Wikipedia:Copyright problems/2012 January 24

24 January 2012
SCV for 2012-01-24 [ Edit]

Copyright investigations (manual article tagging)

 * Homeland Security USA ([ history] · [ last edit]) Is the use of quotations from the ABC medianet press releases (and also bits from the Yahoo! tv pages, for the last few episodes) allowed as episode summaries? I believe it is, but I'm not certain, so I thought I'd ask here. Banaticus (talk) 00:15, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry, but I'm afraid it's not. :( Aside from brief quotations used transformatively, content on Wikipedia needs to be freely licensed. Press releases are generated for wide publication, but they haven't been declared public domain. The agencies that publish them choose who gets to reproduce them and certainly doesn't authorize them for modification. I appreciate all the work you did formatting those as quotes, but plots need to be described in our own words. I've removed them with the Plot2 template on the talk page of the article and as an edit header. Hopefully, it will help reproduce people adding these back in, because it's a common problem. Thanks so much for not just assuming, but for following through. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:37, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I emailed ABC and asked them -- the response was that the text of press releases isn't copyrighted, so they can be used by anyone. Just the images and video are copyrighted.  I then forwarded the email on to OTRS at (permissions-en) on the 24th of January so that they could verify and tag the page as ok.  I haven't heard back from OTRS yet, but in my opinion, given the response I had regarding the text of press releases not being coyprighted, the text doesn't even need quote marks, though I'll just wait to hear from OTRS. Banaticus (talk) 19:05, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Great! I hope that the OTRS ticket passes through. This could be good news for lots of ABC press releases, depending on how it's worded. :) (Oh, but you'd either need quotation marks or you'd have to otherwise indicate copying, to stay within Plagiarism.) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 19:42, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
 * If the material is basically public domain (they aren't copyrighting it and don't care if others repost it elsewhere), then it just needs a reference and the copyright status of the text (or lack thereof) posted in the edit summary. At that point, it's essentially regular Wikipedia text and doesn't need special demarcation (but the reference should remain to fulfill Verification).  People can feel free to edit the summaries after they've been posted like that, shuffle the contents around, mis it with other text, again no demarcation necessary. Banaticus (talk) 01:12, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Update: the website permissions person kicked it up to the head of ABC legal. I hope they agree, it sure would make it easier to be able to use the official press releases -- they're usually nice paragraph summaries of each episode. :) Banaticus (talk) 07:03, 8 February 2012 (UTC)


 * James Wylie Shepherd Observatory ([ history] · [ last edit]) from http://www.shepherdobservatory.org. Spyder_Monkey (Talk) 04:21, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Yeah, it's a copyvio. I'll change it to a redirect to the university page. Banaticus (talk) 08:22, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Pictogram voting keep.svg Article cleaned by investigator or others. No remaining infringement. Thanks. :) The contributor asserts authority and moved the copied content to that university page. I've reminded him of procedures and explained a bit more; let's hope he will follow them. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:54, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
 * While I was looking around at the copyvio, I found other pages that talked about the observatory, so I added a couple sentence referenced bit. Mfpatton pasted the copyvio over my bit again and then that section was properly deleted by Moonriddengirl as a copyvio -- I reverted back to the very short version that I'd put in earlier. Banaticus (talk) 19:20, 5 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Archaeopteryx ([ history] · [ last edit]) from
 * http://archeopteryx.info/paleobiology.html
 * http://archeopteryx.info/controversies.html and from
 * http://archeopteryx.info/description_paleoecology.html .Please note the website is claiming copyright for this.Copyright © 2011. All rights reserved. Archaeopteryx. Please take a look at this Specimens of Archaeopteryx and  also this Pharaoh of the Wizards (talk) 19:35, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
 * As discussed on the talk page, this is a reverse copyvio (external site copied WP text). J. Spencer (talk) 00:21, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Great! Thanks for letting us know. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:56, 5 February 2012 (UTC)