User talk:Occoastkeeper

How to verify copyright permission for article Orange County Coastkeeper
Hello, Occoastkeeper.

Thank you for your interest in donating material from http://www.coastkeeper.org/coastkeeper/about/history.asp to Wikipedia. Since we do not currently have a method in place to verify the identity of account holders at account creation, we must verify such donations through external processes. The article has been blanked to allow time for that verification to proceed.

The simplest way to verify is to place a release on that external website putting the material into public domain or co-licensing it under CC-BY-SA and GFDL, which permit modification and reuse, even commercially, as long as authorship credit is given. This release is irrevocable and must continue to be displayed, or the material may need to be removed. A statement such as the following would be sufficient: "The contents of this website (or page, if you are specifically releasing one section) are available for modification and reuse under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License 3.0 and the GNU Free Documentation License, unversioned with no invariant sections, front-cover texts, or back-cover texts." If you decide to take this route, please put a link to that release on Talk:Orange County Coastkeeper so we can restore the contents.

Alternatively, you may choose to send an e-mail to the Wikimedia Foundation from an address associated with the original publication to [mailto:permissions-en@wikimedia.org permissions-en@wikimedia.org] or a postal message to the Wikimedia Foundation permitting re-use under the CC-BY-SA and GFDL. There is a boilerplate release form at Declaration of consent for all enquiries which can be helpful. Please provide a clear link to the website in your e-mail and specify by name the articles on Wikipedia in which the material is being used. Once your e-mail is received and processed by a member of the Communications Committee, the article's contents will be restored if your release is legally sufficient. Please make a note that you've done this on Talk:Orange County Coastkeeper to help guard against premature deletion of the page. You can compose a note or very simply paste the following on the talk page, brackets and all:

If you decide you don't wish to release the material into public domain or under the terms of CC-BY-SA and GFDL, you are welcome to rewrite the text from scratch at [ this temporary page]. As long as the material is otherwise compliant with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines, it will be used to replace the previous contents. Please leave a note at Talk:Orange County Coastkeeper saying you have done so.

If you are not familiar with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines, you may wish to review Starting an article or Your first article. If you are closely related to the subject matter, you may also want to read our conflict of interest guidelines to get an idea how best to proceed. It may be necessary once permission is verified to address other concerns in the text, if it is otherwise inconsistent with our policies and guidelines.

We apologize for the additional steps necessary, but as copyright is a matter of legal concern, we must ensure that we not only protect the rights of copyright holders, but also guard the Wikipedia project against inadvertent infringement.

The article will be revisited in about a week to see what additional steps have been taken or may be necessary. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to let me know at my talk page. We also have a help desk which is typically manned around the clock by volunteers.

Thank you. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 20:03, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Update regarding copyright concern
Since we do not yet have verification of permission by the processes set out above and sufficient time has passed since the placement of the notice, the article has been deleted for copyright concerns. This deletion is not necessarily permanent. If you have already sent a letter to the Wikimedia Foundation permitting re-use under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License (CC-BY-SA) and GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) (if you are not the copyright holder or have co-authored the material, release under CC-BY-SA-compatible license alone is sufficient), the article will be restored when that letter is received and processed by the Wikimedia Communications committee. Likewise, if you have not yet sent a letter, you still may (or resend it, if you believe your original may have been lost), and the article will be restored when that letter is received and processed.

As Wikipedia does not require proof of identity on account creation, it is essential that we receive external proof of authorization in order to ensure that we remain compliant with US Copyright law. It is also essential that we verify that copyright holders understand the extent of the release they are authorizing, in that our licenses permit modification and reuse in any forum, even commercial publication, as long as authorship credit is maintained and future copies are compatibly licensed.

Please note that once permission is verified, the material may be evaluated and altered to meet Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Although we appreciate donations, we cannot guarantee that material donated will be retained.

Thank you. Moonriddengirl (talk) 16:42, 9 November 2009 (UTC)