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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Kzollman (talk | contribs) at 19:16, 16 November 2005 (→Image contributions of [[User:Jbc01]]). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Archives: Archive 1 | Archive 2 | Archive 3 | Archive 4
Related Discussions: Copyright Violations on Page Histories

Recent archival

I've archived the previous discussions after 3 days of inactivity. Please feel free to reinstate any threads if necessary. --HappyCamper 15:08, 9 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Izumo Province and possible copyvio

I have a suspicion that the last two sections of this article are from some sort of copyrighted material for the following reasons:

  • use of "we"
  • rhetorical questions
  • text for nonexistence, copyrighted images (removed in later edits)
  • paranthetical documentation for unreferenced texts
  • reads like a textbook ("[...] its shrine stands serenely beneath the silent trees.")

I'm certain that the first two paragraphs, as well as the image, are fine, which is why I didn't place a copyvio tag on the article. That, and I don't have solid proof that it is indeed a copyright violation, only a strong suspicion.

-Nameneko 07:44, 10 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I've confirmed that this is the case for the last section - it was copied from http://izumo-province.com.iqnaut.net, removing the infringing text, and will try to check the other section now. Rob Church Talk | FAD 08:34, 10 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
That was indeed the case. Removed. Rob Church Talk | FAD 08:34, 10 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
iqnaut is a mirror of Wikipedia. See Wikipedia:Mirrors_and_forks/Ghi#iqnaut.net & Wikipedia:GFDL_Compliance#High. --Zigger «º» 14:20, 13 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Proposed refactor

This page is an absolute mess. I appreciate there's an enormous backlog, but this rather disorganised and confused layout will not facilitate cleaning that up. I was going to do some heavy refactoring on the page, then I realised that there are at least two - and possibly more - bots running maintenance on this page, so I'm loathe to go changing it.

What I would like to see is a clear, linear procedure set out for dealing with copyright infringement; putting newer discussion at the top, and older discussion (which administrators need to clean up) at the bottom of the page. Clear instructions for dealing with copyright infringement ought to be at the top, and we should direct users to the other avenues for deletion, such as the new speedy criteria for blatant infringement. In addition, it might be an excellent idea to have a notice directing content owners to the page for requests for immediate takedown, as they might stumble upon this page.

Thoughts and comments welcome. We've got to do something about this. Rob Church Talk | FAD 08:31, 10 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Well, there are already instructions on the page for both articles and images, in the yellow/orange table. You can move that around as you please. The pink box right at the top of the page talks pretty clearly about the new speedy. The process isn't linear, because you could have either an image or an article, and articles should be reverted as a first preference rather than blanked and eventually deleted.
The instructions to admins are linked to from the introductory sections too in#Clearing copyvios, and are in Wikipedia:Copyright problems/Advice for admins. We get very little, if anything, come here that belongs in another process, but the other deletion processes are linked to in the 'deletion process' toolbar down the right hand side. The {{copyvio}} tag currently takes you directly to the daily subpage you need to list your new listing on, so people following the link from there will bypass the main page altogether. The page for immediate removal is linked to in the 3rd sentence of the introduction. I don't think there's quite as much missing as you say there is, but it could perhaps be better laid out. The 'bots don't touch the /Header subpage, so you can refactor that at will, as long as you don't change process. We don't get many (any?) complaints about it being hard to work out how to use the page, though.
Rearranging the order of the days is not a problem, and would make it fit the style of other listing pages. This ought probably to be done, with a note dropped to Uncle G telling him of the change in advance.
Also, the backlog isn't as bad as it looks — at present it is about 5 days; about the same size as AfD. The "claims permission" section is lengthy, however, (but it doesn't take an admin to clear that). The best thing to do with that might be to reduce it to a wikilink to the subpage rather than an outright transclusion, but sometimes owners do come along to post things. -Splashtalk 11:25, 10 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

This has been discussed here, but there was no conclusion or consensus. "Commercial content provider" is being interpreted in two very different ways. Some are including commercial sites of any kind and others think that it is only for sites that are selling the content itself. I'd prefer the former (plus non-commercial sites when permission is not asserted), but I think the latter is what people agreed to. -- Kjkolb 08:43, 11 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

It was clear in the discussions that framed this CSD that by "commercial content provider" was meant soemone directly making money off the content. had we thoguh people could have mis--read this as "commercial site" the wording would have been made more explicit. The reason was simple. That was the only class of site where it was thought 100% certian that a GFDL release would never be given. If any other class of site is similarly assured, please suggest a change of wording on Wikipedia Talk:Criteria for speedy deletion or the current thread on this on the village pump (Policy) at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#New CSD for blatent copyvios issues. DES (talk) 19:05, 17 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Counter Copyvio Unit

I'm planning to start a Counter Copyvio Unit as I'm involved in keeping copyrighted materials away from Wikipedia. Any thoughts or suggestions on this. I may or maynot be a member myself (I hate memberships) but I think someone like me who finds that blatant copyvios are emanating from one anon user or in an article for a time period would make use of the unit to do the job. Many might find the violations but might not have time immediately to curb/report it and in the meanwhile other editors might edit it making it a waste of energy for the genuine contributors. Thus the idea. I've posted a similar message on the Counter Vandalism Unit talk page. Tx Idleguy 11:32, 18 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I find this idea interesting as I myself have contributed later and wasted my time and efforts in creating articles that have been copyvios right from the start. I endorse the idea. --Gurubrahma 13:41, 18 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
There is an Association of Copyright Violation Hunting Wikipedians; perhaps you were looking for that. --Idont Havaname 03:08, 13 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Problems with instructions: not all copyvios have a corresponding URL

The instructions on Wikipedia:Copyright problems for using the {{copyvio}} tag are inappropriate, as they presuppose that all copyright violations are taken from Internet resources. That is, the instructions "Blank the page and replace the text with {{copyvio|url=insert URL here}} ~~~~" are impossible to follow if the copying has been done from a book, print magazine, or other offline source. Could someone familiar with the copyvio process please amend these instructions to cover such cases? Psychonaut 06:52, 19 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I just use '''what it's from''' where the url would go. -- Kjkolb 08:55, 19 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Yes this comes up quite often. I have added a small sentence about this case. Justinc 10:27, 19 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

History deletions

Hi all - I'm interested in helping out with the backlog here. I've run across the same thing twice now, and I'm not sure what to do about it. In some cases, people will simply remove the copyvio tag and write a new (non-copyvio) version of the article. This leaves the copyvio in the history. I know that in the instructions you suggest deleting new versions of the article that are copyvio when restoring it to the old version. But this is a sightly different case. Should we delete the old versions of the article when the current one is not copyvio too? --best, kevin ···Kzollman | Talk··· 15:28, 21 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Personally, I delete the earlier copyvio revisions, too. In fact, the instructions are backwards. The instructions on the front page are the ones that are commonly followed: if it is possible to revert to a non-copyvio revision, do so. If that isn't possible, delete the copyvio revisions, however many of them there are. This catches both those articles that are copyvios from the start, and those that are rewritten in place. If the copyvio is in the middle of the history, it's usually hard to delete those revisions without mangling the attribution for later, derivative edits. It is often necessary to do a big revert to before the infringing material appeared in the first place. I'll fix the instructions later. -Splashtalk 15:38, 21 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, I dont know much about wikipedia, but did this statment, added on go through much debate:

Note: In general, copyright exists automatically, upon publication: an author does not need to apply for or even claim copyright for a copyright to exist. Only an explicit statement that the material is public domain or available under the GFDL makes material useable, unless it is inherently free of copyright due to its age or source.

This statment completly ignores fair use, which is a legal use of copyright.

Date the stament was added: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Copyright_problems&oldid=23313193

Old Statment/layout: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Copyright_problems&oldid=23312172

Comparisons between the two: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Copyright_problems&diff=23313193&oldid=23312172 Travb 01:34, 26 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

So? They are two separate issues. Fair use is the same both for copyrighted stuff with the © symbol and copyrighted stuff without it. The point of this paragraph is to remind people not to attribute a magic, talismanic status to the © symbol; it's got nothing to do with fair use.
Now maybe the page as a whole doesn't cover fair use as much as you want it to; but I don't see what it has to do with that specific ¶. Doops | talk 03:42, 26 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Process

Could someone explain the process that goes on here more clearly? I've marked a lot of copyvios, but I still don't quite understand what happens next. I guess the first step after listing would be to determine if it is really a copyright violation. If it is, is it just left on the page until seven days have passed, unless someone bothers to provide evidence that it isn't or gets permission? If that's the case, then why is there a backlog? Does the deleting administrator try to get permission if nobody else has tried or is that left to the uploader and other users? Do you try to get permission for bad articles?

Also, if a copyvio is identified after a terrible article has been put on Articles for Deletion, should the voting stop, especially in those cases where there's a good chance the author will give permission for it to be used? Thanks -- Kjkolb 10:42, 22 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

See Wikipedia:Copyright problems/Advice for admins. Nothing much at all happens for 7 days, unless someone wants to challenge the copyvio status, in which case they usually either post a message here or on the article's talk page. Once 7 days are up, it's a matter mainly of checking that the article is in fact a copypaste, that the site isn't a Wikimirror, that it doesn't release into the PD or under the GFDL, and deleting. We (I) do not try to get permission if none has been asserted somewhere. There's not much point continuning and AfD debate on a copyvio since it'll be deleted regardless (without proof of permission). If the article is rewritten on the /Temp subpage, then clearly the debate can continue. The reason there's a backlog is just because not many admins give this page much attention. {{sofixit}}. I personally will only work here when the Wiki is quick, because it means opening several pages (article, history, talk, revision before copyvio tag) and that can take ages if things are slow, and that's before you wait for the deletion confirm screen and the actualy deletion. -Splashtalk 16:14, 22 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I'd like to respectfully disagree with Splash about the AfD thing. Here's why. There are several pages I've dealt with in the last few days that are terrible; they will almost certainly be deleted on AfD. They were discovered as copyvio and listed here, but now the author claims permission. Now, I have to go track down permission (send emails, etc.) in order to get permission for an article that, I expect, will get deleted on an AfD as soon as it comes back to life. Not only is this a hassle for me, but I think its a bit embarrassing. We send them an email, indicating that we would like to use their content and would they please give us permission and then as soon as they do we delete the page. I would recommend that in cases where there seems any chance that the author will give permission, the AfD process continue. I know its a hassle for AfD folks, but it saves us some trouble in the long run. --best, kevin ···Kzollman | Talk··· 01:31, 25 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Always look at the article before when there's a claim of permission before sending an email for confirmation. If it's something that wouldn't survive afd (or it was already listed there), either start a new afd discussion (or continue the old one). —Cryptic (talk) 01:12, 26 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I could {{sofixit}} if I was an admin. Thanks everybody. -- Kjkolb 12:31, 27 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Royal Gibraltar Police

Could regulars please comment on Royal Gibraltar Police? There is a dispute - and general antipathy - between two editors (Gibraltarian (talk · contribs) and Ecemaml (talk · contribs)) there over an alleged copyright violation. It would best be resolved quickly to prevent the dispute escalating. It appears to me to be copy-vio, and the article was once speedily deleted as such, but I would like others more knowledgeable in copyright laws to comment. --Cyberjunkie | Talk 15:04, 23 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]


IMDB cut and paste

The article Michael Bell appears to be a straight cut-and-paste, of an IMDB page, complete with its headers:

  • 1 Date of birth
  • 2 Sometimes Credited As:
  • 3 Actor - filmography
  • 4 Miscellaneous Crew - filmography
  • 5 Himself - filmography
  • 6 Notable TV Guest Appearances
  • 7 External links

Is this considered a copyright violation, or just extreme laziness? --Calton | Talk 05:15, 26 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Yes to both. DreamGuy 07:17, 26 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, since the wikifying seems to be mostly minor edits it would probably even qualify for speedy deletion under the new WP:CSD#A8. --Sherool 07:32, 26 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Scratch that, it's older than 48 hours, I listed it as a "regular" copyvio instead. --Sherool 07:46, 26 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Fair Use policy (moved from Jimbo's talk page)

  • "Wikipedia goal is to create a free, democratic, reliable encyclopedia—actually, the largest encyclopedia in history, in terms of both breadth and depth. This is an ambitious goal, and will probably take many years to achieve!"--[1]
  • "Finally, we should never forget as a community that we are the vanguard of a knowledge revolution that will transform the world. We are the leading edge innovators and leaders of what is becoming a global movement to free knowledge from proprietary constraints. 100 years from now, the idea of a proprietary textbook or encyclopedia will sound as quaint and remote as we now think of the use of leeches in medical science." ---Free Knowledge requires Free Software and Free File Formats
  • "Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing." -Jimmy Wales, July 2004[2]
  • "Wikipedia is first and foremost an effort to create and distribute a free encyclopedia of the highest possible quality to every single person on the planet in their own language. Asking whether the community comes before or after this goal is really asking the wrong question: the entire purpose of the community is precisely this goal." -- Wikipedia-l mailing list, March 8, 2005[3]
"Fair use (and the narrower fair dealing) is an important freedom from abuse by copyright holders. It is good to see a decision which supports it." [4]

Hello Mr. Wales, I am a newbie to wikipedia, just about a month. I want to thank you so much for your invention.

I have spend days trying to figure out the official policy of wikipedia on "fair use" of text.

I am interested in what the policy is on "Fair use Text"--there has been a lot of arguments about fair use of images, but I can't find your/wikipedia's stand exactly on text. The Wikipedia:Copyright problems page as it is currently written is very anti-fair use.

On 29 September 2005 Mwanner had added a Copyright sentence which still stands, that stated in bold type:

Only an explicit statement that the material is public domain or available under the GFDL makes material useable, unless it is inherently free of copyright due to its age or source.

(I originally incorrectly said Splash was the author,not Mwanner. For this I apologize)

To my knowledge (and I may be wrong), before this sentence was posted, no lawyer was consulted, no study of previous Case law precedence on free use and copyright was studied, and even at a minimum, there wasn't even any wikipublic debate about this sentence and its ramifications for wikipedia. This sentence, and much of wikipedia information on copyright violations ignores fair use.

I think that many wikipedia administrators and many wikipedia posters have forgotten the true goal and spirit of wikipedia. That they are destroying information and are destroying the spirit and intention of wikipedia to create "the largest encyclopedia in history".

If I cut and pasted a 300 word copyrighted article, would this be a violation of fair use?

If I put a footnote refering to the article as a source, would this be fair use?

What if I posted this warning on the bottom?

A warning similar to what is found on tens of thousands of pages on the internet:

This article is copyrighted material, the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Travb (or we) is/are making such material available in my efforts to advance understanding of the ***. Travb (or we) believe(s) this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

I attempted this on five pages posted as copyright violations, and my changes were quickly reverted and the copyright page was quickly returned.[5]

Right now, the volunteer copyright police are incredibly agressive, they slap up a copyright violation notice, then ask questions later. There is:

  • little or no editing of the text accused of being a copyright violation, which would make it fair use,
  • there is no discussion of how much text qualifies as fair use, and how much does not.
  • "Fair use" is never, or rarely discussed.
Hi Jimbo, I'm one of the incredibly aggressive Copyright police who interacted with Travb on Winter Soldier Investigation and would like to give you some background. Winter Soldier Investigation had huge amounts of copied text inserted into it about thirteen months ago by and anon. There were edit wars and name calling and what not, but the copied text stayed there for over a year, being re-inserted over and over again by this anon every time it was deleted. Eventually the article was tagged as a copyvio (there were other copyvio incidents to this article during this time, but I'll just focus on the particular one I resolved). After the article was tagged, there were more edit wars over removing the copyvio tag. Eventually, the copied text was slightly re-written, but was clearly a derivative work and made up a large part of the article. At this point the article had languished on WP:CP for about month or two and nobody would resolve it.
My incredibly aggressive copyright policing involved replacing the copyvio tag, insisting that it stay there until resolved, and reverting the article to the pre-copyvio version (per instructions on WP:CP) to remove all the copied and derivative work. I also asked for additional opinions on WP:AN since there wasn't much feedback on the copyvio page.
Travb is confusing the issue with fair use. The copyvio I resolved didn't involve any attributed text, only work copied from other sources and inserted, unattributed, as if it was a GFDL release written by Wikipedians (I've explained to Travb that Wikipedia requires attribution for fair use).
Also, in the course of addressing this copyvio I've been called power hungry, jingoistic, a bully, and accused of conspiring with another editor to further my POV and silence other editors. For the record, I've never edited this article for anything other than copyvio reasons. I'm happy to report that after a month of effort (by me and a few other admins) the article seems to be copyvio free, at the moment, and various editors have stopped their practice of inserting copyvio/plagiarism over and over and over again. --Duk 16:08, 26 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The way that wikipedia is set up now, it appears like there is a small group of volunteer copyright police who erase text with impunity.

How does this further the vision of "a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge" in your own words?

Isn't this a direct contradiction?

Wouldn't it be better to have those people whose text is copyrighted and posted on wikipedia ask the administrators to erase the copyright material? In otherwords, put the burden of copyright policing on those who have the copyrighted material?

How can I get a clear explanation of wikipedia's policy?

The more I read on fair use of text on wikipedia, the more I get confused, and I am a second year law student: used to reading complex ideas and text. My evidence and civil procedure classes are easier to comprehend than this confusing mess. If I am confused, how can the average person, who doesnt read law school text make sense of fair use policy?--Travb 02:27, 24 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I added the sentence to the Copyright Problems page, and indeed, no lawyer was consulted. I posted it, secure in the knowledge that, if I was wrong, I would be called on it. And sure enough, here you are! The forum is a little unusual (though I, too, have resorted to Jimbo's page out of frustration-- and on a copyright question, too).
Anyway, let's look at the problem you raise. To me, the best reason not to open the floodgates to cut 'n' paste articles is expressed in your final paragraph, above-- if law students struggle to understand Fair Use, how are thousands of unwashed editors going to make sense of it? Fair Use of images is hard to avoid-- a photograph is inimitable-- you use it, or you don't. Text is different. You put it as a question of "free access to the sum of all human knowledge". But "all human knowledge" is not dependent on a particular turn of phrase: a rewrite of an article still contains the knowledge of the original (and, incidentally, the rewriter learns a great deal in the process).
You ask, how many words is too many? I would suggest that a better question is, why copy text verbatim in the first place? If one explicitly quotes a block of text in order to discuss it, that, I think, unquestionably falls under Fair Use. But to paste in an entire article from another source, how can that possibly fail to raise the issue of "competing use"? Why go there? A perfect encyclopedia article is mighty hard to find, and if you do find one, it's likely to be in an encyclopedia, in which case Fair Use is definitely out of play. Besides, you can always link to an article elsewhere on the web, if it's really outstanding.
So I think the offending sentence should go back in. But Wikipedia is nothing if it's not a dialog (frequently frustratingly so). So let's kick it around some. But I think this discussion belongs on the Wikipedia talk:Copyright problems page, whence I shall copy it, unless you object.
Incidentally, the best way to get an answer to the question "How can I get a clear explanation of wikipedia's policy?" is by writing it yourself. -- Mwanner | Talk 13:33, 26 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Go ahead and move it--please include some, or all of the info you added to my user talk page--excellent points! Thanks for the info and insight!Travb 14:42, 26 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
The comments in question:
Incidentally, my addition to the Copyright Problems page really isn't sui generis. Take a look at the very bottom of the Edit page. It reads "DO NOT SUBMIT COPYRIGHTED WORK WITHOUT PERMISSION

All edits are released under the GFDL (see WP:Copyrights). [...] Only public domain resources can be copied exactly—this does not include most web pages."

Finally, a word about Wikipedia-- I see that you're pretty new here. So far as I can tell, there is no hierarchical organization that you can turn to if you want a clear delineation of policy-- Jimbo may weigh in on a question, more often he does not. So, we have met the enemy, and he is us. So the good news is, you can write policy yourself! The bad news is, you have to convince everyone else that it's the right policy.
And an important point relative to this-- a decision was made at some point (and this, I think, was Jimbo's call) that commercial sites should be able to use material appearing on Wikipedia without having to worry about copyright issues. So when you say, above, that your use of verbatim material is non-commercial, that's not the end of the story-- someone else may take your page and reproduce it in a commercial context. See all of our mirror sites, Answers.com, e.g..
--Mwanner | Talk 16:37, 26 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

A proposed change

OK. Having thought about this for a while, and having read up a bit on fair use, I propose to re-add the offending sentence, ammended as follows:

Only an explicit statement that the material is public domain or available under the GFDL makes material useable, unless it is inherently free of copyright due to its age or source. Under Wikipedia:Fair use policy, brief selections of copyrighted text may be used, but only with full attribution and only when the purpose is to comment on or criticize the text quoted.

I realize that this is a considerably stricter standard than one finds in university course pack guidelines. This is because Wikipedia is published to a much wider audience, and our material must be useable by commercial mirror sites. See Wikipedia:Fair use and [6].

I would welcome any comments. Please bear in mind, though, that the purpose of this statement is to express the heart of the matter in a few words so that people might actually read them. A major failing of Wikipedia policy statements is that it's hard to get through them without the eyes glazing over. Most people who turn to policy statements are trying to get something else done, not become experts in tort law.

-- Mwanner | Talk 12:49, 28 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that we are unlikely to have a fair use claim on entire articles, although I am neither American nor a lawyer. I would also like to repeat what I said in this diff as containing a number of reasons why we may rarely want to attempt a fair use claim on an entire article (and to point out that I'd be surprised if fair-use allowed editing of the copied text). -Splashtalk 15:39, 28 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. I'd be reluctant to make the above statement any longer, though. Perhaps a more explicit statement banning cut 'n' paste articles should be crafted for the Wikipedia:Fair use page? Actually, it may be that a rearrangement of the Wikipedia:Fair use page would be better than adding more text. The Fair Use for Text section is buried under a large section of Policy, much of which applies only to images. I'll see what I can do, offline of course. -- Mwanner | Talk 19:39, 28 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I have created a substantially revised WP:Fair Use page at User:Mwanner/Sandbox that attempts to make the Fair Use policy clearer, especially with regard to textual Fair Use. (I joined the Wikipedia:WikiProject Fair use, but I would welcome feedback from readers of this page as well. TIA, -- Mwanner | Talk 14:51, 29 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Nice job Mwanner. thanks for taking the ball and running with it.Travb 02:45, 31 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

One procedural question

Hi all - I have now several times confronted this circumstance. An article is copyvio, the author claims permission, but I cannot contact the author via the other identical page. In several cases I could not find contact information (not even via whois). In two other cases, my email bounced. What do we do? Delete the text because we can't confirm? Assume good faith and remove copyvio? --best, kevin ···Kzollman | Talk··· 22:19, 27 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

AGF doesn't apply in these cases, although m:Avoid copyright paranoia is worth reading. We do not knowingly retain copyright violating material, and we can't very well tell a judge "oh, but the editor seemed like such a nice person". I personally will only add something to the "claims permission" section if it is straightforward to verify the claim e.g. a name that is obviously linked to the material or the provision of an email address. Bear in mind that we do not want to claim usage of everything that comes here, and we are not under obligation to seek it. So in the case you describe, as long as it's been listed for 7 days and you have tried and failed to elicit confirmation, it should be deleted. It can always be restored, remember, if permission is later forthcoming. -Splashtalk 22:28, 27 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Articles that need to be wikified

The articles that need to be wikified category is filled with copyvios (more than usual), if anyone here wants to help out. Veteran users have been adding the wikify tag even to the most obvious copyvios. Some of them even have a copyright notice at the top of the article and even more say that it was copied from a website at the bottom. Usually, half of the new articles are copyvios, more if you exclude stubs, but there's been an influx of new articles that are almost all copyrighted. That's for new articles, the category is probably less now because I have already removed hundreds of them. I found forty in one day recently while trying to wikify, so I didn't get a chance to work on wikifying. Almost every article I clicked on was a copyvio (clicking on articles I hadn't visited already). I've been working on A through C, so you probably shouldn't go looking for them there. Thanks, -- Kjkolb 22:29, 27 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Template:PD-IndiaGov

{{PD-IndiaGov}} claims that images published on Indian government websites are public domain. An earlier version of this template was deleted (Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/Log/Deleted/June 2005#Template:PD-IndiaGov), because this claim was false. The current version is not a copy: it refers to the Right to Information Act, which has only come into effect recently, so the situation may have changed since June.

However, it looks to me that the RTIA is only a FOIA-type act, and does not put Indian government publications in the public domain at all. Should the template be deleted again? -- Eugene van der Pijll 15:36, 28 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The template was intially created by User:Nichalp in Commons Wikimedia. I simply created a duplicate of that template in English Wikipedia. The Right to Information Act was introduced quite recently in June 2005 and more can read about it here. I havent gone through the entire act but according to what I understood, the act allows the people of India access to all non-confidential govt work. --Deepak|वार्ता 19:18, 28 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
However, "allowing access to" is not the same as "putting in the public domain". The latter also implies the right to modify and/or distribute the material; the former does not, as the government still can claim copyright. And it seems to me the RTIA is not related at all to images on a website; after all, the public can already access them.
(I'm taking this to the commons as well.) Eugene van der Pijll 08:11, 30 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Hmm.. I think you do make sense. Ill ask User:Nichalp to intervene and shed some light on the matter --Deepak|वार्ता 17:15, 30 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I emailed the government of Tamil Nadu site and asked them if their work was in PD. They replied: 

Dear Sir,
You can use the contents.
You may kindly acknowledge the source wherever appropriate.
Thanks
Yours sincerely
Website Administration Team
http://www.tn.gov.in

Based on this information I created this template. SEBI has published its work under public domain. The UP government site says "All public domain information like official gazette notifications, acts, rules regulations, circulars, policies and programme documents would be digitised and made available for electronic access on Web." Harayana states: "The State Government Departments shall establish departmental intranets and local area networks which will lay the foundation of Centralised Data Repository of public domain information for "Anytime-Anywhere" usage." Delhi IT policy says: "Simultaneously, the government will also put on the internet information that ought to be in public domain. This will enable the citizens to play the role of a watchdog and to ensure transparency" [7]. This public domain thing was discussed between me, User:Sundar and a few others before creating it. (Another point though perhaps insignificant: Indian government sites lack a copyright notice) User:Nichalp/sg 18:11, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

What a coincidence...I just asked a Indian lawyer today about the template. He said the RTIA act does not annul exisiting copyright laws. I asked him whether we can replace the word public domain with copyrighted, but he said the RTIA act is not appropriate here and suggested using the images under fair use. The commons-law mailing list is also a good place to ask, since it is frequented by Indian lawyers, who have an understanding of free software/free content. We need to clarify whether public domain means without any copyright or information available to the public. --Pamri • Talk 18:17, 30 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Looks like we've erred. Pamri, could you have it clarified for us since you have access to knowledgeble lawyers? User:Nichalp/sg 18:28, 30 October 2005 (UTC)
Ok, I will initiate a conversation on the list and also talk to a few lawyer friends in Bangalore. --Pamri • Talk 18:31, 30 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Here is the response. I will try to provide a summary soon after going through once more and reading all the references provided. But the bottom line is, the template is patently wrong. --Pamri • Talk • Reply 16:36, 2 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

A suggestion to start clearing "claims permission"

Wikipedia:Copyright problems/Poster claims permission is frighteningly backlogged. It is tedious in the extreme to work in that part of the page as it entails doling out copy-paste emailsa after filling in copy-paste links taken from several pages. It is important, however, since we would often like to have the text that has been contributed.

In a significant number of cases, however, we are, in my opinion, unlikely to retain the text if it is taken to AfD. In several cases where I have received grants of GFDL permission, I have had very serious doubts over whether we want the text at all, or if the article we thus have is even remotely useful as a starting point. In those cases I have heavily tagged for cleanup, wikification, sourcing etc. However, I'd like to suggest that we look through that list and consider whether we should leave some of them blanked (or re-blank them) with {copyvio} but still take them to AfD to see whether we plan to retain the text before asking for permission, which we have no obligation to seek. This suggestion also arises from the point about an embarassing deletion taking place shortly after a good-faith grant of permission. So I will start doing this soon, unless I hear objections. Not for all the article in that section by any means, but those that I reckon there's a better-than-average chance we might remove if retained. At the very least, in some cases it will elicit a /Temp page rewrite which we can simply move into place.

This will sound like a potential waste of AfDs time for articles which do not get permission, but since there's already an assertion of permission, these cases should be fairly few. What do people think? -Splashtalk 20:25, 28 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

  • This is a very good suggestion, Splash, in particular for this reason: This suggestion also arises from the point about an embarassing deletion taking place shortly after a good-faith grant of permission. I have wondered about doing the same thing before after noticing instances where the (C) holder has placed text that would not meet, for example, WP:CORP or WP:V, but which the holder believes is acceptable because he views WP as essentially some kind of free publicizing service. I would suggest that a good note accompany the noms, though, or half the vote will be "Cvio, send to WP:CP", or similar. encephalon 22:12, 28 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Great idea, Splash! This makes me feel better about getting permission. You should be sure and say something in each of the AfDs about what you're doing since folks at AfD treat copyvios as basically an end to their discussion sometimes. I'll help out too. --best, kevin ···Kzollman | Talk··· 17:31, 29 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
There were a number of times in the past where if I couldn't obtain satisfactorily proof of compatibility with the GFDL, I simply referred the article to AfD. People contributing to Wikipedia are more than notified adequately that they need to do their due diligence in ensuring that their contributions are appropriate for the encyclopedia. If they choose not to do this, it should not be our burden to ensure that they are in compliance. In other words, the burden of substantiating appropriateness of material for Wikipedia lies on the contributor. As was expressed above, there is no obligation on our part to seek GFDL permissions. When we do this, we are essentially doing the contributor a favour of which we have no obligation to do.
My suggestion? Start bringing the articles to AfD. Then, develop a concrete, understandable, workable policy on what exactly constitutes due diligence when one is submitting material that may potentially violate copyright laws. Then, we can say, tag copyright articles and add a link to this instructional page where the contributor can work to demonstrate GFDL/Wikipedia compatibility. If after X days this is not adequately demonstrated, the article is deleted. Of course, this is only a first attempt at addressing this, so feel free to comment/modify my ideas. I'd like to help out more here. :-) --HappyCamper 00:35, 31 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
To your first paragraph: if you can't adequately get GFDL permission, the article does not need to go to AfD: it needs to be deleted, and thre's no reason to debate the fact. Many times, the followup is because they do claim to have granted GFDL permission, but we aer not satisfied until we have that in an email that we can archive (since a talk page message could come from anywhere), and this is why the section is so long.
We most certainly shoukdn't take all the articles in that section of the page to AfD. Some of them are eminently keepable, and it is not for AfD to debate every single assertion of permission based article. As it stands, the due diligence required is to note permission within 7 days and response to the follow up email within 7 days. That instruction is buried on the main page, but that is all they have to do. -Splashtalk 00:47, 31 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Ah yes, I forgot that copyvivos are can be happily speedied - I was thinking about the days of VfD land. Is there a way to compile this so that it is easier to find all this information? I don't think we need to take all the articles over to AfD, but I think that having AfD as an option is good. --HappyCamper 01:04, 31 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Not all copyvios can be speedy delted, look at WP:CSD more closely. In particular if there is a claim of permisison speedy does not apply. DES (talk) 01:21, 31 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
IMO the original (quite sensible) proposal was to say "Before doign the ratehr tedious work of due diligience, let's consider if we even want the content." If an article is likely to be deleted even if there is no copyright issue, they why bother to write for confirmation of permisison? So if an article seeems quite likely to be deleted on other grounds 9advertisement; non-notable; not verifiable; etc), take it to AfD, with a note that the copyvio issue shouldn't be raised during the AfD, if the art is kept the claim of permission will be verified one way or the other. I appove of this idea. DES (talk) 01:21, 31 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Comments appreciated

At Wikipedia_talk:Image_copyright_tags#Coats_of_arms, as they relate to a specific case (anon claiming copyright of some images). --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 17:30, 5 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Stretching Fair Use beyond the limits

Zatch Bell! characters (result of a copy and paste move from Zatch Bell! Character List) has over 200 images, mostly marked as fair use, or screen shots. Surely this goes way beyond what could be thought of as Fair Use? I tagged the page for cleanup, in October, before the C&P move. What's the best way to deal with this? --GraemeL (talk) 19:00, 7 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Please see Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)#Copyright_on_Lists for why I think 20+ lists stolen from other sources need to be deleted. Dragons flight 06:16, 12 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

CSD#A8

While I appreciate speedying obvious copyvios, criterion A8 strikes me as major instruction creep due to its excessive verbosity. Wouldn't it be feasible to remove one or two of the criterion lines to make the criterion simpler? Radiant_>|< 17:45, 14 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Lyrics are clear copyvio, right?

Hi! From rummaging around I get the impression that song lyrics are clear copyright violations, but I can't find a policy or deletion page that says that explicitly. Could somebody point me in the right direction? The pages I'm looking at are

I notified one user who was actively working, but I wanted to point the authors at the clear policy statement before I put these up for AfD. Thanks, --William Pietri 09:23, 15 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Image contributions of User:Jbc01

All image contributions of Jbc01 (talk · contribs) are listed here (under September's author claims permission section). This user claims to be uploading the files with permission to redistribute under the GFDL from the original company JBC Productions. These are all bondage photos, and I cannot find contact information on the first page. I realy don't want to go hunting around the site for contact information, but on the first page (don't worry this one is clean) I found this notice:

Oh yeah, one more thing folks. These pictures are for your own personal use!!! What does that mean? It means that these pictures remain the property of me, and any UN-AUTHORISED use of them, such as putting them on your own web site, or downloading them all and popping them on a news site just isn't the done thing. Above all else, it just ain't plain nice!!! So come on, be a pal, do the right thing!

Beyond the excessive use of punctuation, this looks incompatible with the GFDL and so warrent deleting the images right? I would just go and do it, but image deletion is sketchy business. So I thought I'd get at least a little support here. --best, kevin └ KZOLLMAN/ TALK┐ 19:06, 16 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I have also left a note on the Jbc01's talk page. --best, kevin └ KZOLLMAN/ TALK┐ 19:16, 16 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
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