Wikipedia talk:Copyrights

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The request for copyright assistance page co-ordinates the various issues and requests related to copyright queries on Wikipedia.

Preinclusion Help
Can I use... | Could we get...

Postinclusion Problem Solving
Missing copyright information | Violation check | Suspected copyright violations

General Copyright Advice and Discussion
General help/discussion | Policy discussion | Copyright holder assistance | Asking permission | History pages

Shortcut: WT:C

[edit] What about torrents? Torrent search engines?

Hi, someone recently objected to my removal of links, saying that torrent sites and search engines do not distribute illegal links themselves. Would you say this is a valid line of logic? I'd say it makes Wikipedia look bad, and should be discouraged anyway.

IMHO something needs to be added to the Copyrights Policy to prevent such disagreements. --Kjoonlee 02:01, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Copied from archives. --Kjoonlee 05:39, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Again, linking to a torrent tracker/search engine only points out a place where one can search for files, the same way google searches for webpages. Linking to such a site does not say that we encourage illegal activity, merely that we would rather they look somewhere other than Wikipedia. Instead of removing such links for third-parties who may believe this to be unethical, we should inform them of the points I made previously.--Frenchman113 on wheels! 21:40, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

So it would be a legal link in an article on torrent search engines, but normally we should not be linking from an article to a set of search results, anyway. - Jmabel | Talk 19:09, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Correct. Note that a serch query will return different results with time. ≈ jossi ≈ t • @ 19:40, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Could the top anonymous contributer please give an example, I am struggling to understand what sort of thing you mean--BozMo talk 13:46, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

I was the person who wrote the first two paragraphs. Here's the link. Wikipedia:Reference desk archive/Computing/2006 September 3 --Kjoonlee 03:02, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Webiste using wikipedia material without compliance to the GFDL

I'm not sure where to report this, but this site is using wikipedia material without following licencing requirments.--Peta 01:48, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

You can send them a Wikipedia:Standard GFDL violation letter asking them to give credit to Wikipedia -- Lost^(talk) 03:21, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

And the main place to not this is Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks. - Jmabel | Talk 17:13, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

I dont know where to report this-but there's a huge copyright violation on Yael Dayan's wikipedia page. I went to google her- and I found the same information on http://www.answers.com/topic/yael-dayan --Max 01:45, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Actually answers.com is a pretty well known mirror site of ours and is already listed in the link directly above your question. -- Lost^(talk) 04:09, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Clarity of application of GFDL

On the Copyrights page, it says this in bold:

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover Texts.

A copy of the license is included in the section entitled "GNU Free Documentation License".

Content on Wikipedia is covered by disclaimers.

It is not, however, explicitly said that this applies to the whole of Wikipedia unless otherwise stated (fair use images etc). I think it should be made clear that it does, because otherwise someone who wants to be a jerk could argue that it applies only to the Wikipedia:Copyrights page itself, or is just an example or whatever. The argument may not be particularly valid, but stupid lawsuits can still take lots of time and money.

The notice that's shown on all pages and when editing does not mention the versions of GFDL that apply, but it should. It should say "Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation" to avoid any potential problems in the future when new versions of the license are introduced. New versions may e.g. dispense with Invariant Sections, Front-Cover Texts and Back-Cover Texts altogether, as they have been criticized by Debian as being non-free. The license might also be made compatible with some Creative Commons licenses and the GPL, something that just can't be done otherwise. It'd be sad if at that time some disgruntled ex-Wikipedians of the competing future project Trollopedia claimed that "oh, we were only licensing this stuff under the GFDL 1.2, not any future version!" just to cause trouble. As the condition of allowing FSF to change the license you're licensing your work under is rather unconventional and yet is not prominently stated, who knows, they might even have a case. Don't they have all those patently silly warnings in products in the U.S. precisely because some people did patently stupid things with the products and then won lawsuits because the danger wasn't made "clear enough" (common sense be damned)? -- Coffee2theorems | Talk 10:48, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Funny coincidence, almost immediately after I wrote this, the FSF released a new draft of GFDL :-) Looking at things a bit more closely, at least some of my concerns appear unwarranted. The GFDL says "If the Document does not specify a version number of this License, you may choose any version ever published (not as a draft) by the Free Software Foundation.", so at least there isn't room for quibbling about new versions there. -- Coffee2theorems | Talk 11:16, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Where is WP material legally copyrighted?

Due to a discussion on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics (where some authors questioned the right to translate articles from other language WPs), I have spent some time trying to understand the copyright discussion on the Wikipedia_talk:Translation into English page, and on the archived talkpages for Copyrights. I have also checked this page, and its links. I still have not understood the absolute basics. Here is my first question; it is absolutely serious, although I do think that there should be an easy answer to it that I miss (since I suppose that the legally trained WP people have considered these questions with some care):

Is the Wikipedia as a whole, ore are its articles, legally copyrighted? If so, how, and where can I read the actual legally valid copyright note(s)?

As far as I know, a legally valid copyright note must contain explicit information on who (i.e., the name(s) of the physical and or juridical person(s)) claims the copyright, and the year of taking it. I do not know if there is any exemption from this in the form of implicit copyright notes with templates; if so, I'd like to have a short explanation of this.

I have worked with a software project for a number of years. We license under a GPL version. However, that means that we start any document by a notice Copyright (C) <name(s)> <year(s)>., accompanied with a couple of sentences summarising it, and a reference to the full copyright text. I've never ever considered the idea that a reference to the full text without any enumeration of copyright holders would be legally valid.

Now, of course I know that there is a note on edit pages, stating that authors agree to license their contribute under GDFL. However, I do not understand how such an agreement could be construed as replacing an actual copyright note, if there is no copyright owner and time mentioned anywhere. In other words, by submitting I clearly agree to licensing, but am I really licensing (in the legal sense)?

This is what one of the GNU documents our copyright page is referring to states about the GDFL 1.2:

How to use this License for your documents

To use this License in a document you have written, include a copy of the License in the document and put the following copyright and license notices just after the title page:

      Copyright (c)  YEAR  YOUR NAME.
      Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
      under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2
      or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation;
      with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover
         Texts.  A copy of the license is included in the section entitled "GNU
      Free Documentation License".

If you have Invariant Sections, Front-Cover Texts and Back-Cover Texts, replace the "with...Texts." line with this:

    with the Invariant Sections being LIST THEIR TITLES, with the
    Front-Cover Texts being LIST, and with the Back-Cover Texts being LIST...

(You have the same text on the wikipedia here.)

Doing this explicitly does (I suppose) provide a legal copyright. I have found nothing similar to this anywhere (except someone, perhaps the author, who tried to make an explicit copyright note to a section of Biological patent she had written; the note and the section were promptly removed). There is a common way of ceeding copyright implicitly: When you submit an article to e.g. a journal, you may thereby yield the right to an explicitly named party, namely that journal. In this case, however, we assume the various authors to retain the ownership of the copyrights of their contributions, but agree on GFDL terms for this copyright.

In the archived discussions, some contributers claimed that since the rule of citing up to 5 main contributers of an article only is mentioned for modified versions, it does not apply to the verbatim ones. Now, as fr as I understand the GNU text, this is just because a verbatim version is supposed to start with that line

without which the license is just an information of what a license would look like.

[edit] Implicit authorship?

So if neither the authors, nor e.g. the Wikipedia foundation, are mentioned explicitly as copyright owners, could there be considered as implicitly given, i.e., possible to determin from the context in some legally valid manner? First of all, I do not know if the law recognises implicitly specified copyright holders or not; perhaps some wikipedian with legal training could answer that. Second, I don't understand where and how this is done here.

Perhaps it would be useful to write something somewhere like

Unless explicitly stated otherwise, each contribution is copyrighted under the GDFL by the person having made the contribution, at the time the contribution was made, as recorded in the history pages.

I think some people are of the opinion that this indeed is the correct interpretation of our copyright rules; so perhaps something like this is written in some legally valid document. If so, I'd very much wish a link to it. However, even arguendo there is such a note, and it is legally valid, I don't see how this solves most problems.

Notice that there also is right to anonymous contributions; and that contributions that are not anonymous in wiki sense, may be so in the legal sense, since you don't have to disclose your name on your user page. In other words, without some hard detective work you cannot deduce the name of from a history entry, in most cases. Does the non-named contributions enter the public domain? JoergenB 21:29, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

The formatting of your comment makes it hard to read, but I think you're asking if Wikipedia articles are copyrighted, if so who holds the copyright, and what you're allowed to do with articles.

The answers:

Wikipedia articles are copyrighted.
Copyright to the articles is held by the individual contributors. This copyright does not need to be stated explicitly; under United States law the simple act of fixing a work of creative effort into a tangible form (in this case, typing it into the edit box) establishes a copyright. The exact nature of this copyright and exactly who holds it in the case of a collectively-edited document like a wiki page hasn't been determined by the courts, but it still exists.
By clicking the "save page" button, a contributor agrees to license their contributions under the Gnu Free Documentation License. The details of this license are quite complicated, but for the purposes of using Wikipedia content on Wikipedia, the important part is to maintain the list of authorship. For a translation from Wikipedia in another language, this can be done by a note such as "Translated from the French Wikipedia article fr:Matière fécale (http://fr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mati%C3%A8re_f%C3%A9cale&oldid=10368554)" as the first edit summary.

I hope this helps. --Carnildo 01:44, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

To make point two more clear, the United States is considered the country where the material is published (although some countries may disagree, regardless most countries are under the Berne Copyright Convention and recognize copyright without an explicit statement.) Rmhermen 03:53, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the answers - and I'm sorry if my question is hard to read. I have one remaining unanswered question, and a couple of follow-up questions. The unanswered one is: Is an anonymous IP address or an alias user name in the history list legally valid author determinations? My guess (based on Rmhermen's answer) is that it would be a court or police matter to decide who really was the author, if the thing ever got legally tested.

First two follow-ups: If I understand your answers concerning what you call point two (the only important point here) correctly, you mean that an explicit copy notice is not necessary under present US law. This was clearly not the case in older days; so when did the law change, and what kind of copyright does material without explicit copyright notes default to? (My reason for asking: If we don't make valid specific copyright notes, perhaps this default is what the courts would find really holds for our material.)

Second follow-up: Is the GFDL 1.2 simply obsolete, in demanding an explicit line with year and author(s)?

Third follow-up: Can we use the GFDL 1.2 without complying with its specific demands for author specifications?

If the consensus opinion is Don't bother, we know what we mean, and hopefully it will never be tested by a court anyhow, then I'll drop this - but I'll also find any discussions on particular points a waste of time. On the other hand, a 'consensus' stating Don't bother, these things are too hard to understand for laymen I cannot accept, without some guarantee that the professionals do have looked into it, found solutions, - and that their rules are followed, not voted away by a majority of laymen. JoergenB 12:22, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Copyright notices (or registrations) have not been required in the U.S. since 1989. There is apparently no difference legally in having the notice or note. Having the material registered does allow a slight advantage in court. Rmhermen 14:16, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

By default, all rights are reserved. The copyright held by an anonymous individual is the same as one held by a known person except that the term of coverage is based of the date of publication rather than the date of death of the author. GFDL documents must have a notice declaring that fact, and be accompanied by information on the authors, but the form of that notice and how the authors are presented are not exactly spelled out. Wikipedia acts on the assumption that the declarion at the bottom of the page combined with the History page on each article is sufficient to satisfy the requirements of the GFDL, though whether or not this is so is a point that could be argued in court. Dragons flight 15:06, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Which license for attribution requirements?

Which copyright license would you guys recommend for an image if the main requirement is attribution (eg. the name of the original photographer)? The Free Software Foundation recommends the Free Art license over Creative Commons licenses, but I'm concerned about where the FAL states "DIRECTIONS FOR USE... if appropriate, specify the names of the previous authors or artists"[1]. This sounds like attribution is non-mandatory, unlike CC-by-sa which is explicit about attribution. I'm also not clear on how GFDL deals with attribution. With these licenses, should I / am I allowed to put in a note saying "you must attribute so-and-so"? Thanks. Shawnc 09:50, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

I believe CC-by-sa is considered a "free license" and it would certainly meet your (and our) needs. You can always add another license later. - Jmabel | Talk 02:54, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Fair use where the source is intentionally obscure

I've asked what I think is an important question over at Wikipedia talk:Fair use#Fair use where the source is intentionally obscure, and I'd appreciate anyone's input. – Quadell ^{(talk) (random)} 17:11, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Is translation of a public domain article public domain?

A user has copy-pasted to the Turkish Wikipedia an article from a commercial site written in Turkish, this text was a translation of an article in the English Wikipedia. Is this submission to the Turkish Wikipedia a copyright violation?--InfoCan 13:57, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

The article in the English Wikipedia was under the GNU FDL, not in the Public Domain. The translation was a derivative work of a GFDL text and would have to be licensed under the GFDL, too. Reintroducing the text into another Wikipedia should be okay then. – Things would be different if the original text was really in the Public Domain: the translation is copyrighted and owned by the translator. Rl 15:38, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Linking to copyrighted works

[edit] As contributory infringement

The sentence inquestion is knowingly and intentionally directing others to a site that violates copyright has been considered a form of contributory infringement in the United States (Intellectual Reserve v. Utah Lighthouse Ministry). Intellectual Reserve is a Utah federal district court case from 1999. This policy also is repeated at links normally to be avoided.

The example given (Intellectual Reserve v. Utah Lighthouse Ministry) is somewhat disingenious considering that in the USA, contributory infringement is almost never actionable with internet links. Otherwise the internet as we know it would cease to exist. I suggest you remove the Intellectual Reserve v. Utah Lighthouse Ministry reference since it is the extreme exception, not the rule. Whoever put it there, searched case law far and wide to find the one case that made their point. They ignored the thousands of cases that were laughed out of court. 71.139.23.245 07:47, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

As it says, knowingly and intentionally helping others violate copyright is illegal. The fact that it occurs through a hyperlink is irrelevant. Most links aren't actionable only because most links aren't intended to serve as willful infringment, but some are and we have to be mindful of that. Dragons flight 08:10, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

That is simply not a true statement under current US law. Stop spreading misinformation. 71.139.23.245 08:53, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
Stop spreading misinformation. — Matt Crypto 11:06, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

FYI, in Ticketmaster v. Tickets.com, 54 U.S.P.Q.2d 1344 (C.D. Cal. 2000), the court held that a link itself does not violate the Copyright Act, and in Online Policy Group v. Diebold, Inc., 337 F.Supp.2d 1195, 1202 n.12 (N.D. Cal. 2004) the court said "Hyperlinking per se does not constitute direct copyright infringement because there is no copying." Also note that in Intellectual Reserve, Inc. v. Utah Lighthouse Ministry, 75 F. Supp. 2d 1290 (D. Utah 1999) the court only found liabilty after the defendant was enjoined from itself posting the infringing copies directly, and replaced the material with links. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 67.188.38.151 (talk • contribs) 03:21, 13 November 2006.
The sentence knowingly and intentionally directing others to a site that violates copyright has been considered a form of contributory infringement in the United States (Intellectual Reserve v. Utah Lighthouse Ministry). is not true. In A & M Records, Inc. v. Napster, Inc., 114 F.Supp.2d 896, 920, (N.D.Cal., 2000), the court expressly found that Intellectual Reserve v. Utah Lighthouse Ministry held that posting links to infringing websites did not contribute to infringement by those websites' operators. Thus, I removed the Intellectual Reserve v. Utah Lighthouse Ministry citation and added a "citation needed" note.-- Jreferee 17:17, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

You are right they did not contribute to the infringment of the website operators (since they had already decided to infringe and were not connected to the defendants), but the court found they did contribute to the infringment of the people who followed those links and loaded the material they would not have had permission to access. Also, I think it is silly to add a citation needed note to the fact distributing copyright material sets us in a bad light. Dragons flight 17:36, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

User:Dragons flight I see that you have been giving this same legal advise to others for some time and I believe that you are being sincere. If your reading of Intellectual Reserve v. Utah Lighthouse Ministry is correct, then the present copyright policy is not sufficient. Based on your statement of the law from Intellectual Reserve v. Utah Lighthouse Ministry, I have added the following to the copyright policy:

Linking involves instructing another's browser to go to another Web site. Before considering using links in Wikipedia, editors should:

First attempt to obtain permission for linking outside of Wikipedia: By receiving prior approval from the linked site owner, editors may avoid a lot of potential contributory copyright infringement problems. Maintain a record of the permission--even if it is only a communication from you to the other website confirming that permission has been granted for the link.
Periodically visit all sites linked: Even if a linked site presently contains no copyright infringing material, it is possible that such information may be added in the future. By visiting the sites you link periodically, editors may ensure that the linked site owners have not changed content in a way that might be a problem.
In your article, include disclaimers for outside web site links: A website that is linked to will likely have rules different than Wikipedia regarding the site and may contain copyright infringing material under one or another law of a country. Because of the potential contributory copyright infringement problems, you may want to take the precaution both to warn those who may click on your link and disclaim any liability. When disclaiming liability for hypertext links, you may use a simple and direct message such as: "This article provides hypertext links to other websites only as a convenience. These links are not under the control of any of the editors of this article. The editors of this article are not responsible for any third-party materials accessed through any website linked in this article. The editors of this article expressly disclaim all liability with respect to actions taken or not taken based on any or all of the contents of any third-party sites."

-- Jreferee 00:21, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

This is a question which really needs to be discussed at Wikipedia talk:Disclaimers. Physchim62 (talk) 09:03, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] As shedding bad light on Wikipedia

The policy presently states that linking to a page that illegally distributes someone else's work sheds a bad light on us. I have added a "citation needed" note to that sentence.-- Jreferee 17:17, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

I don't like the "sheds a bad light" wording at all — for one thing, it's POV. It seems like an unnecessary sentence to include at all. Can we strike it? Schi 23:01, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Links to YouTube etc. copyvio videos

This is a similar to the original question about torrents that didn't get answered because it turned out to be moot. I had a look through the archives to see if this has come up before -- I'm sure it must have. At any rate, I couldn't find an on-point discussion, so pardon me if this is an oft-answered question: are links to copyright-violating material -- in this case copyrighted TV episodes uploade to YouTube -- excisable as copyvio? Is there a passage in a policy statement that addresses this directly? --Rrburke 20:58, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Try the external links policy. In general, linking to known or probable copyvio material is forbidden, as it can be considered contributory copyright infringement by the courts. --Carnildo 06:05, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Ridiculous statement of a non lawyer. Links are almost never actionable. 71.139.23.245 07:49, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Right or wrong, it doesn't much matter, as the key issue here is Wikipedia policy anyway. The external links policy does indeed, as Carnildo points out, prohibit such links.

Also, please accept a friendly reminder to be civil. --Rrburke 13:48, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

External links and in particular links normally to be avoided are Wikipedia guidlines, not policy.

[edit] French Ministry of Foreign Affairs

I tried asking this at Wikipedia talk:Free image resources, but apparently no one knows. According to Wikipedia:Free image resources, photos from Expositions - Ministère des Affaires étrangères online photography expositions "are free for any use, provided that they are tagged with the following sentence: "Ministère des Affaires étrangères - Service photographique."([French] Ministry of Foreign Affairs - Photographic Service)]". What is the appropriate copyright tag to put on these photos when they are uploaded? — BrianSmithson 22:41, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

{{French Foreign Ministry}} should do the trick! 193.251.1.172 08:30, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Magnifique! Merci beaucoup! — BrianSmithson 09:22, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Next step

After forwarding a consent receipt via email to permissions, how do I acknowledge the source using the Template:Confirmations template? I have received consent for Image:Seymour Knox I.jpg and Image:Seymour Knox III, II, and IV.jpg. TonyTheTiger 23:30, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Placing copyright on material copied from Wikipedia

I noticed that a commercial site in Turkey is harvesting articles from the Turkish language Wikipedia without attribution and backdating their pages to make it look like their version was written first. However their 'bot is incompetently written so some articles still have some Wikipedia code in them and, in one instance, the source of one article says "translated from the English language Wikipedia article ... dated July 2, 2006", while their date is February 22, 2005. The sites legal page states that all rights to the content of the site are reserved and may be used only for personal use. There is no mention of GFDL. What is the proper course of action? --InfoCan 19:03, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks#Non-compliance process --Francis Schonken 19:10, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Question

Suppose I contribute an article to Wikipedia (written entirely by me as of now). A friend wants to publish that in his blog. Does he attribute it to me or to wikipedia? -- Lost^(talk) 12:32, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

You, Wikipedia or both. That is, if you didn't need to invoke "fair use" or anything in that vein when you authored that article "entirely by yourself".

Note however that unless you also release the material written by you under a different license than exclusively GFDL, and/or via a medium different from Wikipedia, all the conditions of the GFDL license, as clarified in wikipedia:Copyrights, need to be followed.

If you contributed to Wikipedia as an anon, you might have trouble to demonstrate that you have the "right" to release that material with a different license. Conversely, when the material you contributed to Wikipedia is found outside Wikipedia without a free license that is compatible with GFDL, Wikipedia might have trouble establishing that there is no copyvio involved, and for that reason delete the material from Wikipedia.

(Assuming good faith, but for clarity:) note also that if you contributed unacceptable material that is permanently deleted from Wikipedia, it would be better not to implicate Wikipedia. --Francis Schonken 13:19, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Gender issue

In the section on Celebrity photographs, it writes:

Submissions from the celebrity himself or herself or a legal representative of the celebrity.

I think it should be changed to "herself or himself."

Stovetopcookies 00:50, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Outside assistance

I need some outside assistance and other editor opinions at Image talk:Corpus Christi, Texas flag.svg. There is a User:Durin who, I believe, is carrying copyright status verification to an extreme, wanting personal contact information and private phone numbers for city employees who have verified the copyright status of these flags. That, I believe, is taking things waaaay too far. For that matter, this user seems nice enough, but the project he has about policing fair use images has, in my personal opinion, gotten way out of control to the point that he appears to be stalking the every edit of certian editors, policing user pages for the slightest bit of copyright violation indications, and mass removing images from user pages and other locations. His justification is to enforce the policy and prevent lawsuits to Wikipedia- however some of the image sources (Republic of Turkey, Iraq, etc) probbaly have better things to do than file lawsits (which they would lose) against Wikipedia. I mean no offense to this person, it just seems that we should all remember the policy Wikipedia:Assume good faith. Anyway, extra comments on this flag issue would be welcome. -Husnock 04:39, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

I am not asking for personal information or private phone numbers. I am asking for a contact point to be able to independently verify copyright status if such is necessary. Wikipedia:Image_use_policy#Adding_images specifically states "Permission: Who or what law or policy gives permission to post on Wikipedia with the selected image copyright tag". Husnock has generically indicated the City of Corpus Christi. I believe this to be insufficient, as it requires a person who wishes to verify the status to contact a number of people before contacting the right person who can handle this request at the City of Corpus Christi. In this particular case, I am contacting the City Secretary of Corpus Christi to verify the copyright status of this image. That information is publicly posted ([2]) and is not a "private" number. In fact, quite a large set of numbers of multiple offices within the City of Corpus Christi are posted on their website. Thus, I find Husnock's claims that posting this information would expose them to harassment, stalking, etc. to be without basis.
- You should be aware that a great number of U.S. government websites are blocked to me as I am currently in the Middle East. My only option to confirm this image was to provide the e-mail I recieved which contained a full name, personal e-mail, and private office line of someone who researched this for me as a favor. I am sure they would not appreciate me posting thier name and number on the web. -Husnock 14:42, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
  - As noted, their information is already posted on the web. What we need is the title and name of the person who made the release, so we don't have to cast about within the city government trying to find the right person. --Durin 14:46, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
Further, I do not believe that the release that has been made is sufficient to our policies here. Quoting the release (posted at Image talk:Corpus Christi, Texas flag.svg), "With regards to using our city flag, our city does not place any restrictions on recreating our flag or hanging our flag in public places. There are also no royalty fees that you mentioned. Based on what you told me about the website you work for, there should be no problem with using the city flag in the way you described." This strikes me as a permission for use on Wikipedia type release. I believe this person needs to be contacted using the e-mail template located at Commons:Email templates, and clarify just what their release is. Husnock claims they are releasing it for any purpose, but it does not strike me as that. This is why it is important to have this contact information to help clarify situations like this.
- This gets back to my original point that there is a point where this can be taken to far. Any source or image can be beaten to death on this site to the point that someone will always think its not verifiable. I also have to wonder why I draw so much attention for posting simple flag images, an administrator on this site for several years, when there are those out there who really are committing copyright violations harmful to this site. -Husnock 14:42, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
  - Simple; any problem is a problem regardless of source. This is, from my view, a problem. I don't hold you in any higher regard than myself, and I don't hold myself in any higher regard than a first time user. Arguments that this isn't a problem because there are worse problems elsewhere are not particularly valid from my view. --Durin 14:46, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
Lastly, Husnock has used a tag that has been deprecated for more than half a year. The tag he has used is {{CopyrightedFreeUse}}. But, that tag has been replaced by {{No rights reserved}}. Husnock claims that it's ok to use {{CopyrightedFreeUse}} because the image is not a 'new' image, but the application of the tag is new. --Durin 14:18, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
- Actually, I was asking you to explain the difference between the two tags because another user, long ago, had mentioned that the "norightsreserved" was only for new images. I never said I thought that was true, I was asking if it was. -Husnock 14:23, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
  - Template_talk:CopyrightedFreeUse#This_template_should_be_deprecated is a possibly good place to start. --Durin 14:42, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
    - The CopyrightedFreeUse Template should never be used. It has been deprecated since february 2006 and will be deleted as soon as all transclusions are replaced. Kaldari 17:51, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

In the past e-mails with personal details removed (or changed) is allowed as copyright verfication. Durin you are taking this too far it almost seems like you have a grude against the user. Date of contact, name and position should be all that is required, you should be able to remove everything else. PPGMD 02:15, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Not at all. I believe Husnock asked for permission to use on Wikipedia, which is improper. I believe he did this in a number of cases, and I am using the flag of the City of Corpus Christi for a test case. I wanted to clarify the permissions that the city gave, and requested the contact information to followup. Husnock refused to provide this information...not even the name and position as you suggest he should give. Result; I've sent an e-mail to a potentially unrelated office requesting clarification; in effect I'm on a wild goose chase trying to clarify permissions he requested. There is no grudge here; I'm a strong advocate for adherence to copyright, and my track record shows this. Husnock is simply one of literally hundreds of users (possibly more than a thousand now) that I've come in contact with on copyright issues. Two days ago, I asked Husnock to clarify what exactly he asked for of these various agencies that hold copyrights to the 50+ images he has modified as a result of contact with these agencies. He has edited substantially since then, including creating and extensively editing a new article. My question remains unanswered. I've requested again that he answer the question. --Durin 05:49, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
- To clarify, I gave Durin the web address where he could contact the city. The reason I did not give the name and contact number of the employee was it was a friend of my late grandfather who had done me a favor. The only contact I had was a direct private office line number, her personal yahoo e-mail account address, and her real full name. This is why I would not post such things. Also, this section was meant to get the opinions of other editors, not for Durin, or I to further debate this. I suggest Durin and I cease edits here and let other editors take a look at the situation as a whole. A good solution would be apolicy page on displaying flags on a user page, since I started this contacting of the cities so I could totally free images of thier flags to display on my page without violating copyright or fair use laws. -Husnock 06:18, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
  - I don't think it unreasonable for us to state and clarify our positions. As to a policy page on the display of flags; this would create a special exception to our fair use policies and would potentially open the door to all sorts of exceptions. The fair use policy is written to be easy and clear to understand; if it's not free license, then it's under fair use...no exceptions (except in very rare cases...which to date have only been for the main page). City flags in the U.S. do not fall under any law that automatically places them under a free license. Contrast with state flags that do. So, if we create a special exception for city flags where there is no supporting law (which would violate law to begin with), where do we draw the line?
  - Also, this discussion started four days ago. Three days ago I posted a message about it at the far more active WP:AN. In that time, we've received input from three people. I doubt we're going to get much, if any, additional traffic. --Durin 14:33, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Incompatibility between WP:Copyrights and Wikipedia:Fair use criteria

Hello.

It looks like that the statement "In cases where no such images/sounds are currently available, then fair use images are acceptable (until such time as free images become available)", contained in WP:COPYRIGHTS is not compatible with WP:FUC "No free equivalent is available or could be created that would adequately give the same information".

Which of the two policies rules over the other?--Panarjedde 16:03, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

The statements appear to reflect a lack of consensus in the community that extends quite a bit farther :-/. Rl 16:14, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Yes they aren't compatible. In particular there are those that take could be created a bit too far. There are cases where fair us promotional images are deleted because they "could" be created by a free user. But the could would be very very rare, such as the case of a picture of a CMOS chip in a $3,000 professional camera. Yes we could create one, if I user wanted to take apart his expensive camera, but it's just not practical. Another would be a cut away image of the Lamborghini V-10 engine, yes it is possible to take a picture of a V-10 engine in the car, but the promotional image is much more encyclopedic because it shows the internals, something that is not practical for a Wikipedian to reproduce. PPGMD 19:43, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

I acknowledge that there is no consensus. But, for what is worth, I support the removal of fair use images that are replaceable, even when this is difficult to do so; after all, we are striving to produce a free encyclopedia, not a fair use one. If this rule means we will miss a picture of a CMOS chip in a $3,000 professional camera, or of a cut away Lamborghini V-10 engine, well, it is not such a big loss.

However, I see there is no consensus. So, what is people expected to do?--Panarjedde 23:06, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

We have plenty of fair use images, with exception of dead people, almost all the news images can be replaced under that reasoning. PPGMD 02:08, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

We need to try and bring thes policies into line. Any ideas please?--luke 15:54, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Role of Wikipedians

I'm not a fan of the directions in the section "If you find a copyright infringement". What are "rank-and-file Wikipedians", what is their "job", and why isn't it to be vigilant for copyright infringements? Who are the "others" that will examine the situation and take action if needed? Shouldn't we be encouraging all Wikipedians to, if they choose, be involved in the process? This language seems to discourage Wikipedians from contributing to a part of the project, and implies that only elites of some mysterious sort can substantively contribute in the copyright field. Schi 23:09, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Word(Art)

Can a title made with WordArt and then saved as a .jpg/.png be uploaded under GFDL? what about if it is trying to emulate the "Steely Dan" of this album (for a WikiProject)? NauticaShad e s 14:32, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Can we presume PD?

In Image:Lapanka zoliborz warszawa Polska 1941.jpg. All we know about the photo is that it was taken in occupied Poland 'secretly'. Author is unknown. It is logical to assume that the author was a member of Polish resistance, and wanted to disseminate the photo (for taking of which he risked his life) without any thoughts for the copyright; he might have died during the war and and in the 50 or so years afterwards. Can we assume public domain or do we have to stick with fair use?--_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk} 17:51, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Weirdly, it's not public domain. Clearly, it is an abandoned copyright. There are many proposals for laws that would put such an image in the public domain, but as far as I'm aware, they all remain merely proposals. It is clearly fair use in the legal sense. I would hope that Wikipedia has the good sense to consider it acceptable fair use under our policies. - Jmabel | Talk 20:46, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

to be copyright it had to follow the copyright rules in 1940s --for USA, it had to be registered at US Copyright Office. That was not done so it was never under US copyright, then or now, I believe. Rjensen 20:50, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

I think (but am far from sure) that that only apply to stuff first published in the US itself. Unless it as PD in Poland itself before a scertain date (wich escape me at the moment) I think the usual life +70 (or if author is not known 120 years from creation or 95 years from publication (wichever is shorter)) rule apply. --Sherool (talk) 09:59, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Article Subbmission?

--- I want to make an article about TD (Tails Doll). My favorite SOnic the Hedgehog character. Someone made an n article, but it only gave the out-side gaming info, it was like two centimters long! I was woundering if it wouls still be okay to write and article, as long as it gave true info and was longer than that one? (Of corse.)

[edit] User:Tubezone

I'm being harrassed by this user because I'm not an admin and suggested that he needs to provide evidence that the creator of Image:Brpkmap.jpg and other similar images gave permission to license them appropriately. Can someone help? Was I too hard on him? Does he need more evidence? Thank you. --NE2 06:51, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

As far as I can see, you're not being harrassed. The two of you are simply disagreeing. If Tubezone has Bill Gustason's permission to upload said image, he should forward the e-mail to permissions AT wikimedia DOT org. However, the cut-off text in the lower left corner makes me think that it is actually a scan from some book, and unless Gustason were the author of that book and indeed drew the sketch himself, he isn't the copyright holder and thus his permission would be useless. Also, Tubezone should understand that also non-admins are entitled to care about image copyrights. Lupo 08:57, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Actually I don't think it's a scan from a book, but an edited screenshot from a mapping program. That would make it unfree. --NE2 09:03, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Pardon me, but I'm not the one that brought up the copyvio issue. These images have been on WP for months. If you look at User:NE2 edits, he pulled my images practically out of a hat to target, and I still don't know why. Here's the text of what I put on NE2's talk page:

When I uploaded the image, the CopyrightedFreeUseProvidedThat|restrictions tag was not offered on the upload page as an option. GFDL seemed to be the proper category. There are a few other points and questions I want to bring up here.1. Except in cases of obvious vandalism, it's at least polite to put a warning on the author's talk page when you tag his contributions for deletion. 2. Putting comments on my talk page that I might be a liar is a personal attack that is prohibited by policy. See WP:NPA. 3. Looking at your contributions for today, my images.. (some of which have nothing to do with roads or railroads at all, and you had no reason to presume to have copyright problems) are the only images you bothered with at all. Any reason for that? 4. You are not an admin, and do not have user authority to rule on copyright issues. So I am going to restore the CopyrightedFreeUseProvidedThat tag on the images Bill Gustason gave permission to upload. If you do not agree you can take it to IfD and we'll let the admins decide. 5. The other images are from Mexican tourism authorities. I don't think I'll have a problem either getting permission or a legal ruling that as Mexican government issue, they're available for free use. Tubezone 06:14, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Really, does this qualify as harrassment? When these deletion notices turned up on my watchlist, I assumed a bot or admin had done it, and it had admin authority to tag them, like User:OrphanBot. As it is, NE2 had no reason to even bother them. I do not question that he has a right to bring up copyright issues, my point is that he's targeting my contributions without a good reason to do so. NE2 did not post a warning tag on my talk page, nor point out to me that he's not an admin, rather, he tagged these images without any comment to me and, it seems, assumed I would take the tagging as that of an admin or bot and respond likewise. NE2 is neither admin nor authorized bot, and I have a right as an editor to pull his deletion tags and replace with valid use copyright tags, if the ones NE2 put on aren't valid.

I am still puzzled as to why my images are being targeted by NE2, or why anything I've written so far would even in the mildest sense be considered harrassment.

However, the cut-off text in the lower left corner makes me think that it is actually a scan from some book This has been shrunk and fiddled with numerous times, but if it's really a problem, I'll just scribble up a diagram myself. IMA, I can get probably better pix of Brighton Park Junction off Trainweb, or just walk down there and take a freaking picture myself. I still want to know what NE2's problem is with me. Tubezone 10:14, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

I was looking at articles and saw a map that I had seen before. I went to the image description page and the information was incomplete. Thus I checked through all your images and found a few more with incomplete information. --NE2 12:40, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

If you'd just left me a note that you thought that map was out of a book, I would have fixed it, since it apparently IS out of a book (I had no idea, since I didn't make it originally) I will replace it. I would ask in the future that you assume good faith on my part. Tubezone 18:56, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Regarding my recent edit to the fair use section

I believe this is the correct interpretation, this old paragraph that said that fair use was acceptable as long as no free licensed work was available is clearly out of step with the more recent changes to WP:FAIR wich I should take presidence on fair use matters. See also Wikipedia talk:Fair use#how to bring WP:FUC and WP:C into line?. Hopefully this will cut down on the confution about wether or not applying the {{subst:rfu}} tag to images is within policy or not. --Sherool (talk) 16:31, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

No good to make such a significant change without allowing for discussion first. You seem to have made the change, then posted to "discussion." Please undo the edit, then we'll discuss the change here. Thanks. Badagnani 06:10, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

It's been debated plenty see archives of WT:FAIR, mailing list archives, policy vilage pump archices, the talk page of publicity photots essay, Wikiproject fair use talk page , various RFC's etc and naturaly the speedy deletion criterea to enforce it... Fair use policy is detailed on WP:FUC not here, I just fixed the inconsistency between the two that was most likely a caused by a simple oversight in the first place. --Sherool (talk) 07:43, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Hi, Maybe you missed the call for a discussion here, but I had asked for it deliberately after seeing JW's intervention elsewhere in an ongoing RfC in which the longstanding policy figured prominently: We need to try and bring thes policies into line. Any ideas please?. That was most certainly NOT intended to provoke a unilateral change in one of the most important policy pages on the encyclopedia. The meaning of my question is plain...you have pre-empted discussions elsewhere also. This is surely not right. I hope to be able to raise this elsewhere, but in the meantime this was an unfortunate edit. Please reflect on your actions. ...luke 08:31, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

As I was trying to point out there have been pleny of disucssion. Not spesificaly here, true, but only because it obviously makes more sense to debate fair use related policy changes on the talk page of the fair use policy. Do you rely think we need to repeat the whole debate just to fix the inconsistency between the two now that the fair use policy have been changed and speedy deletion criterea to enforce it have been added? WP:FUC is unlikely to be overturned any time soon, both Jimbo and Danny seem to favour the current version and the foundation do tend to take a more active part in the forging of copyright related policies than most of the other (for obvious reasons). I'm not trying to kill furter debate on the issue, but as long as WP:FUC is as it is I think it's simply a matter of common sense to keep the policy pages internaly consistent in order to minimise confusion, and like it or not WP:FUC describe how things are corrently working... --Sherool (talk) 09:41, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "If you find copyright Image"

Can people just change language of this policy without a disscussion? User:Alex_Bakharev carfully changed language (see comparison here) which nullifies a point I have presented in talks going on right now regarding various users systamaticly tagging fair use images which are in need of justification. Hackajar 05:41, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

FYI that language I refer to was first seen July 31, 2006 Hackajar 05:48, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

The phrase is right if understood in the correct context. It was meant as a friendly introduction, and rarely are friendly introductions wanted in policy that is left to be interpreted, as seen here. Obviously it wasn't ever intended to forbid someone from performing cleanup operations. (Note: I still agree with you on the fair use thing; we should be able to use promophotos under fair use, but this didn't really make a good argument. Nice try though.)--Jeff 06:27, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Ask for advice

For the article "Nord Stream" and for some bio articles I would like to use some images from the Nord Stream AG image gallery. All this images are protected by following copyright notice: "The content and design of the Web site is subject to copyright. Pages and contents may only be duplicated with the prior agreement of Nord Stream AG, unless the duplication is of a nature which does not need consent, in accordance with legal stipulations." How to understand this part of "unless the duplication is of a nature which does not need consent, in accordance with legal stipulations"? Does that mean that for using in Wikipedia the prior agreement is needed or not? Thank you in advance. Beagel 08:44, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] A question about referencing radio interviews

Hi, is it allowable to reference radio interviews? If so, is it allowable to upload a radio interview into a free hosting website, and use that as the reference? User:GuardianZ uploaded a radio interview into the free hosting website GoEar.com, [3] and used that as a reference in the Midnight Syndicate article. Let me know if this violates the copyright policy. Dionyseus 19:12, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

It is no different that linking to any other website that hosts an interview or podcast or movie info such as IMDB. Since the editors arguing the reference do not like that it was originally hosted at a website that the editors did not like due to it's other content, I requested permission from the owner/subject to host it on a non-affiliated site. I uploaded it directly from [4] to the new site HERE which contains no pop-ups or subscription fees. It plays automatically and it streamed via Flash, not downloaded to one's hardrive. I have used the site before for other projects and it is a good site. The ONLY reason that Dionyseus doesn't like it is because it disputes some of the propaganda that he and Skinny McGee are trying to get away with adding to the article in question. There are no copyright issues involved. The radio interview was broadcast live and the subject of that interview has made the recording of that broadcast including station ID publically available. GuardianZ 20:43, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Let's let those who know about these policies make a decision. As for the reason, I want to make sure we're not infringing on copyrights. Dionyseus 22:54, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Boomp3.com

I just found links in a couple of articles (Amelia Earhart and Joseph McCarthy to http://boomp3.com/, a site that allows anyone to upload audio recordings. While the site does display the message "Please do not upload copyrighed files", I suspect that not everybody pays attention to it. We need to watch this site to see if it will cause any copyvio problems. -- Donald Albury 23:43, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Changed shortcut?

The shortcut used to be WP:C, but it was just changed to WP:CR, along with many changes to other pages using that shortcut. Why was this done? This seems like a big change to happen with no discussion beforehand. --Milo H Minderbinder 18:16, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Unavoidable breach of copyright on talk page of controversial articles?

Some articles are so hotly disputed that no addition will be provided unless long excerpts are posted on the talk page to ensure that nothing is misparaphrased or misquoted. When this involves excerpts from another encyclopedia then I think this is a copyright infringement. But I think this is unavoidable or at least I do not know how to avoid it. I intend to do it again to enable me to use other encyclopedias as a source. See here for an example. [5] Andries 21:22, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Author's publication of text on WP and elsewhere

Here's the situation: an expert in a certain field has written and published a text elsewhere (on the web and in a book); (the copyright license is not explicated elsewhere, but it isn't explicated as GFDL(-compatible) either) Few years later, he decided to contribute the text in question to Wikipedia, and performs more-or-less a copy&paste of it. I can verify his identity (and I know him more-or-less personally). Is the situation considered a copyvio? If yes, whose rights are violated? If not, does it imply that the wikipedia's copy is free to reuse, while the other one is not? Duja► 10:28, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

The copyright on his texts originally was his. If he didn't grant the publisher an exclusive license to publish his texts, and if he didn't transfer (parts of) his copyrights to the publisher, he is still free to re-publish his texts here or elsewhere under whatever license he chooses. If he re-publishes here under the GFDL, he is still free to publish it also at yet other places; the GFDL is a non-exclusive license. IANAL and all that. Lupo 10:56, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../c/o/p/Wikipedia_talk%7ECopyrights_c69a.html"