Wikipedia talk:Copyrights and Warranty Disclaimers (proposal)

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[edit] Licensing

PS: while for once in a while the topics treated below are not about what can go "in" Wikipedia exclusively, but on other important topics that relate to copyright too, I copy-paste this to: Wikipedia talk:Copyrights and Warranty Disclaimers (proposal), and propose to continue the discussion there. --Francis Schonken 15:53, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Do I misunderstand the GFDL? I thought that the GFDL requires attribution to the author(s). Afaik, Wikipedia caters for this by having the history function. However, are not all copy&paste edits (copy from one article and paste in another) violations if the original author/article is not mentioned? Also, I've come across a number of images stating from German Wikipedia as source. This is probably true, but should there not be a link (and credit to the contributor), too?

I there a project working on image licensing? (tough on images ;-) I mean making sure images are tagged accordingly or removed? (BTW, what do you think about this source: Image:Michel-foucault.jpg?)

Summa summarum, should we not take licensing a bit more serious? Kokiri 21:25, 20 Aug 2004 (UTC)

This is a matter of some concern to me also. The issue of other encyclopaedias "grabbing" WP content is also pertinant. They shouldn't be allowed - WP "knows" who its contributors are, and has histories, these others do not. Bah! People getting confused between "copyleft" and "copyabsent". Sue them all I say :o) zoney ███ talk 00:47, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

If they link to the wikipedia article, the edit history there. So no problem. As for images - I do think people should put a link in to the image description page on the other wiki [[User:Theresa knott|]] 01:12, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Yes, we should advertise this to make wikipedians more aware of the need of attribution. It is therefore also important to remember to use the edit summary to attribute to someone else when copy-pasting, for example by writing "merged from Wikipedia:Village tap" when doing a merge, using the links-in-summary feature. [[User:Sverdrup|❝Sverdrup❞]] 17:27, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The history information isn't exported in the cur dump, so it's really hard to get the information without downloading and parsing a multi-gig file. If Wikipedia wants individual authors credited, they should make this information more readily available. anthony (see warning) 00:28, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)

It does look like copying and pasting anything that is not solely one author's contribution is against the GFDL. If you export the history that should be fine, and you don't need to link to wikipedia, likewise manually attributing to the authors in the history would be ok. If, however, you copied a chunk of text from one article to another within Wikipedia, and failed to attribute it to it's author (or its constituent parts to the relevant authors) that would be a violation.

(--Francis Schonken 21:51, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC):) I just re-read the opening paragraph of Wikipedia:copyrights, and found this as the third sentence:

Wikipedia content can be copied, modified, and redistributed so long as the new version grants the same freedoms to others and acknowledges the authors of the Wikipedia article used (a direct link back to the article satisfies our author credit requirement)

I want to focus on the last part of this sentence (the part I put in bold), because I have some questions about it (and this is the only discussion I found that relates to some of these questions I have myself):

1. It's not only about author credit, but also about wikipedia contributors/authors being copyright holders, in the sense of how GFDL becomes "legal" by using copyright law and its terminology, am I right?
2. Presently, the wikipedia:copyrights page gives clear instructions regarding what people have to do when they want to use content from wikipedia articles. As a GFDL requirement, and for whatever just reason that is imaginable, these same people ought to be able to find back any author that contributed to the article (unless the author deliberately obfuscated his name by using an intracable nick, or a TCP-IP number that happens to be non-traceable). From the examples given above, and from personal experience that includes some more "cases" than what is mentioned above in this section, this seems not always to be possible: what can be done about that? Anyway, I'm willing to put my energy in this when someone has clues how this issue can be tackled!
3. Presently it is Wikipedia policy that someone wanting to re-use wikipedia content only has to mention "Wikipedia" as source (besides all other obligations following from GFDL). Being a fervent wikipedian myself, I can nonetheless only agree with no individual authors needing to be mentioned (which they should if GFDL is applied in all its severity), when the list of authors of that content is only one (or maximum two, say in extremis three) clicks away when opening the wikipedia URL that is prescribed for the copyright notice in that derived work and if wikipedia web-usability is such that people with few Wikipedia experience immediately find where to click to find that list. Presently this appears to be all but true. What I propose is that a section "Copyright holders" would be added to the Wikipedia:copyrights page that in brief, but unambiguously clear & understandable terms, explains how lists of contributors can be retrieved. Is it OK that I start writing such paragraph on that page?
4. Is there a list of all Wikipedia contributors? Maybe there is, but I didn't find it yet? Can someone help me on this one?