Wikipedia:Copyright problems/2014 March 24

Copyright investigations (manual article tagging)

 * GT Advanced Technologies ([ history] · [ last edit] · rewrite) from http://investorwand.com/stock/5231/gtat-gt-advanced-technologies-inc; the page actually appears to have been copied lock, stock and barrel from http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:VgoMcQJzsrcJ:hitchhikersgui.de/GT_Advanced_Technologies+%22Products+of+this+segment+include+directional+solidification+system%22&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=it&client=safari, a cache of a version of the page previously speedied as G12. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 11:37, 24 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Pictogram voting keep.svg Article cleaned by investigator or others. No remaining infringement. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:57, 31 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Illinois v. Hemi Group LLC ([ history] · [ last edit] · rewrite) from http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-7th-circuit/1538180.html. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 20:48, 24 March 2014 (UTC)
 * This article is quoting a federal court opinion, which are not copyrightable and can be freely copied. Please remove the blank. Bundaberger (talk) 18:54, 1 April 2014 (UTC)
 * The page carries this notice: "Copyright © 2014 FindLaw, a Thomson Reuters business. All rights reserved." Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 22:34, 1 April 2014 (UTC)
 * That page's copyright notice goes to the site as a whole (e.g. all the elements around the court opinion text box) but cannot be extended to include text in the public domain. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Public_domain#U.S._government_works. The words of the court opinion are not copyrightable and not protected. Simply using a Thomson Reuters site as a source does not violate copyright because Thomson Reuters has no copyright over that text. Again, it is impossible to violate the copyright of text which is not copyrightable.Bundaberger (talk) 03:34, 2 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Could you specify what text in the article violated Thomson Reuters' copyright, and how Thomson Reuters owns copyright over non-copyrightable text?Bundaberger (talk) 03:37, 2 April 2014 (UTC)
 * I can't. This needs a bigger brain than mine. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 09:55, 2 April 2014 (UTC)
 * This is not a copyvio for the reasons already given. Court opinions are in the public domain. Also, simply quoting from a copyrighted work does not equal a copyvio or we couldn't quote most reliable sources. I suggest using another source for the public domain opinion, such as Google Scholar, CourtListener, or Justia to help avoid confusion. Brianwc (talk) 11:35, 2 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Hi. I think part of the confusion here, as I mentioned at my talk page, is that FindLaw does a poor job (if any) of explaining what their site copyright tag does and does not cover. I couldn't find any mention that court documents do not belong to them in their Terms of Use or their Disclaimers. :/ However, we do sometimes ignore spurious or unclear copyright claims. Most websites put that notice up automatically on every page, and while some of them offer specifics in their disclaimers (sometimes, weirdly, buried under "privacy"), some don't. Public domain covers court judgments in somewhat buried text under PD: "Under U.S. law, laws themselves and legal rulings also form a special class. All current or formerly binding laws, codes, and regulations produced by government at any level, including other countries’ governments, and the court opinions of any court case are in the public domain."  (User:Justlettersandnumbers, this isn't a question of brain size; it's a question of familiarity. :D Wait until you encounter some from a Florida state government website. And if you want the details on that, let me know at my talk page.)--Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:17, 3 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Fort Calhoun Nuclear Generating Station ([ history] · [ last edit] · rewrite) Some examples of short sections that were taken nearly verbatim from their respective sources are posted on the Talk page. Copyvio? Geogene (talk) 23:39, 24 March 2014 (UTC)
 * User:Geogene, it looks like Close paraphrasing, but the examples I see don't seem egregious enough to me to rise to the level of copyvio, unless there's a ton of it, and the whole rises to capturing the flavor and feel of the original. Sometimes editors particularly in controversial areas start pushing closer and closer to source wording due to concerns about WP:V and WP:NPOV. It can be very hard for some people to get the balance between acceptable paraphrase where such is possible and quotation where it's not. If I encountered an article like that, I'd probably do what you've done and note the concerns at the talk page, although, again, if there's a lot of it I might go further, at least to put the close paraphrasing tag on the article. If it's confined to three or five sentences or so in an article of that size, I might not. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:26, 3 April 2014 (UTC)
 * That seems sensible. Thanks for the explanation! Geogene (talk) 15:30, 3 April 2014 (UTC)