Wikipedia:Copyright problems/2014 February 24

24 February 2014
SCV for 2014-02-24 [ Edit]

Copyright investigations (manual article tagging)
I saw a Wikipedia page classified using the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) system. I think doing so infringes copyright. I forgot which page it was, but Template:Infobox_book uses a parameter for the Dewey system and there may be other instances as well. Adding anything into Wikipedia requires conformance with a license that permits commercial reuse (except for fair use, which is probably inapplicable to this use.) While the Dewey system may be available for noncommercial use, commercial use of the Dewey system requires permission from the copyright licensor, OCLC. Therefore, use of the Dewey system on Wikipedia does not conform to the license, unless the licensor has granted the Wikimedia Foundation a license. Has that license been granted? Or has the Foundation decided that a license is unnecessary and that the Dewey system can be used to classify a number of project pages? (Permission would not be necessary if a project page explained how DDC worked and gave an example, but that does not seem to be the case generally in Wikipedia.) Nick Levinson (talk) 01:22, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
 * The Foundation hasn't decided anything, Nick Levinson. :) They are an online service provider and do not monitor or approve content. Those decisions are made by the individual volunteers who add and curate the material. They are the ones who chose to add it and the ones who will need to choose to remove it, unless the OCLC pursues official removal processes through the WMF (specifically, DMCA.) I don't think this is as much a copyright issue as it is a trademark issue - while mentions that the system is copyrighted, it primarily discusses license to trademark the DDC. Classifications can be copyrighted and I don't doubt that the updated version of DDC is, but I'd be willing personally to lay some odds that the oldest systems are out of copyright. Even if they weren't, though, a single line in an infobox may not constitute a substantial taking. (Arguably, collectively they might, but they might also constitute fair use and fit the non-free content guideline in that case.) Since it's just a single line spread across multiple articles, I don't think that this is something that can be decided at this board. Especially since the major issue may be trademark, I think this may be more a matter for widespread consultation such as through an WP:RFC. It might also be something to ask for a meta:Wikilegal consultation on, to provide some context. If you'd like to request a legal intern to look into doing some research on the question, you can write to legal@undefinedwikimedia.org or just let me know. If I switch into my work role, I can communicate that request for you. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:02, 5 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Trademark is separate. This is a copyright issue, whether it is also a trademark issue or not. And I don't think we're infringing a trademark.
 * I think the DDC is old enough that I likely agree that the earliest is in the public domain, but I haven't seen any use of a DDC number for a Wikipedia article or book cited in Wikipedia specifically refer to a public domain edition of DDC. More likely, all such uses are of recent DDC editions, thus under copyright.
 * A common error regarding fair use, and an error I think you're making, is with the baseline for proportionality. If we copy a short article from The New York Times, because people think of an issue of the Times as large, we might think a little article is too small to require permission. But the Supreme Court has already ruled on that. Even from a large Sunday paper, and even if the article is short, the baseline for proportionality is not the large paper but only the short article, of which we would have copied 100%, so copying the whole article would be infringement even if the copying is only of a paragraph and a headline. On that principle, just one class number identified as a DDC number is all that is used for a normal book, so that is enough for the proportionality baseline, so that assigning as little as one DDC class number to one Wikipedia article is enough to require permission under copyright law. I don't think fair use applies. Fair use probably could apply if we were preparing an article about DDC and illustrated how it works by assigning a DDC number to one article as an example, but Wikipedia already goes beyond that.
 * The Foundation is responsible for infringement in its projects, and if a license was acquired it would have been by the Foundation. If a volunteer acquired the license without the Foundation doing so, it's probably invalid beyond that volunteer's use, and that volunteer posting DDC content based on a license the Foundation does not have probably violates the terms for posting.
 * If infringement is present and no volunteer deletes it, the Foundation is responsible for deleting it. Wikipedia is proactive in deleting infringements and needs to be; it cannot rely on DMCA alone, because DMCA is not the only remedy available to infringed-upon parties.
 * I appreciate your offering to make contact through your work role, but I don't think that will be necessary. I don't mind an RfC, and if someone wants to prepare one soon I won't mind awaiting its outcome, but unless someone comes up with a legal argument why it's not infringement and not in violation of the terms under which edits are posted it will be appropriate to seek a way to resolve it. If I'm wrong about copyright law in this case, that will be fine.
 * Nick Levinson (talk) 01:26, 11 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Yu Xiang Rou Si ([ history] · [ last edit] · rewrite) from http://www.chinesefoodfans.com/chinese-food-recipes/pork/fish-flavored-pork/. Neil916 (Talk) 07:22, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/MakoProgram ([ history] · [ last edit] · rewrite) from https://makoprogram.net/. (t) Josve05a  (c) 16:39, 24 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Acid Black Cherry ([ history] · [ last edit] · rewrite) from http://www.acidblackcherry.com/en/profile.html and http://www.tokyohive.com/article/2013/03/acid-black-cherry-announces-hokkaido-tohoku-tour. FylgjaOnika (talk) 22:02, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Pictogram voting keep.svg Article cleaned by investigator or others. No remaining infringement. Revdelete request added for admin attention. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 00:58, 2 March 2014 (UTC)