Talk:Eau Claire City Council

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1 Copyvio
- 1.1 I am looking into this
  - 1.1.1 The following comments were moved from Eau Claire City Council/Temp To Here, Where They Probably Belong
2 I decided to just re-write the whole thing, but I'm still unsure about the Copyright Issue
3 Copyright problems
4 aldermatic districts

[edit] Copyvio

This is clearly information from a government website and there is no possibility of copyright problems, unless I am mistaken, of course. "Works produced by employees of the United States federal government in the scope of their employment are public domain by statute." That quotation was from the Copyright page. Micah 08:52, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

See User talk:EdwinHJ#Eau Claire City Council. Brianjd 08:43, 2004 Dec 9 (UTC)

Works of the United States federal government are in the public domain. Works created by local and state governments within the United States can and often are copyrighted. It's odd, but that's how it works. Gamaliel 09:10, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

CAN BE, but very rarely. Most states clearly make their publications public domain in statue, except for some products of state universities. Edwin 09:19, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

True, but in the United States the default is that something is copyrighted unless specifically placed in the public domain, either by statute, as you stated, or by the creator renouncing copyright. Until we have definite proof that this page is in the public domain, please do not restore the article. Gamaliel 09:27, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] I am looking into this

I'm waiting for a call back from the Eau Claire Legal Office about this. The librarian I talked to was 95% sure that in Wisconsin only the University of Wisconsin system had the power to copyright things, and even then, they have to explicitly state it on the material. I have been looking through Wisconsin statutes, but since I'm not a lawyer, I don't know exactly how to interpret what I've found, but I will have an answer by tomorrow hopefully. Micah 05:39, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Your reading of the law is right, only the University of Wisconsin system and the Board of Education have the power to copyright. Edwin 05:47, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] The following comments were moved from Eau Claire City Council/Temp To Here, Where They Probably Belong

I fail to see the problem, this is a government web site in the State of Wisconsin, and it is not subject to copyright. It is in the public domain, the information on it is public information. Please let me know if using information of images from US Government websites causes problems, because I really do not think it does. Micah 23:15, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Information from U.S. federal government websites is public domain. Other units of government are not. Only California among the states is. Rmhermen 00:50, Dec 10, 2004 (UTC)

Rewrite article at: Eau Claire City Council/Temp
Perhaps my English is not that good, but I didn't know that meant putting discussion here. We have a discussion page for that. Brianjd 07:47, 2004 Dec 24 (UTC)

[edit] I decided to just re-write the whole thing, but I'm still unsure about the Copyright Issue

While I am still unsure about if because this was on the City of Eau Claire's website, that it is a matter of public record. While I did ask permission to use the information that I copied from the site, and it was granted, they were unable to tell me what the general rule is for government pages within Wisconsin.

Hope this resolves this issue, but I really would like to know exactly how fair use/public record/public domain plays into local governement sites.

Micah 00:28, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Please do not edit this page for the moment, even if you are rewriting it

Are you exempt from this? Brianjd 06:36, 2004 Dec 29 (UTC)

Sorry about that; should I revert it to the copyright statement? I'm not really sure how these things are resolved outside of removing any potential problems (which I did, I hope, by re-writing the article). I'll just keep my hands free of it from now on until it is resolved. Thanks MicahMN | Talk 23:53, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Copyright problems

Moved from Wikipedia:Copyright problems:

Eau Claire City Council from [1] Brianjd 08:35, 2004 Dec 9 (UTC)

These seem to be public records of a city government. Are they copyrightable? --Gene s 08:45, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

They are not under copyright, they are in the public domain Micah 23:18, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

The discussion at /Talk is quite interesting; it seems possible that (almost) all Wisconsin government documents are PD, in which case this should be recorded somewhere (Wikipedia:Public domain resources?) to guide (a) future WP:CP cases and (b) provide Wikipedians with a source of PD materials. Having said that, wisconsin.gov has a copyright policy which implies that they do have copyright. --rbrwr ^± 17:30, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

After looking at the Wisconsin Copyright page, it says that "The fair use guidelines of the U.S. copyright statutes apply to all material on theWisconsin.gov and linked agency Webpages." Then it says "For copy or use of information on the State of Wisconsin website that is outside of the fair use provisions of copyright law, please seek permission from the individual listed as responsible for the page." Isn't Wikipedia using this for fair use? Micah 23:55, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Maybe so, but Fair use is not the same as public domain. If you want to assert fair use, go ahead. I would still like to know whether it really is PD, because it makes a difference to future copyvio cases. --rbrwr ^± 19:48, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

End moved text

As the article was rewritten, I'm just leaving it as-is. I'd merge the /Temp page's history into it, but the damned block-compressed revisions error is preventing that. -- Cyrius|✎ 03:56, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)