, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

Please check them, thanksBanzaku (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 17:18, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

@Banzaku: Mmm. Seems like GIS is failing on me there... if it shows up as copied to you, you may want to start a deletion request on Commons about these. The EXIF data certainly look odd.Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 17:27, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

Coal Wars

The article Coal Wars, specifically this edit by an anonymous editor, copied and pasted directly from this website: http://www.gutenberg.us/articles/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain. Subsequently the same editor edited the material into the current form. My question is if this is a copyright problem (the website mentions the material is Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License) and if so is the current Coal Wars article sufficiently different enough or should it be removed.

Thanks -Killian441 (talk) 17:54, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

The editor who added the text copied it from another Wikipedia article. The link you've given admits taking the text from here, which is an obvious copy of Wikipedia. Copying between articles like that is actually copyright violation because the copying editor didn't attribute the source (violating the terms of CC-BY-SA), but that is easily fixed. I don't know how the material got into the original article but we've got no reason to think it's a copyright violation. The copying editor also didn't know how to copy the footnotes, I'd suggest you fix that. Hut 8.5 19:02, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for answering so promptly. I didn't notice that connection. I will put cleaning up this article onto my todo list. -Killian441 (talk) 21:11, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

USHMM?

I just came across Kaufering concentration camp which is mostly copy-paste from here http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10006171. Now, there are some pages that use USHMM content with permission (eg Chelmno) but there is no indication of that here...Drow69 (talk) 13:50, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

Good catch, Drow69! There seems to be no room for doubt there: the initial version of the page was copy-pasted (by an indef-blocked problem user) from here. That page carries a clear copyright notice; this page makes clear that commercial re-use of USHMM content is not permitted. I've blanked and listed the article. Thanks for noticing this. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 14:35, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

Copyright Euclids Elements

I want to make a detailed content of Euclid's Elements book 1 article as hub to link to and from many other articles.

When I did that the first time it was marked as being copyrighted by another and speedely deted see:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:WillemienH#Speedy_deletion_nomination_of_Detailed_contents_of_Euclids_elements_Book_1

As being copyrighted by http://aleph0.clarku.edu/~djoyce/java/elements/bookI/bookI.html.

But what is the exact copyright status of this work and can I reuse the content in an article in wikipedia

The original is Euclid's Elements (circa 300 BC, I guess out of copyright) in ancient greek. the now a days most used english translation is the one of Thomas Little Heath's (5 October 1861 – 16 March 1940) "The thirteen books of Euclid's Elements" (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1908) this version is still printed and sold by Dover books (and also by other publishers, see the Euclid's Elements article.

I really would like to use larger parts of this book, the book is mentioned at https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Elements_of_Euclid There are other translations mentioned but they just use not the same translations and using them is likely to cause confusion.

I am wondering if this is the right place to discuss this problem , I was send here by a link on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Help_desk/Are_you_in_the_right_place

thanks WillemienH (talk) 14:11, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

• Copyright tags are sometimes added to things incorrectly, for example on websites which host both copyrighted and non-copyrighted content you may see the same footer with the same tag on all pages. Now, Euclid's original work is definitively in the public domain but translations can add their own copyright. Is the particular translation you want to copy old enough to be PD? Also, sure that this text belongs on Wikipedia? Wikipedia:Do not include the full text of lengthy primary sources, Wikisource may be a better place for this.Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 14:31, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

No I don't want to include the complete text I guess around 4 pages in total of the around 250 of book 1,(it is fat pocketbook size ) my idea is to make it an article that links to many other pages and vv. Is the particular translation you want to copy old enough to be PD? that is exactly what I also want to know :) WillemienH (talk) 16:58, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

To decide whether a particular translation is PD we would need to know things like who published it and when, but one published in 1908 would certainly be PD. However I doubt that an article like this would be considered suitable for Wikipedia. As noted above Wikisource hosts pages that consist of large chunks of text published elsewhere. Hut 8.5 21:25, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

YT official channel for external link and/or source

I added the link below to the article Sönke Neitzel:

• "Mindset of WWII German Soldiers": video interview with Sonke Neitzel discussing his book Soldaten, via the official YouTube channel of The Agenda, a programme of TVOntario, a Canadian public television station.

Another editor commented that it may be problematic since it comes from YouTube.

However, I interpret Perennial websites: YT as okay to use YouTube as long as the video comes from the official channel:

• As an external link: * Sometimes. Videos from "official channels", like the United States' Naval History & Heritage Command, are more likely to be accepted than other links.

AgendaStevePaikin looks official to me. It seems to me that if a program puts a video on their official YT channel, they want us to consume it.

Along the same lines, if a video comes from an official YT channel of a reputable organisation, such as U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center, and delivered by an WP:RS, reputable historian, would it be okay use as sources, in addition to external links?

K.e.coffman (talk) 01:51, 13 March 2016 (UTC)

The page is on overflow

Dear User:MER-C and User:Justlettersandnumbers. This page is on overflow and appears at Category:Pages where template include size is exceeded (see the corresponding talk page). As a result, some parts of this page are not correctly displayed. Perhaps, you should consider splitting this page. Best regards. Pldx1 (talk) 17:04, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

William Churchill (ethnologist)

I have attempted to answer a copyright complaint at Talk:William Churchill (ethnologist). If any of the project's experts would chip in, I'd appreciate it. -- John of Reading (talk) 08:17, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

Answered there. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 17:10, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

Copyright and Dispute over brand/name

Hi. I am unsure if this is the correct place to put this but I am here to basically inform any mods/admins that there is a copyright dispute over the "Have I Been Pwned?" brand and name. This is being brought to attention due to an official Copyright application made via the UK GOV web site for sole rights to the "Have I Been Pwned?" brand and name which now puts the actual entity in full dispute. We are the guys responsible for the .org incarnation of ever so popular "Have I Been Pwned?" service run by Troy Hunt and we are making full claim to having come up with the idea as well much further back than 2013 which is when the main .com incarnation was introduced.

If this is not the correct place to make contact with a mod or administrator in regards to the official Wikipedia "Have I Been Pwned?" page, please could someone point us in the right direction or could an admin get in touch with us please via Talk. We are not privy to how Wikipedia works fully. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hibporg (talk • contribs) 20:42, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

• @Hibporg: Greetings. I'll admit that this question doesn't seem to be an issue for Wikipedia, unless there is something else here.Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 20:49, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

@Jo-Jo Eumerus: Hi there. Well it is since the "Have I Been Pwned?" Wikipedia page has been put up, the brand/name is now in dispute as is the official site address. I am addressing this as one of the site administrators for the .org incarnation since we are the guys who have made the copyright application for the "Have I Been Pwned?" brand and name. We are now not only putting the name in dispute officially but we also are making claim rights to the official web site space which is currently filled with the .com incarnation of the site not ours. How do we proceed because this is a copyright issue and dispute.

Hibporg, I've checked Have I Been Pwned? and find no evidence of copyright violation. If you are disputing Troy Hunt's right to use the tag, you will need to take that up with him. But I see from this page, where you write 'After some lengthy conversation with Troy Hunt we have come to a mutual agreement … we get our data directly via the "Have I Been Pwned?" API which of course is part of Troy Hunts site haveibeenpwned.com', that you have already done so. As Jo-Jo Eumerus has already said, any dispute you two may have has nothing to do with Wikipedia; there's nothing "official" about our page, it merely reports what is written in independent reliable sources. You will probably need to change your username; you should be aware that user accounts are for individual, not collective, use – if there's more than one of you, you will need more than one account. Welcome to Wikipedia! Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 23:30, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

Weald

I was copy-editing Weald, and I had a question, so I asked Checkingfax, and s/he answered my question but also checked with Earwig's Copyvio detector, and found a high degree of similarity between the WP article and the published article. See User talk:Corinne#Weald and Earwig's copyright violation detector. According to Checkingfax, the source is [26].  – Corinne (talk) 14:33, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

Hi, Corinne, and thanks for keeping an eye open for copyright violations. I've had a look at this and don't think there's any doubt that in this particular case we're OK – it's a WP:backwardscopy, where the kentpoi site has copied (without the necessary attribution!) from us. Give-aways are the "[Edit]" in square brackets before the "Wildlife" heading, and the Wikipedia footnote number [18] after "Hartfield". Also, if you look at the history of our article, you can see it evolving gradually with contributions from many editors; when there's mass copying from an external site it tends to hit the article in a lump (which makes it easy to see). I'll tag this as a backwards copy on Talk:Weald. Thanks again, Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 17:06, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

Pará

I just happened to come across this article and saw a notice regarding a copyright problem in the section Pará#Indigenous population that has been there for a while. Just thought I'd point it out.  – Corinne (talk) 02:55, 1 April 2016 (UTC)

Removed and {{copyvio-revdel}} requested. — JJMC89 (T·C) 04:38, 1 April 2016 (UTC)

Wanting further comment at a related page

Please see Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)#Works_that_are_PD_in_US_but_not_in_country_of_origin and comment. Want to make sure I'm in the clear before I add text. Thanks! Calliopejen1 (talk) 23:23, 1 April 2016 (UTC)

Please see Seolhyun Edit Summary. I accidentally made this mistake, and I believe it violates copyright until it is fixed. 78.148.65.71 (talk) 15:43, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

Copyright violations by probable PR firm editor

I've been clashing this week with an editor who appears to be working for a digital media PR firm (evidence at [27]). Beyond any of the issues with POV-pushing and COI, though, one thing that bothers me clicking randomly through her edit history is that a lot of it seems to be plagiarized. I'm reading the policy correctly that this isn't allowed, right?

Edits for comparison:

• “Ergen studied finance at the University of Tennessee, became a CPA, and worked for Frito-Lay before striking out on his own.“ [28] taken word for word from [29]

• The “History” section of the article we’re arguing over on the ACCF page (compare her to her source--see pages 72-73; sorry Google Books won’t let me cut and paste it here). Even at a glance it’s clear that Blumenthal’s paragraphs were just copied in and slightly rewritten, sometimes with long phrases still in his exact words. (I did remove this one, but she keeps restoring it.)

• The incredible amount she copied out of this single Bloomberg article... almost every quotation and a lot of other sentences and phrases as well. [30]

• LA: Soon after the call, Business Insider blared the headline, "Dish CEO says customers don't care about AMC because they live on 'farms and ranches.'" [31] Source: “Not long after the earnings call, Business Insider blared the headline, "Dish CEO says customers don't care about AMC because they live on 'farms and ranches.'"” [32]

I saw these in just a few minutes of searching, so unless this is some crazy fluke, I’d be surprised if the problem doesn’t run deeper than these few examples.

Would someone more experienced be willing to take a look at this? I don't feel confident enough in my understanding of Wikipedia policy to try to police it alone. I've tried raising this issue at other noticeboards and have gotten a lot of "not my department" sort of responses, and the editor herself refuses to respond to my concerns. Any advice would be welcome. Thanks, Ellen -- EllenMcGill (talk) 15:59, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

EllenMcGill, if there's evidence of extensive copying this might be a case for a contributor copyright investigation. The general rule of thumb there is that there should be at least five examples of unacceptable copying. Can you give at least a brief example of the copying you saw in the ACCF page? Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 09:10, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

Sure, Justlettersandnumbers, if it’ll help.

LesbianAdvocate: in 1978, Walker's group pushed a bill through Congress that greatly cut capital gains taxes. The Council claimed this would boost financial markets. During this time the Council's board included Democratic "superlawyers" such as Clark Clifford and Edward Bennet Williams and supply-side advocate Arthur Laffer. Robert Keith Gray, a powerful Republican lobbyist, served as president. The Council lobbied hard and released numerous economic studies showing the benefits of their bill. In his book Revolt of the Haves, Robert Kuttner wrote: "Many of these studies later were shown to be based on unverifiable assumptions about how the market was likely to respond to a cut in the capital gains rates; yet they were presented as scientific fact, and by the time the liberal economists reassembled their forces and challenged the methodology in the various tax journals, the political battle was over and Charlie Walker's capital formation council had moved on to other issues." Although the 1978 capital gains tax cut bill passed, the predicted spurt in investment never materialized. Walker argued that other economic factors were in play and in November 1979 he told the Council's annual meeting that the tax cut had saved the economy from yet worse troubles.

Source (Blumenthal): “In 1978, Walker’s group won a swift and decisive campaign in Congress. The council developed a bill that would greatly reduce capital gains taxes. This, Walker claimed, would make the financial markets flush. His group by now had bipartisan support within the Washington establishment. On its board, seated alongside supply-side wizard Arthur Laffer, were venerable Democratic superlawyers Clark Clifford and Edward Bennett Williams; the council’s president was Robert Keith Gray, a high-powered lobbyist with close ties to prominent Republicans. The council lobbied hard … and released studies showing the beneficent effects the bill would have. Robert Kuttner, the economics correspondent for the New Republic, wrote in his book Revolt of the Haves: "Many of these studies later were shown to be based on unverifiable assumptions about how the market was likely to respond to a cut in the capital gains rates; yet they were presented as scientific fact, and by the time the liberal economists reassembled their forces and challenged the methodology in the various tax journals, the political battle was over and Charlie Walker's capital formation council had moved on to other issues."

Although the 1978 capital gains tax cut bill passed Congress overwhelmingly, there was no spurt in investment … Walker, however, was undaunted. In November 1979, he told the annual meeting of the council that the tax cut had saved the economy from deeper troubles.”

As you can see, she changed some of the language in a superficial way (though some exact phrases still slip through like “The Council lobbied hard”, “spurt of investment”, etc.), but no one could mistake this passage for anything but Blumenthal’s work. I assume this is what is meant by close paraphrasing? If a student had turned this in to me, I’d certainly be marking it “See Me After Class.”

For a fifth example, here’s a duplication detector check on another source from her attacks on Dish Network. [33]

I really appreciate your looking into this, and sorry I can’t be more help cleaning this up. I’m a little burnt out by having to battle with this company for two weeks (it is essentially now confirmed a digital PR firm was behind this, and they seem to be controlling multiple accounts) and am hoping to move on to calmer waters. Thanks, Ellen EllenMcGill (talk) 12:45, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

Non-paternity event

Hello, I just added a copyright template to Non-paternity event and wasn't sure if I need to explain it here. An IP editor re-added a data table that I had removed from Misattributed paternity (links to talkpage) before I merged it with Non-paternity event. (See misattributed paternity revision history). The IP editors clearly took the table from the old page, so presumably should have seen my edit summary where I said it was a copyright violation and gave the specific citation from the article. I just reverted the re-addition explaining it was a copyright violation and the IP editor started a conversation on Talk:Non-paternity event (after undoing my revert, but at least a discussion was initiated), so there are more information about the details about the violation on the talkpage. I added the copyright violation template and I'm posting here because I didn't remove the content again yet. It's the data table in the Rates of non-paternity in single births section. I wasn't sure what else to do. The content is a problem for a plethora of reasons, COPYVIO, OR, UNDUE, etc. etc. Thank you! PermStrump(talk) 15:33, 9 April 2016 (UTC)

EUR-Lex

According to the copyright notice of EUR-Lex, "except where otherwise stated, reuse of the EUR-Lex data for commercial or non-commercial purposes is authorised provided the source is acknowledged ('© European Union, http://eur-lex.europa.eu/, 1998-2016')." Is this consistent with Wikipedia's licensing requirements? Does it mean we can copy legal texts from EUR-Lex into Wikipedia articles? If so, do we have a template for articles that incorporate texts copied from EUR-Lex? — Kpalion^(talk) 08:38, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

R2-45

Moved from Wikipedia:Copyright problems/2016 April 12

 – Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 09:39, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

The article R2-45 links directly to two external web sources (tonyortega.org and wikilinks) that (according to the text in those same sources) carry a unauthorized 3-minute excerpt from a lecture by L. Ron Hubbard, copyrighted by the Church of Scientology. My understanding is that this violates Wikipedia:Verifiability#Copyright_and_plagiarism (rule is duplicated at WP:ELNEVER). The local editors accept that copyright is claimed on the material,[34] but they revert my edit when I remove the link and argue, under various theories, that the Church of Scientology cannot enforce copyright on the material.[35][36] They also argue that linking is OK if it is for a different purpose.[ibid:"for the purposes of commentary"] Given the volume of the controversy, I reasonably expect that adding a WP:CV template to the page would be reverted and accomplish nothing. I have already been "warned" by an opposing editor that my insistence on following WP:POLICY on this and other issues is "continued tendentious editing".[37] Grammar'sLittleHelper (talk) 06:53, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

To be clear, this isn't about content that is hosted on Wikipedia, but content hosted on third-party sites to which Wikipedia links. I've already pointed out to Sfarney that a three-minute extract from an hour-long lecture, excerpted for the purpose of news reporting and commentary, is exactly what fair use covers. We are not linking directly to the content, but to the news reporting and commentary accompanying it. There is no particular reason to believe this is a copyright violation, and there is no indication from the copyright holders that they have any objection to it. As WP:ELNEVER says (but Sfarney seems to have overlooked), "You can link to websites that display copyrighted works as long as the website has licensed the work, or uses the work in a way compliant with fair use" (my bolding). Prioryman (talk) 14:58, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

Sfarney, Prioryman, WP:ELNEVER is a guideline; it is for guidance. Our policy on this sort of thing is at WP:LINKVIO. I personally don't see much scope for fair-use justification in the wording of that policy. In general, it is probably best to err on the side of caution. One thing I'm sure of: whether or not the copyright owner has voiced an objection, or would have any chance of enforcing such an objection in law, is of absolutely no concern to us – we have our own copyright policy and fair-use guidelines, which are "subject to purposely stricter standards than those laid down in U.S. copyright law". Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 09:57, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

WP:LINKVIO says "However, if you know or reasonably suspect that an external Web site is carrying a work in violation of the creator's copyright, do not link to that copy of the work." The question here is whether this is a copyright violation. A 15-second clip from a lecture (because that's what this is) is so patently within our Fair Use guidelines ("Spoken word clips of historical events, such as speeches by public figures, may be used when accompanied by appropriate sourced commentary and attributed to the speaker/author.") that it would be OK even to host it on Wikipedia, let alone link to it. --Slashme (talk) 17:03, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

Something odd is going on here. A few days ago, that recording was more than 3 minutes long. Tonyortega.org still bears the words, "We have about three minutes of it for you in a recording." Please see those words on the current altered tonyortega blog page (if you get to it before it is altered again) and on the archived copy. As I remember it, the Wikileaks page was the same, though I do not have hard evidence. How is it that those sources are changing so quickly to suit the arguments of the editors? Grammar'sLittleHelper (talk) 17:39, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

Unless you wish to have an ArbCom case opened on Scientology and can show those who cut the clip down did so for improper reasons, or unless you can make a reasonable argument that the 15 seconds is a violation of Wikipedia policies, I find your final sentence disturbing here. Is it your position that people with a COI of some sort are deliberately acting to edit this article? If so, which editors do you have actual reason to believe are acting as proponents or opponents of Scientology, and what specific evidence do you have to proffer? Absent such evidence, would you, if you were an admin, act on that complaint? Collect (talk) 22:11, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

I cite facts only, not suppositions, conclusions, or suspicions. The recording was previously more than 3 minutes long as shown by Ortega's surrounding text. According to the statements above by other editors, it is now only 15 seconds long, and the change coincides with this copyright query. Grammar'sLittleHelper (talk) 22:35, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

The excerpt on tonyortega.org is more than 3 minutes long. Linking to that from Wikipedia is apparently not permitted by policy. Grammar'sLittleHelper (talk) 16:05, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

Is this a violation?

Can I ask for an opinion on Economists' Statement on Climate Change#Text of statement? It quotes pretty much the entirety of the source page, but it's not the kind of thing that can easily be paraphrased. Cordless Larry (talk) 08:22, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

Well the statement itself is almost certainly copyrighted, so the only question is whether this quotation can be justified under our non-free content rules and I don't think it can. The rules say that this kind of quotation has to be "used to illustrate a point, establish context, or attribute a point of view or idea" and must be "brief". Three paragraphs isn't brief, and the quotation isn't serving any particular purpose in the article - it isn't integrated into the text at all. I would recommend removing it. Hut 8.5 19:08, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, Hut 8.5. I forgot to check back here for replies, so have only just seen yours. I'll remove the text now. Cordless Larry (talk) 06:54, 10 May 2016 (UTC)

Too close a copy?

Adelante Fraternity#History from http://www.adelante.org/about.php ?Naraht (talk) 17:54, 17 May 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Village_pump_(miscellaneous)#Old_licenses

A discussion regarding old files with GFDL assumed licenses is taking place at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(miscellaneous)#Old_licenses. Please see that discussion if you are interested. — xaosflux ^Talk 00:29, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

Hedy Epstein

Floquenbeam spotted what appeared to be a copyvio in our Hedy Epstein article and removed the relevant text. However, I think this is a case of someone copying the Wikipedia article. I haven't restored it, as I would like someone experienced in dealing with copyright issues to take a look first - all the details are at Talk:Hedy Epstein#Copyvio in "biography" section.

As this has been nominated to appear on WP:ITN, it would be excellent if someone could take a look before it becomes stale. Thank you. Thryduulf (talk) 22:20, 30 May 2016 (UTC)

No, you were right, Thryduulf, I didn't do enough research. They copied us. I've reinstated the text. --Floquenbeam (talk) 11:56, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

University of Nairobi Department of Geology

Could someone please take appropriate steps. I believe this page was copied from the department's own website at [38] and should probably be deleted. Thanks. Taknaran (talk) 14:55, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

• The first version of the article is even more similar to that website, with some minor edits. I've asked for speedy deletion.Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 16:22, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

new CopyPatrol tool is live

Hello copyright problem solvers. You probably stay busy enough with the reports on this noticeboard. However if you ever want to get more involved in keeping Wikipedia content free of copyright violations, checkout the new CopyPatrol tool. This tool is a web version of User:EranBot/Copyright that shows potential copyright violations as they are being added. Login using OAuth (you don't need to enter your password) to get started. You can click "compare" to compare the diff against the copyright source. Once you've confirmed it's a violation, please fix it and mark the entry as "Page fixed", or "No action needed" if it is not a violation.

Look forward to new features like filtering by WikiProject. This tool is still beta-ish, so please report any problems you encounter (or suggestions) here. Thanks! MusikAnimal (WMF) (talk) 18:23, 15 June 2016 (UTC)

Confession

Back in 2010 I add content removed in this edit which was "covers a lot of territory and preys on Montreal" from a source that said "preys on Montreal and covers a lot of territory", so pretty much a copyvio. I was new and guess I thought it was okay. Better you hear it from me. I am terribly sorry. I will check my other edits from around then to be sure that is the only one. Again, I'm sorry. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 10:16, 12 June 2016 (UTC)

I've been pouring through my edits and have found another case. I've reworded. I am looking for more in other articles, but it is a bit difficult because this was around five years ago and there are plenty of reverse copyvios. Again, I am so sorry. I think I was simply trying to rearrange text in a notepad to avoid copyvios rather than doing a rewrite. I have no excuse, just that explanation. I promise to find any others and fix them. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 23:27, 12 June 2016 (UTC)

@Anna Frodesiak: I'm blocking you! :) I think a lot of people inadvertently add copyright violations. Almost all the time it goes right under the radar. But guess what, we have a new tool to help identify and repair copyright violations as they happen in real time, see below! — MusikAnimal ^talk 18:24, 15 June 2016 (UTC)

Technically not a new tool, just a web version of User:EranBot/Copyright. Hopefully you and others will find it useful — MusikAnimal ^talk 18:30, 15 June 2016 (UTC)

Thank you, MusikAnimal. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 23:34, 16 June 2016 (UTC)

Scope creep

It looks like this article as it stands now is at least a partial lift from this section of a paper from 2010. The "sources" tacked on failed RS. The paper is dated 2010, and I don't know how to (and don't know if there's a functionality to) step back through hundreds of edits in the article history to find when particular text was added. "There's too many edits to go through to find the problem" isn't a valid CSD copyvio reason, so I need a bit of help figuring this out. MSJapan (talk) 19:22, 17 June 2016 (UTC)

Hi MSJapan. The history page can help. Under "Browse history" you can enter a year and month to see the history at any time. Putting in 2009 for the year shows the page was much the same back them. "Revision history search" in the "External tools" lists takes you to "WikiBlame". This lets you find when a particular word or phrase was added. StarryGrandma (talk) 17:23, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

Copyvio from patents?

I've removed a request for revdel from the electronic harassment article, as it raises copyright issues which I think should be examined here before choosing how to act on it. The template is

{{copyvio-revdel |url = http://www.google.ch/patents/US5123899 |start = 719308647}}

My concern is this: while uncredited copying of patent material is definitely plagiarism, and thus not allowed in articles, I'm not sure this necessarily counts as copyright infringement. See http://www.uspto.gov/terms-use-uspto-websites , which says, among other things: "Patents are published as part of the terms of granting the patent to the inventor. Subject to limited exceptions reflected in 37 CFR 1.71(d) & (e) and 1.84(s), the text and drawings of a patent are typically not subject to copyright restrictions." I'm not an expert or even particularly knowledgeable about any of this, so I have no idea whether or not this is relevant to this specific case, but I think this situation is worth taking here so more knowledgeable people can comment, or possibly even to the WMF itself for an opinion, as they have their own in-house lawyers for just this purpose.

(Pinging @Jytdog: for courtesy.) -- The Anome (talk) 14:20, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping. Jytdog (talk) 06:10, 27 June 2016 (UTC)

We have an article on the topic, which says the situation is somewhat ambiguous. However the revdel criterion says "blatant copyright violations", and I don't think this falls under that rule as you could certainly make a plausible case that the text is not copyrighted. Hut 8.5 21:29, 27 June 2016 (UTC)

The two text fragments you have quoted are rather conclusive. Only plagiarized material (fraudulently represented as one's own) is forbidden. But "the text and drawings of a patent are typically not subject to copyright restrictions", so copyright rules do not apply. To avoid plagiarism, the material must be credited to the source. Grammar's Li'l Helper ^Talk 21:46, 27 June 2016 (UTC)

Roger Brown & Swing City

Please review the corrections. Hopefully they will fix the copyright violation problem.

was this fixed? Moscowamerican (talk) 01:32, 29 June 2016 (UTC)

Copy vio and possible copy vios

I was doing research for new article when I came across this message on this other talk page (diff: [39]) "The section on impusle response seems to have been lifted from [40]--AwesomeWells (talk) 11:55, 24 January 2012 (UTC)". I checked the section - and it does appear to have been copy and pasted from the aforementioned url before January 2012. In other words, it is still there. I looked at another section - and it may be that other sections of this article have also been copy pasted from other copyrighted sites. However, I have no desire to blank the whole page for one section that is "for sure", while the other sections are "maybe". Hopefully someone will look into this matter. Thanks. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 03:34, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

Brand New-U

Hi,

As a native French speaker, I'm not very aware of the procedure and a little bit lost in WP:DCV. Please, excuse me for that and let me explain here what I found out.

The text of this contribution seems to be copy of the official plot summary. On the official website or this trailer posted on Vimeo, the same capitalization can be found and the trailer is dated may 2015, prior to the contribution.

Best regards, --Lacrymocéphale 21:35, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

@Lacrymocéphale: I restored the previous plot section and request that an admin WP:RevDel the infringing revisions. — JJMC89 (T·C) 22:58, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

Driver License Compact

Hello!

I've never been here before and I don't know anything about either copyright law or wikipedia's copyright policy, but I did come across this page Driver License Compact which has an antique copyright warning that doesn't seem to be logged in your listing anymore. Or at least I couldn't find it. Not sure if it's really a copyvio or just a misplaced tag or what. Hopefully someone can take a look!! AgnosticAphid talk 22:11, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

Proquest claiming copyright for out-of-copyright work by a third party

A few months ago I uploaded a 1939 UK government document onto commons, which is currently shown in the infobox at White Paper of 1939. It is certainly not in copyright, since UK Crown Copyright for such materials expires 50 years after publication. However, this copy of the document comes from ProQuest, who claim to have copyright (see small text sentence watermarked at the bottom of the document). Their claim has no basis as they have not created it as an original work themselves.

I am bringing this here to check that others agree with my analysis.

Oncenawhile (talk) 11:09, 20 July 2016 (UTC)

• I would tend to agree with your assessment. One can take a PD (or OGL) document and create a derivative work that then is copyright eligible. The key there is transformativeness, where they do something to it that has their "personality" attached to some creative change made. In this case, it looks like they scanned it and slapped their tag on it, so at worst this can be considered a compilation by them (being very generous with the term), but since they made no creative alterations, modifications, annotations, or anything else transformative, they've done nothing to generate a new copyright. I would recommend explaining this on the talk page of the image at Commons, as patrollers there often tag anything with a copyright notice or watermark as a violation. Please anyone else reading this, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. Crow^Caw 17:13, 23 July 2016 (UTC)

Thank you - I have added a note to this effect. Oncenawhile (talk) 20:54, 23 July 2016 (UTC)

Bugs

I'm finding that since July 16, all the daily copyright problem subpages to this page are showing a date that's one day earlier than the date of the subpage. For example, all the dates on the July 17 page were July 16, until I changed them manually to July 17, and also fixed the pages for July 16, 19, and 21, but not for later pages. I also discovered that several of these pages (for July 16, 17, and 19) were missing from the day-by-day listing on this project page. Was their omission caused by the same bug? I'm adding them now. Largoplazo (talk) 19:50, 29 July 2016 (UTC)

When I read that, I thought I was going to find that the explanation was simple human error on my part; but it seems that DumbBot is living up to its name. I don't know what made it start editing these pages, it hasn't done so for ages. As for the daily listings, we're adding them manually; a number of bot requests have fallen on deaf ears (well, they would, wouldn't they?). Thanks for fixing stuff. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 21:52, 29 July 2016 (UTC)