Wikipedia talk:Copyright problems/Archive 5

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)

Google it!
I found this item while looking around on Google. I think it might be useful re: copyvio stuff. Here is an excerpt:

What's the "Usage Rights" advanced search feature?

Our "Usage Rights" feature helps you find published content -- including music, photos, movies, books, and educational materials -- that you can share or modify above and beyond fair use.

Sct72 02:29, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

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: 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.
 * 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.")

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


 * 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 08:34, 10 October 2005 (UTC)
 * That was indeed the case. Removed. Rob Church Talk 08:34, 10 October 2005 (UTC)
 * iqnaut is a mirror of Wikipedia. See Mirrors_and_forks/Ghi & GFDL_Compliance. --Zigger &laquo;&ordm;&raquo; 14:20, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

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 08:31, 10 October 2005 (UTC)
 * 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, and are in 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 &mdash; 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. -Splash talk 11:25, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

Speedy deletion for blatant copyright violations
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)

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 (archived discussion). DES (talk) 19:05, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

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)
 * 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)
 * There is an Association of Copyright Violation Hunting Wikipedians; perhaps you were looking for that. --Idont Havaname 03:08, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

Problems with instructions: not all copyvios have a corresponding URL
The instructions on Copyright problems for using the 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  ~ " 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)


 * I just use what it's from where the url would go. -- Kjkolb 08:55, 19 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Yes this comes up quite often. I have added a small sentence about this case. Justinc 10:27, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

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)
 * 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. -Splash talk 15:38, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

Template for the Copyright problems completly ignores free use
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)


 * 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)

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)
 * See 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. -Splash talk 16:14, 22 October 2005 (UTC)


 * 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)


 * 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). &mdash;Cryptic (talk) 01:12, 26 October 2005 (UTC)


 * I could sofixit if I was an admin. Thanks everybody. -- Kjkolb 12:31, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

Royal Gibraltar Police
Could regulars please comment on Royal Gibraltar Police? There is a dispute - and general antipathy - between two editors ( and ) 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)

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)


 * Yes to both. DreamGuy 07:17, 26 October 2005 (UTC)


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

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!"--


 * "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


 * "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


 * "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."

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 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.

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)

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)


 * 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)


 * 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)


 * 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)

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 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 Fair use and.

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)

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). -Splash talk 15:39, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
 * 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 Fair use page?  Actually, it may be that a rearrangement of the 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)
 * 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 WikiProject Fair use, but I would welcome feedback from readers of this page as well. TIA, -- Mwanner | Talk 14:51, 29 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Nice job Mwanner. thanks for taking the ball and running with it.Travb 02:45, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

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)
 * AGF doesn't apply in these cases, although 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. -Splash talk 22:28, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

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)

Template:PD-IndiaGov
PD-IndiaGov claims that images published on Indian government websites are public domain. An earlier version of this template was deleted (Templates for deletion/Log/Deleted/June 2005), 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)


 * 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)


 * 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)


 * 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)

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". 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) =Nichalp   «Talk»=  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 &bull; Talk 18:17, 30 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Looks like we've erred. Pamri, could you have it clarified for us since you have access to knowledgeble lawyers? =Nichalp   «Talk»=  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 &bull; Talk 18:31, 30 October 2005 (UTC)


 * 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 &bull; Talk &bull; [ Reply] 16:36, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

A suggestion to start clearing "claims permission"
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? -Splash talk 20:25, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
 * 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)
 * 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)
 * Haha, so I apparently missed the last sentence of encephalon's comment, so I repeated it. Reading can be so hard sometimes... --best, kevin  · · · Kzollman | Talk · · · 17:34, 29 October 2005 (UTC)


 * 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)
 * 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. -Splash talk 00:47, 31 October 2005 (UTC)


 * 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)


 * 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)


 * 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)

Comments appreciated
At Wikipedia_talk:Image_copyright_tags, 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)

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)

Copyright on Lists
Please see Village_pump_%28policy%29/Archive N for why I think 20+ lists stolen from other sources need to be deleted. Dragons flight 06:16, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

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_ &gt;|&lt; 17:45, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

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) Thanks for the link. That's very helpful. The user never came back, so I have tagged them all with copyvio. --William Pietri 22:56, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
 * 'Thomas We Love You' Song
 * 'Every Cloud has a Silver Lining'
 * 'Surprises' Song
 * 'Busy' Song
 * 'Try to do things Better' Song
 * You can tag these with copyvio since there are essentially nothing but full lyrics. However short quotations of lyrics are fair use, and might we worth adding to the Songs section of Calling All Engines along with an explanation of the theme. Kappa 09:30, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
 * P.S. I found the relevant policy: Lyrics and poetry. Kappa 09:35, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Image contributions of User:Jbc01
All image contributions of 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)


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


 * A portion of the whois record follows. You should send an email to this address, probably cc to webmaster@. --ChrisRuvolo (t) 23:13, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

Administrative, Technical Contact: ,  admin@aussieropeworks.com aussieropeworks P.O. Box 12143 Northbury, Nova Scotia 20388 CA     934 554 289


 * Oooohhh look at you and your fancy "whois" :) I had forgotten about that, thanks for reminding me.  The author also provided me with a plausible email address, I will email the one he provided and cc admin and webmaster.  Thanks! --best, kevin  └KZOLLMAN/TALK┐ 22:02, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

The public domain
Calling all people knowledgeable about copyright legislation: I would like input and help on User:Lupo/Public domain. Correct me if I'm wrong, point out missing things, help improve it, tear it apart... This grew out of concerns about Image:Albert Einstein by Yousuf Karsh.jpg (see also there). Basically I think we need some clarifications put into place, especially regarding all those country-specific PD-tags: such images are not automatically also PD-US! And PD, with its "worldwide" claim, needs to be used carefully, and we should explicitly say under what circumstances it may be used, if at all. Lupo 13:51, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

Question about procedure
If I have listed an image here as fair use, and explained why, how does the appropriate admin go about confiriming or rejecting this claim, and removing the copyvio notice? I don't see anything about fair use in the advice for admins page. Thanks, Dsol 23:55, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

Image confirmation template
Hello - I received permission from the website discussed above, and I thought it would be worth having a version of confirmation for images. I have created Img-confirmation for image description pages. I will start going through the users images later tonight. --best, kevin └KZOLLMAN/TALK┐ 02:25, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

Miki Fujiwara
This was posted by the artist. I was told that Artists are allowed to post their own article on Wikipedia. The other sites that may have my bios are either my own site or part of the artist organization that I am with. I am willing to rewrite it for Wiki, if needed.
 * Thank you for posting this information to wikipedia. If you own the copyright of the information provided, it is accpetable for you to post it here.  Pending review of the article for notability, someone will likely contact you by email to verify this claim.  --best, kevin  └KZOLLMAN/TALK┐ 15:54, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

Company logos vs. product logos
I know company logos are generally OK for use in WP, but, if I have understood things correctly, product "logos" such as the one used in the Athlon 64 microprocessor article generally aren't OK. As regards said logo, AMD's copyright notice states that
 * Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. ("AMD") hereby grants you permission to use, copy and distribute documents, related graphics and software delivered from this AMD Web Server ("Materials") provided that you (1) include both the above copyright notice and this permission notice in all copies; (2) do not modify the Materials; (3) use the Materials for non-commercial purposes within your organization only [...]

This means that the logo should be speedily deleted as per Template:NoncommercialProvided, because of the above "non-commercial purposes [...] only" clause, right? I just want to be 100% sure, so I won't risk deleting stuff which should/could be kept. --Wernher 06:00, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Fair use can supersede such a restriction: it's the purpose of fair-use so to do. We appear to think that we can claim fair use on logos, so it would appear that we do not feel ourselves restricted in the manner you describe. That decision is one to be taken by the uploader, or the applier of the tag. If you are unsure, ask IFD. -Splash talk 03:05, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

If the tag is removed?
What is the best procedure if the original contributor removes the copyvio tag and replaces the copyvio content? Kappa 01:24, 21 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately, it needs to be reblanked. WP:AGF doesn't really apply since we have no corroboration that the original contributor is the copyright owner, even if they make that claim. Having a convincing username doesn't help either, since it doens't really take a genius to think of that. Generally, a message on the article's talk page, or their talk page if they have one, saying that they need to send an email to permissions at wikimedia dot org tells them what to do. Or, if they leave an email address, you can send them the boilerplate text and forward that to the above address and then unblank the article. If they are resolutely persistent in reinstating the content without taking any other course of affirmative action, it should be treated without a great deal of sympathy, since copyright law is not for debate (by mere Wikipedians, anyway). -Splash talk 03:01, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

instruction correct?
The instructions say to add ~ to the page being considered as copyvio. Is the ~ correct? Do we really want to sign the article? RJFJR 23:28, 3 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Some people do, others don't - it is not required.--nixie 00:22, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

Image:Papa Giovanni Paulo II.jpg
I'm unsure how to tag this image. It was originally posted with a copyright notice in Italian, for which I've located an English translation and added to the page. This, unfortunately, is the only evidence there is of a copyvio and indeed the only source information: I can't seem to locate the original on the Vatican website. Should I tag it with anyway even though I can't provide the original as expected? Or is there a different way this should be handled? TCC (talk) (contribs) 04:12, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
 * See vatican. --ChrisRuvolo (t) 04:40, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry, but I don't see how that helps. We have a notice saying, "The photos shown here are protected by copyright and their use is reserved to the editions of 'L'Osservatore Romano'." That's pretty clear, and if it's really applicable there's no weaseling around it. The problem as I see it is that there's nothing to definitively associate that notice with the image. Suppose they don't really belong together.  In that case we have no source information and the image ought to be tagged accordingly. Suppose it does, which we ought to do if we assume good faith.  Then we plainly have a blatant copyvio (and the uploader really should have known better).  I don't see the middle ground that vatican seems to allow for. TCC (talk) (contribs) 05:13, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
 * vatican basicly says that the allowed use of the image based upon its source information alone is insufficient. You should either make a fair use claim or delete it. --ChrisRuvolo (t) 13:32, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Equals signs in URLs
The article Tarot: Witch of the Black Rose appears to infringe on the copyright of http://www.the-trades.com/article.php?id=1642 but I can’t put a link in when I try to put a violation notice on it. Susvolans ⇔ 15:45, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Template parameters don't parse correctly if they have an = sign in them, unless you include the parameter name, ie or  . &mdash;Cryptic (talk) 16:46, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Why sign the template?
The instructions for dealing with copyright violations say: If all revisions have copyright problems: Blank the page and replace the text with  ~  .

What I don't understand is why it is considered desirable to have the signature of the person who found the copyright violation on the main article page right below the copyvio template. If someone wants to know who it was who said the article was a copyvio, they can look at the page history as with any other edit (or for that matter, look at WP:CP, where signing copyvio nominations looks more appropriate). --Metropolitan90 04:50, 16 December 2005 (UTC)


 * To make it easier for someone who wants to claim permission to find a contact. Most copyvios are uploaded by inexperienced users, who may not have understood that they can also find the info in the page history. Lupo 08:16, 16 December 2005 (UTC)


 * It also fills the cross-namespace links report, and slows down anyone checking for new users signing articles. Also, surely someone claiming permission should be coming here, shouldn’t they? Susvolans ⇔ 17:16, 18 December 2005 (UTC)


 * It realy makes cross-namespace links hard to maintain. I was working on these pages for some time and most of them are copyvio... I think we should change manual so users were not encouraged to put signatures. --ManiacK 02:47, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

friendlier version of template:nothanks?
Is there a friendlier (and perhaps longer) version of template >? Something suitable for new contributors who don't know better yet. RJFJR 17:23, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
 * nothanks is the friendlier and longer version (of cv). User:Angela/useful stuff might be worth converting into a template, though. &mdash;Cryptic (talk) 15:53, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Copying from a forum post
Hi all. This article copied the text from this forum post. I was wondering if this violates copyright policy. Thanks. - Akamad Merry Christmas to all! 13:30, 25 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Yup. Any material from the web, even just a couple sentences, is probably a copyvio unless that page contains explicit notice of releasing the material under the GFDL or a more liberal license like free use. However, if we properly quote it and attribute it to its original source, it may qualify as fair use. Deco 22:18, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Habitual copyright violators
(This content copied from Village pump (proposals) for additional feedback here)

This isn't so much a proposal as a problem that I'm not sure how to solve. I recently hit the random article link, and up came Manas Journal. At first it didn't look like a copyvio to me because of the links. Looking at the history made me suspicious, and I did a Google search, and sure enough it was an egregious copyvio.

I marked it with the usual template and went to inform the user and found they'd already received a warning about another article. My natural response was to check their user contributions. My sad discovery was that they had added copyrighted material to all of the following articles, most of which he created, most of them over 90 days ago:


 * Manas Journal
 * David Orr
 * Barry Lopez
 * Erazim kohak
 * Terry Tempest Williams
 * Gene Logsdon
 * The Land Institute
 * Prairie Writers' Circle
 * E.F.Schumacher Society, E.F. Schumacher Society
 * Orion Society
 * Orion Magazine
 * Myrin Institute
 * Schumacher College (UK)
 * Gary Paul Nabhan
 * Robert Michael Pyle

I templated them all and added them to Copyright_problems/2005_December_27 (except one, which he simply added material to; I removed it and left a notice on the talk page). Needless to say, this sets a worrisome precedent: in all this time, only one of the user's many copyvio pages was caught, and no action was ever taken against them - they went on creating these things for weeks. I think the user's tendency to add links disguised their origin.

So my question: how do we prevent this kind of thing from happening again? How do we detect and stop habitual copyright violators? Deco 09:38, 27 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Copyright violations on Wikipedia are far more common than most people realize and a portion of it goes undetected for a long time or completely undetected . For example, a lot of articles sent to cleanup and most of the articles longer than a paragraph sent for wikification are copyright violations. During one wikifying session, I wikified about 5 articles and reported 40 copyright violations. It's rather disturbing when someone does a lot of wikification work, but their name never shows up at Copyright Problems. Some of the copyright violations have been extensively edited by veteran editors and admins and most have been edited by some watching Recent Changes. Most of them are blatant and all people need to do is to look out for them. Almost all of the rest can be caught be searching Google.


 * As for habitual violators, I think they should be warned once or twice and then banned indefinitely. -- Kjkolb 09:57, 27 December 2005 (UTC)


 * That's interesting - perhaps the project page for wikification should discuss the preponderance of copyvios amongst the nominated pages. But as Bobbyjones shows, sometimes violators do add links, which makes this unreliable as a method of detection. Most copyvios are new articles, and some kind of automated offline check could be done against the database dump using the Google web service to detect these, but even this would fail to detect cases like Barry Lopez, where copyrighted material is added to an existing article. Maybe all article modifications since the previous dump could be scanned for suspicious-looking additions, but it seems difficult to distinguish copyvio from original contributions by an experienced writer. This type of copyvio particularly concerns me, because if copyrighted material is significantly edited it becomes more difficult to detect, more difficult to remove, and results in lots of wasted effort by those who edited it. Deco 19:07, 27 December 2005 (UTC)


 * "Some of the copyright violations have been extensively edited by veteran editors and admins and most have been edited by some watching Recent Changes." - very true in my experience as well. and btw, I have caught around ten copyvios that did not get reflected in google but got caught in search.msn.com. A couple of the articles I tagged couldn't be traced in both these search engines but the anons who created them innocently gave a link to the source URL. --Gurubrahma 14:43, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Jimbo has given the OK to block perpetual copyright violators, see this therad, if you need an admin to block a user just leave me a message on my talk page and I'll check the history and block.--nixie 18:06, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Copyright question
There is a question on Image talk:MoriaSmall.JPG about applicable copyright law/policy in regards to derivative works. It primarily focuses on whether a user created computer-graphic image derived from a line drawing infringes the copyright of the original work, but also draws into question whether maps of fictional locations, similarly derived from a published original, are allowed. See the linked talk page. Any guidance on legal/Wiki precedent would be appreciated. --CBD &#x260E; &#x2709; 18:00, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
 * It really depends. If there is sufficient creative difference, it may be judged an independent work based on the original rather than a derivative work. In this case, although there are some added creative elements, the general appearance is very close to the original. In more practical terms, anyone who's read the books would immediately recognise it. If someone creates a map with the same location layout as an existing map but a substantially different style of art, I probably wouldn't call this a derivative work. IANAL. Deco 01:54, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Thanks, after reading up on the relevant copyright issues I came to the same conclusion. The image was meant to evoke the original because it was intended for use as a portal link, but in doing so it had to stay close enough that it'd probably fall on the 'derivative' side of the line. The maps in Middle-earth and similar articles are probably only 'based on' rather than 'derivative' due to the different presentation of geographic features. I marked the original image for speedy. --CBD &#x260E; &#x2709; 02:22, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

Russian music pre-1973
Apologies if this is the wrong place, but I can't find a better one. I've added one music track (and intend if possible to add more) which was released in Russia before 1973, and which I therefore take not to be protected by copyright (the one I've added is Image:1947_-_Piano_Trio_No._2.ogg (this particular one was actually recorded in Prague, but I could find ones which were definitely recorded in Russia if necessary). However, the CD I took it from claims "the copyright in these sound recordings is owned by and exclusively licenced from" Ostankino.  Are they bluffing? Mark1 13:37, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

possibly CV for review
Someone asked me for an opinion on Audio artist (and related articles submitted by Special:Contributions/128.237.11.72). They've been worked on, I'm not sure if they are now CopyViolations. Could someone give me a second opinion? RJFJR 19:23, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

Can't find discussion on image up for deletion
Hi. I just noticed on the George W. Bush page that Image:Lincoln18.jpg (sorry, I don't know how to link to it without making the entire image appear on this page) is listed as a candidate for speedy deletion on January 6th. However, I have searched and searched and cannot find where this was at all discussed or even nominated for deletion. I looked where I thought the nomination would have been listed, but it's not there. Can someone tell me where the original complaint was posted, and where I would post an objection if I were to be able to establish that the image was usable? (I don't intend to start an argument about this particular matter; I'm just trying to learn where things are for future reference.) Thanks... --Aaron 23:48, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

Why sign two templates but not the third? (table cleanup proposal)
I have a followup question to the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Copyright_problems#Why_sign_the_template.3F "Why sign the template?" discussion] above: Why do the instructions tell editors to sign the first template (the one posted to the article itself or the image description page) and the second template (the one posted on the "Today's Section" page) but not the third template (the one posted to the article creator/image uploader's talk page)? I just had someone freak out and launch a pissy personal attack on me on both his and my talk pages, because I didn't sign the templates I put on his page (he uploaded two copyvio images at the same time, so I posted two copies of the template, one for each image).

There is definitely confusion on this issue, as any random check of a few copyvio reports will show that at least half of copyvio editors do not sign the templates they post to user talk pages. And when I brought up this issue on #Wikipedia, the consensus was pretty much unanimous that editors should sign these templates even though the instructions do not explicitly say to do so.

So we have what I hope we can all agree is a confusing set of instructions, and I personally think that any change which will greatly reduce the chances of future arguments between editors is a good thing. Given that, I ask if there would there be any objection to me editing the instructions to include the ~ on the user talk page templates (and making a few minor formatting changes so that the user talk template instructions match the other template instructions design-wise), so that the table will appear as follows:

The only differences here from the version currently on the page are:


 * The addition of the ~ to the instructions regarding the addition of the nothanks or idw-cp templates to the user talk pages.
 * Boldfacing of the text that needs to be added on the user talk pages for those two templates.
 * Dewikification of the same two template names (currently they're the only two template names that are wikified in the entire table).
 * Minor edits to the wording and punctuation to maintain consistency throughout the table and to make it easier to read.
 * Removed typo in one template instruction that does not seem to affect how images are reported on the daily pages, but is a potential problem waiting to happen nevertheless. Just for safety's sake, I'm going to detail the proposed change here. Notice that I'm removing the extraneous colon from before the first instance of the word "Image":
 *  * :Image:ImageName from [insert URL here] ~ 
 * is being changed to:
 *  * Image:ImageName from [insert URL here] ~ 

Any objections? Aaron 03:06, 4 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Well, as they say in Congress, "Without objection, so ordered." I'm installing the new table. I'll keep this page on my watchlist in case any issues come up. --Aaron 22:41, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Website violating wikipedias copyright
http://www.tvave.com/CartoonNetwork-O/Oh_My_Goddess.php

Is my analysis incorrect? This is for a much earlier version of Oh My Goddess! (something like this) -- Cool CatTalk 09:40, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

This page is a mess
This page appears to be trying to serve two purposes.
 * 1) Discuss copyright in general
 * 2) Discuss specific instances of Copyvio.

I suggest we'd do better with two separate pages? Regards, Ben Aveling 12:01, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Speedy everything?
The current instructions seem to be giving people the impression that everything can be speedy deleted, whether or not its from a commercial content provider or there is chance of permission. For example, an article about John Kay (economist) using material from http://www.johnkay.com/ and I believe the user name was User:John Kay or something like that. This seems like a perfect example where we should wait and give the contributor a chance to give permission to use the material, but nonetheless it was speedy deleted. If all new copyvio is to be speedily deleted the instructions need to be updated to reflect that. If not, we need to clarify them. Kappa 16:13, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure what your point is. The instructions say, quite clearly, that "Blatant copyright infringements of commercial sources may now be "speedied"", which is precisely correct. If people are misunderstanding such a simple phrase, it is not the phrase's fault. -Splash talk 16:17, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
 * So johnkay.com is a commercial source and content from there can be speedy deleted? Kappa 16:24, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree with Kappa that this wasn't a CSD candidate, so I've undeleted it to allow the normal WP:CP process to take its course. (This is the kind of thing I was worried would start happening under this speedy deletion criterion.) --Nick Boalch?!? 16:34, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Wait - so instead of deleting it right away, its just going to be deleted in a couple of days. This is a waste of everyone's time.  --Jeffrey O. Gustafson - Shazaam! - &lt;*&gt; 16:43, 10 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Commerciality is irrelevant. It's copyvio, period, and it must go.  Ngb should not have restored it.  Also, it was not "User:John Kay" it was User:Mrball that created the page.  --Jeffrey O. Gustafson - Shazaam! - &lt;*&gt; 16:39, 10 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Please read WP:CSD criterion number 8. Speedy deletes for copyvios are quite limited. Any that do not conform to these restrictions can and should be undelted as out-of-process deletions. If you think that we should broaden the class of speedy-deletable copyvios, then start a proposal to that end. A fair number of people may well agree.s may not, depending on exactly what you propose. DES (talk) 16:45, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

As you can see the backlog here is shocking. This page is inneffective, as is the current process, and I'm going to continue to nuke obvious candidates that I come accross. IAR. --Jeffrey O. Gustafson - Shazaam! - &lt;*&gt; 16:49, 10 January 2006 (UTC)


 * IAR is supposed to be used to help the encyclopaedia. Unilaterally deleting potentially usable content is not in any way helping the encyclopaedia. If you're concerned about the backlog here, perhaps you'd like to help us clear it? --Nick Boalch?!? 16:53, 10 January 2006 (UTC)


 * (edit conflict) Deleting garbage that could get the foundation in trouble is helping the encyclopedia. And I won't touch this backlog if people are just going to whine that I deleted someone's illegal copyright violation.  This is where process is getting in the way.  IAR applies.  --Jeffrey O. Gustafson - Shazaam! - &lt;*&gt; 17:06, 10 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Cases where a seeming copyvio is not actually so come up much more often than some seem to think. The most common case is when the uploading user IS the copyright holder, or has permission.  We bite the newbies enough as it is with blanking the content and slapping a big scary copyvio notice on it; speedy deletion in these cases is much too much. —Matthew Brown (T:C) 16:59, 10 January 2006 (UTC)


 * m:Avoid copyright paranoia; we are not going to get into any trouble for having copyright violations on the site as long as we take them down on request.
 * Re the backlog: No-one is going to 'whine' at you for deleting violations that have been listed here for the requisite period. On the other hand, they are going to whine at you disrupting Wikipedia to prove a point. --Nick Boalch?!? 17:12, 10 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Where have I violated POINT? --Jeffrey O. Gustafson - Shazaam! - &lt;*&gt; 17:22, 10 January 2006 (UTC)


 * You say above you will continue to speedy delete articles where the criteria for speedy deletion don't apply, apparently because you don't agree with current policy on processing copyright violations. Looks like POINT to me. --Nick Boalch?!? 17:28, 10 January 2006 (UTC)


 * I don't delete to make a point at all, I delete to get rid of the garbage. Now if I were to redelete John Kay (economist) - that would be a POINT violation.  --Jeffrey O. Gustafson - Shazaam! - &lt;*&gt; 17:35, 10 January 2006 (UTC)


 * So you're not going to continue to speedy delete articles where the speedy deletion criteria don't apply, then? --Nick Boalch?!? 18:11, 10 January 2006 (UTC)


 * I will continue to delete articles where I feel the speedy criteria applies. --Jeffrey O. Gustafson - Shazaam! - &lt;*&gt; 19:19, 10 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Excellent. No-one can complain about that. However, your statement above that 'commerciality is irrelevant' does suggest a slightly worrying lack of understanding of when the speedy criteria apply. --Nick Boalch?!? 20:45, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

The "right" place to list images?
It has ocured to me that there is some "redundancy" in places one can list a image with a problematic license. WP:IFD, WP:PUI and WP:CP all accept images with unclear/missing/false/disputed copyright status to be listed for deletion/clearification and while the processes have somewhat different focus the same results are usualy achieved, and it often seems to be down to personal preference wich process you choose to deal with a questionable image. Do we need some clearifications in this area or is it working well enough to not be worth tampering with? Just curious, personaly I work mostly with the completely untagged images wich are speedy deletion candidates, but once in a while I come across images with blatantly wrong license info (such as game consept art labeled as PD or GFDL and what not) and become unsure just where to list them, or wether or not I should just slap the "no license" tag on them and let them be speedied if the uploader does not react after being notified. --Sherool (talk) 18:12, 10 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Images tagged with an obviously fake license should come here. Images that you suspect of being tagged with a false license should go to WP:PUI. Images without any license at all should be tagged with no license and left for speedying. --Nick Boalch?!? 18:28, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Posts moved from Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Fair use
The following posts belong here, not in Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Fair use, which discusses future wikipedia fair use policy.Travb 16:26, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Image talk:SaddamBaghdadwalkabout.jpg
Someone want to have a look at Image talk:SaddamBaghdadwalkabout.jpg? I can't for the life of me see what to do to tag it more appropriately, and the fair use justification seems solid, but it seems to be marked for deletion

By the way, is there some different place than here that I should raise a question like this? -- Jmabel | Talk 04:50, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

Logos in navboxes again
We discussed this before, and it was pretty agreed that the use of the SEPTA logo in SEPTA is OK. Zzyzx11 recently removed it, citing the fair use policy. Can we get a policy change on this? Something like "the logo of an organization is allowed on a navigational template for articles closely related to that organization"? --SPUI (talk - don't use sorted stub templates! ) 21:53, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
 * WP:FU reads "Exceptions can be made on a case-by-case basis if there is a broad consensus that doing so is necessary to the goal of creating a free encyclopedia". I would think one could argue that an exception could be made under this provision but I'd welcome other comments.  JYolkowski // talk 02:56, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

New image tag
I have created Vector-Images.com, which is based on the Commons template by the same name. I also pasted a link to the terms of service agreement that the Vector-Images.com people told us that we can use their images under, so we might have a possibility of having less fair use images to deal with due to this. Zach (Smack Back) Fair use policy 08:57, 5 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Looks like they can only be used on websites? Or has that also been fixed? --SPUI (talk - don't use sorted stub templates! ) 08:20, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Football club logos
There are various FU violations to be seen at Userboxes/Football--Doc ask? 02:09, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

Promo tags etc
Should the promo tags explicitly ask the uploader to add a source? As far as fair use goes the source - in so far as it could help establish the ownership of an image - should probably be provided.--nixie 02:34, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Yes, on the theory that an AP photo of Starlet Starbright is not fair use, but the one on her official website, made as a work for hire, is legit. I suspect some will require considerable research, especially for actors that predate the web - you'd have to trace back to someone who can certify that a digital image was scanned from the physical press kit. Stan 23:45, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Unusual ogg files
I've got a list of unusual .ogg files at User:Carnildo/Unusual Files. The unusually large ones may contain a number of full album tracks or excessively large samples, while the small ones probably include many non-ogg files that have been renamed. There's about 750 files in total; could someone help me in checking them out? --Carnildo 02:34, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
 * I uploaded Image:Svyaschennaya Voyna vocal.ogg and the song, in full, is in the public domain due to it's age. Your welcome to see me on my talk page about any files I have uploaded. Zach (Smack Back) Fair use policy 02:41, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Question
When uploading an image from source deemed to be an Original Video Animation, should we use the tv-screenshot templete or the film-screenshot templete, or does it matter? TomStar81 23:06, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

Pokémon Card Game - Copyright
How much of what is on Pokémon Trading Card Game/Fossil can be used. I want to list every Pokémon Card and its text, so how much can be used? Gerard Foley 16:56, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
 * I didn't follow the link, and know nothing about the card game, but suggest that small quotes from the rulebook should be fine, as long as one makes sure that the amount of material on Wikipedia as a whole doesn't mean that our readers cannot avoid buying the rulebook to play the game and that we don't have enough material to impact the manufacturers' sales of trivia books and the like. Jkelly 19:13, 13 January 2006 (UTC)


 * What it looks like he is doing is putting up a low-res (not print quality) scan of the card itself and putting the card information on the Wikibook page (what each card allows you to do in the game, etc.). I'd be suspicious that it was too much use, personally. The only caveate might be that one could make the argument that since the value of the copyrighted material is only invested in the fact of its being an official card (that is, knowing what the card says does not devalue the material, since owning an actual card is the source of their value) the Wikibooks version of it wouldn't be a problem. But I don't know -- that seems like a stretch to me. If it were a published "book" using that much unlicensed material, I imagine it would definitely not be fair use, which is perhaps the standard we should hold ourselves to in these instances. --Fastfission 23:02, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

More templates on tfd
I've listed a bunch of Canadian Crown Copyright tags on tfd, since they are badly written and not being used as intended, more input on the discussion would be appreciated at CanadaCopyright and others.--nixie 22:27, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

Help from admin needed
Hi. Image:Dylan jams with campbell.jpg has turned into a contentious matter. It was recently deleted for lacking copyright information, and has been re-uploaded by. Since I have been involved in the whole thing, I would appreciate it if some other admin would review the conversation at Image talk:Dylan jams with campbell.jpg and either find some way to justify this screen-capture of a bootleg video as fair use after coaxing the authorship info out of the user, or, failing that, delete the image again and caution the user about image use. Thanks. Jkelly 22:45, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

Movie characters
Consider Yoda. It has several screenshots of Yoda from the various Star Wars movies. I'm new to this game, but from what I'm reading here (and elsewhere), it seems that the claim of fair use on the screenshots would only apply to their usage in articles about the movies themselves, rather than articles about the characters.

Is this true? If so, then lots and lots of movie character pages need revision, I think. Would it be enough to indicate the name (and version, in the case of Starwars grr) of the film in a caption to each image? Some captions on Yoda do that, but not all (3 out of 8).

Or am I being too restrictive? Staecker 00:08, 16 January 2006 (UTC)


 * A lot of the article is about the movies so it is probably ok although the shear number may be cause for concern.Geni 00:39, 16 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Given that this is a fictional character, no paparazzi-style shots possible, the screenshot is pretty much your only option. If you wanted to rationalize, you could say that a fictional character is an integral part of the movie, so a screenshot of the character is no different than a screenshot illustrating a dramatic scene. For an important recurring character like Yoda, I would guess a half-dozen is reasonable - different appearances in different films, aspects of character, etc. For real-person actors, it's not so clearcut; personally I'm inclined to allow the screenshots anyway, captioned "X appearing as Y in Z". Stan 06:08, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Educational purposes?
I've spotted a couple pages (namely Auditorium Building, Chicago and Gage Building) that make extensive use of imagery from Mary Ann Sullivan's Digital Imaging Project. At the bottom of her image galleries she notes "Please feel free to use them for personal or educational purposes." and "They are not available for commercial purposes without my explicit permission." Am I correct in thinking these fall under the same umbrella as Creative Commons NonCommercial images and need to be deleted? - EurekaLott 03:27, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Yes. They are speedies per WP:CSD. -Splash talk 03:44, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
 * They're tagged now. Thanks for the pointer. - EurekaLott 04:43, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Copyright question
This is regarding the article Five O'clock Dog - a new user keeps adding the message Five O'clock Dog® is a registered trademark. to the article, and I don't think it should be there. If there are questions over the use of this name in Wikipedia then tbh the article shouldn't be there at all. I think it takes away from the encyclopedic-ness of the article to have the message there - what do other people think? -- Francs2000 10:45, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
 * No, it shouldn't be there unless it's somehow useful to the article. They don't even say to whom the trademark is registered. There is no copyright issue that I'm aware of, though IANAL. I removed the line again. -Splash talk 13:33, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
 * This page looks suspiciously like self-promotion. --ChrisRuvolo (t) 14:41, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
 * I have received the following two emails in my email inbox, the first of which I find quite patronising which is why I haven't responded to either (formatting is mine, not the user's):
 * ''Graham,
 * ''You are a valued UK citizen and should be comended for your effort to the Wikipedia project.
 * ''Intellectual Property rights are very specific. They are not a matter of opinion. Not mine or yours. The GNU license is kind of a band aid that the inventor is using to protect his project - very smart and I would do the same. This is a truly great project. It, in fact of law, does not trump or hold precedence over IP rights. Layman's terms - The Publisher of this article is not claiming that the words or structure of the article, is in itself a separate or newly copy-written material. Just that the term "Five O'clock Dog" (and the characters) is itself protected against brand def-amity, theft, confusion etc. etc. If The Inventor of Wikipedia was to apply the concept that he did not have the right to "copy" or reproduce common information that may also be trademarked then he will have to strip Wikipedia of every brand name in the database and - lets just not go there. Wikipedia is just reporting the news. For the inventor its a don't shoot the messenger thing. At the end of a day, we all will speak other brand names without their permission. That doesn't preclude the owner of the brand from using the registered symbol. - Five O'clock Dog
 * ''info - Five O'clock Dog may sell other brand Items, books, hats, dog wear, shoes etc.
 * And
 * ''Chris, Splash, Graham,
 * ''Five O'clock Dog is a Brand name, The Five O'clock Dog Book is one of the children's products. Five O'clock Dog is a family oriented product. (children's books) Everything contained in the current article is factual and relevant. If you are interested in articles that look like self promotion OR "I think it takes away from the encyclopedic-ness" try this link (which is one of many). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelle_Marie I think I would be more worried about how all the admin of this project are going to keep Wikipedia from becoming a porn link database.(respectfully stated with genuine concern for the well being and encyclopedic-ness of Wikipedia). - Five O'clock Dog
 * If anyone wants the email address of the user I'm more than willing to email it to you but I won't post it here because of spambots. From these two emails, I'm with Chris - they may deny it but it smells quite distinctly of self-promotion. Also worthy of note are the commercial links to purchase this project that were removed a number of times from the article. -- Francs2000 [[Image:Flag of the United Kingdom.svg|25px| ]] 23:41, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

IMac
On article IMac, user:Schwarzm claimed the promophoto of an IMac Image:IMacIntel.jpg to be fair use, after I had removed it once. Commonts? / Fred-Chess 03:30, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Translations and copyright
I am not quite sure what to do with the page 满汉全席. The Chinese text on the page appears clearly copyrighted (it says "中国中央电视台版权所有", which means "Chinese Central Television, all rights reserved" on the source page) but the submitter since translated it and claims his actions to be fair use, see User talk:Shaoquan. As I don't really know copyright law very well, I wanted to ask for advice here before I put the ugly copyvio notice on the page, in order to avoid to bite this newcomer. Help would be greatly appreciated, either here, at User talk:Shaoquan or on my talk page. Kusma (討論) 01:37, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
 * The translated quote following "According to CCTV" is perfectly fine and fair use. The later translation "What does the name mean?" would be fine if marked up correctly. The Chinese text should be removed or better integrated. If the entire article were a translation, it would be a strong derivative work that cannot be released under GFDL, and fair use would not apply. Deco 01:42, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
 * All of the text is a translation, except for the "What does the name mean?" section. Kusma (討論) 01:59, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Atribution of external GFDL sources.
Case in point Cal Schenkel, the source it was copied from is actualy the Cal Schenkel] article at another Wiki wich also use the GFDL license. So no problem right? However then I started thinking; GFDL require the original editors to be atributed, so how do I do that for an external source? Is it enough to point to the external source where people can just click the "history" link themselves, or do I have to list the editors of the original article, or even copy the entire edit history (like when you move a image to commons), and how to do that for an article without making it "ugly". --Sherool (talk) 16:05, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Well, when we transwiki articles, my understanding is that we do a copy-paste of the history page onto Talk, and provide a link as well. So I suppose that will do in other cases, too. There is also a little-used template that I guess can go on articles to yell "GFDL" at a potential copyvio tagger: Gnuweb. -Splash talk 16:28, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Indian folk dances
This article appears to be a copyvio of various parts of dances.mayukhi.com. Either that, or the website is using WP's material and claiming copyright over it. Can an expert please take a look? Kappa 12:26, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Gray's Anatomy
A number of images have been added from the online edition of Gray's anatomy. (E.g. Gray347.png)  (In fact, they've been added to Wikimedia commons, but I don't know where to register my concern there.)  The images have been marked as "public domain". However, while the books themselves from which the images are take are no doubt public domain, the images are almost certainly taken from the online edition at http://www.bartleby.com/107/

Are these images really public domain? If a contributor took the time to scan the images themselves, then I can see that the images would be fine. However, since it's bartleby.com who have done the scanning, are we really allowed to nick their images? (Worse than that, the Talk:Gray's Anatomy suggests that we've also taken some text from the website, which is no doubt from their OCR software.

I've no experience about US copyright law, but in the UK there's something called "mechanical copyright", which refers to the copyright in the representation of the images. (Ie even if the images themselves are out of copyright, specific scans of the images might still be copyrighted. I'd appreciate it if one of the more experienced people check over the situation. Bluap 13:22, 27 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Yes, they're fine. It doesn't matter who scanned them. Scanning or otherwise reproducing a two-dimensional original does not give rise to a new copyright on that scan under U.S. copyiright law. Since the 1918 edition of Gray's Anatomy (the one at Bartleby's) is in the public domain, so are the scans. See WP:PD, "Uncreative works". The relevant U.S. case is Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp., and the U.S. Supreme Court explicitly rejected difficulty of labor or expense as a consideration in copyrightability in Feist v. Rural. Lupo 15:13, 27 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the quick response. Bluap 16:32, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Problem: Display of entire images
(I also posted this under the technical section at village pump.) The instructions at WP:CP currently state that article-cv should be used to list images on that page. However, if one follows this, the entire image is displayed because it isn't prefixed with a colon ( : ). Is there another template that should be used for images? There is no image-cv. -- Gyrofrog (talk) 16:12, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
 * There is no seperate template. However if you marked the image using the &#123;{imagevio}} template it will generate the text you need to insert into the lising, complete with the leading colon, so simply copy that. --Sherool (talk) 18:16, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
 * You're right, that method does generate the text, including the colon, for the image in question. The WP:CP page doesn't mention that the colon is required (I know that it is, but for some reason thought it was automatically generated for images). The instruction reads thusly: "Go to today's section and add: * Image:ImageName from [insert URL here] ~" (I have gone back and added a colon.) Thanks, -- Gyrofrog (talk) 19:16, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Rather belatedly, I've created image-cv with the obvious auto-colon. This is minor instruction creep -vs- reduction of confusion, and {article-cv} will still work with the colon. I've amended imagevio accordingly. -Splash talk 23:23, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Category:Free use images
This category is just brimming with "copyvios". I've been spending the last few days just going over the most "suspicoius" looking images there and I've retagged like a 1000 obvius fair use images that where hiding in there. I'm talking albumcovers, tv and movie screenshots, logos and such and a huge number of promo pictures. Not to mention the tonnes of images that have no source, just a tag that says the the copyright holder allow anyone to use it for anyting or some such, not a word on why. Now a few of those are "legit" uploaded by the photogapher without as much as a "I made this" in the summary, but many, if not most are lifted from somewhere else. It seems people are reading the tag selectively and because there is "copyrighted" in the tag name people just dump copyrighted stuff in there without reading the actual text of the license. I've seen things like "This image is owned by so and so, allowed for non-commercial purposes only all rights reserved", followed by the "The copyright holder have released all rights to this work and allow it to be used for any purpose bla bla bla" license tag. It's kinda depressing. That's on top of the regular "well there is no copyright notice on the site so it's public domain" kind of misunderstandings. Anyway I've come to the conclution that I'm not even scratching the surface of this one on my own so a few more eyeballs on this category would be nice. It's long overdue for some serious "spring cleaning" IMHO. --Sherool (talk) 23:30, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree. It should say just "free use", not "copyrighted free use". And it shouldn't have a giant copyright symbol on it either. This is emphasizing its differences from public domain rather than its differences from every other license for no particular reason. Deco 03:42, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

Proposal to avoid deletion of possibly good articles
Recently, a good article was incorrectly flagged as a copyvio, and subsequently deleted. After some time and a series of misunderstandings, it was reinstated. However, it could have easily been avoided by simply contacting the article's creator so that the copyvio notice was actually noticed! In this article's case, the original text of the article contained the alleged copyvio, and the creator of the article was still an active contributor. However, the copyvio notice wasn't noticed, so went unchallenged. May I propose that when a copyvio notice is placed on a page, the original creator of the article is contacted as well, as a matter of course. Then there is no possibility of the process going unnoticed. (It's all too easy to miss something with several thousand articles on a watchlist).

In addition, for a non-admin, it was impossible to correctly recreate the "crumb trail" of activity that led to the article's deletion, since the article history was also deleted, and the deletion log only contained the barest summary. It is this that led to some unnecessary misunderstanding. I'm not sure what should be done about this, but a way to have a more complete picture of the deletion process after the event could be very useful in avoiding a repeat of this. Graham 03:37, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
 * For the latter problem, I'd suggest perhaps a copyvio deletion script that includes information like the nominator and nomination date. Deco 03:40, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

/Temp Redirects
I have a question as a new admin trying to make some headway on this page. If I move a /Temp page to replace a copyvio, is it considered acceptable (if not totally in strict compliance with WP:CSD#R) to delete the redirect? I can't see why not (no one would ever stumble on those pages), but if anyone objects at all, I won't do it. Superm401 - Talk 01:21, 11 February 2006 (UTC)


 * I have done this a number of times in the past. If it isn't what is supposed to be done, then I'm going to have to check quite a number of my edits! Usually, I delete the main article page, then move the temp page over, and then delete the redirect. I only move the page if the entire temp page history does not have any copyrighted material in it. Maybe we should add a little note to the CSD page that these redirects can be speedied too? --HappyCamper 18:15, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
 * I've been deleting those redirects too. I think it would be better to make it part of the copyvio cleanup process rater than further cluttering up CSD with these things. --Sherool (talk) 21:38, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
 * The reason we keep redirects after moves is just so that the once-evidently-useful article title is retained. That's clearly not the case in /Temp pages, and I for one delete them. After all, the moving admin becomes the sole editor of the /Temp page after the move and it's only content ever is the redirect, so nothing at all is lost in the deletion, not even breakage of out-of-Wiki links. I see someone has added this to the CSD. Good move. -Splash talk 23:08, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Article copied from website by its author
Folks, what is the policy or guideline on articles that have been copied from a website by the author of that website?? In particular, check out Laguna Catemaco and this site. The editor, DonGringo, has copied quite a few of his webpages into Wikipedia (they are not quite written in encyclopedic style, but that's another question). Madman 19:28, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Speedy deleting of copyvio edits at Hannah Teter?
Hi. Is there any compelling reason for me to not simply delete the offending edits at Hannah Teter? Given that a number of editors are removing the copyvio notice from a high-profile article in order to create a real article, it would be less of a pain to simply let people go ahead and work rather than having to monitor the thing to ensure that the copyvio tag remains. Thoughts? Jkelly 21:51, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

YES. God just let anyone do it. Why does it have to be so heirarchical. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ivymike21 (talk • contribs)

Yes, this is one of the problems with wikipedia. As it has gotten bogged down in structure and heirarchy and policies, it isn't able to change and adapt as fast as it once could. Hannah Teter is a current event, she won a gold medal YESTERDAY (13/02/06) and her page right now is a tiny stub marred with a huge copyright notice. Wait a week to change that, and she'll be yesterday's news. This signed contribution was the work of IvyMike21, bub.


 * I've just gone ahead and done it. Jkelly 22:35, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Copyright problems/2006 February 16
Is there a reason why Feb 16 is excluded from this combined page? The JPS 02:33, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

Delete history? Revert? Which is it?
For a very long time, I've been told to put all copyvios here, rather than revert to the previous version in history (when one exists) because we want to remove it from the history, right? So now I come here to report Band-e Amir and the box on WP:CP says, hey, just revert! Ignore the history! Will someone please tell me what we're supposed to do? --Golbez 04:53, 18 February 2006 (UTC)


 * The project page clearly mentions that we should revert to a non-CV version if such a version exists. If we start deleting articles based on latest version, lots of trolls would start putting CV material in genuine articles to get them deleted ;) We need to delete the article only when we cannot revert to non CV versions. --Gurubrahma 10:16, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
 * I am unsure of how long it has been this way, but it's been at least a while. I didn't change the then-standing instructions when I refactored the header into its present form. If someone contacts the Foundation requesting removal from history, then we will do it (I think). What I do is:
 * Revert to a copyvio-free revision if you can;
 * Delete if you can't.
 * But, if the copyvio runs from the start of the history thru some point where the article was comprehensively rewritten in place, then truncate the history to that point. -Splash talk 23:48, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

List of NP-complete problems copyvio?
I'm uncertain whether List of NP-complete problems is a copyright violation or not. Most of the problems are listed in exactly the same categories and in the same order as in the famous book Computers and Intractability; I have personally verified this. Since copyright has been shown to protect the organization of a collection of facts, even if the facts themselves cannot be protected, would it stand to reason that this is copyright violation?

If so, what's the appropriate way to clean it up? Turn it into a "naked" list of problems in random order and wait for it to be recategorised in some other way? Thanks for any input. Deco 23:41, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Can someone please answer this? Deco 19:15, 25 February 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm not a mathematician, but it seems to me that there should be more than one name for each of these problems. It would not be a copyright violation if someone were to use alternate names for some, removed some of the ones with borderline notability, and added a few. It would help if they were organized in a different way as well: folding "Iso- and other morphisms" into "Misc", or dividing "Compression and representation" into two groups. – Quadell (talk) (bounties) 23:11, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

Idea for "Copyright problems without online sources"
I have an idea for dealing with these. See Wikipedia talk:Copyright problems/Without online source, and let me know what you think. – Quadell (talk) (bounties) 14:23, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Since no one has objected, and since we all want to cut down on the backlog, I'm going to go ahead and implement this. Similarly, I've posted an open question at Wikipedia talk:Copyright problems/Fair use claims. Let me know what you think. – Quadell (talk) (bounties) 20:40, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

A new problem in Wikipedia copyvio policy
It looks like we have a situation now that's not addressed by Wikipedia's current copyright problems policy.

On 12 February, the Robert Hoyzer article was listed as a copyvio because it matched an article in The Peninsula, a newspaper in Qatar, on 26 December 2005.

Only one problem... The Peninsula violated Wikipedia's copyright, not the other way around. The Peninsula story virtually matches Wikipedia's version of the Hoyzer article as it existed on 26 December. The Hoyzer article has existed as a non-stub since 27 January 2005. Matter of fact, I recognized several of my own edits to the Wikipedia article in the Peninsula piece.

The problem this scenario brings up: Why is there not a speedy process for resolving a false copyvio when it's clear that Wikipedia's copyright was violated? — Dale Arnett 02:53, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
 * There is. Remove the tag with an appropriate edit summary, and make a note on the talk page about why, for future reference. It may also be worth noting this somewhere...like WP:AN or somesuch, just for community notice. This isn't a new problem, there were articles a while back in a newspaper that appeared to take Wikipedia content pretty shamelessly.-Splash talk 03:05, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Copyright
Hello. I saw this article - Luton Riots. The entire article is a copy from here. But I did not tag it for sppedy deletion because it says that the site from which the copy is done should have intention of making profit. This url has a .org suffix, which means that it must not be making profit from it, nor is it a commercial site. So what would be the appropriate way to tag it? Or is it not a copyright problem at all? - Aksi great 13:54, 23 February 2006 (UTC)


 * The text does seem to be copied verbatim, which makes it a copyright violation. It doesn't matter what the URL suffix is. I don't know whether it would be appropriate to tag it for speedy-deletion or not, but it would certainly be appropriate to list the image here on WP:CP as a copyvio. All the best, – Quadell (talk) (bounties) 14:09, 23 February 2006 (UTC)


 * It's not speediable. It's still a copyvio. Deco 17:52, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

Backlogs
I just wonder why there are still very old cases that have not been cleared.--Jusjih 09:33, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Because no admin yet got around to it. For the offline cases, we need someone who a) has the offline source to b)come to this page and c)be an admin if necessary and delete it. It's just human delay and lack of appropriate resources. -Splash talk 12:30, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

case-specific questions: image copyright/fair use with editing?
copyright/fair use or not:
 * 1) user takes a low-res dvd cover from a web page and uploads it to wikipeida to use (bad?)
 * 2) user takes a low-res dvd cover from a web page, auto-corrects colors (filter), resizes the image, changes format from .jpg to .png, uploads it to wikipeida to use (ok?)
 * I guess my question is whether taking an image that you could acquire yourself is ok... and if not, if editing the picture (cleaning up colors, resizing, changing format, etc.) and then using it is ok?

-- geekyßroad . meow?'' 06:32, 25 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Either of those might be fair use or not, depending on how they're used. If used in an article about the DVD, then either would work. If the DVD cover shows a picture of the Eiffel Tower, and it's used in the Eiffel Tower article, that probably would not be fair. But yes, altering an image is still fair use, so long as the use is fair to begin with. – Quadell (talk) (bounties) 15:14, 25 February 2006 (UTC)
 * changing the photo in this way is called making a derivative work. The copyright of the original applies to the derivative.   If the derivative is unique enough, you may have an addtional copyright claim of your own to the new modifications, but the underlying copyright on the original work still applies. Thatcher131 00:29, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Public Domain Text
Is public domain text copied wholesale from other sources like Bion 8 acceptable for wikipedia? It seems a bit wrong to me, as we then license the text under a more restrictive license withpout having put any creative effort in to it. --Martyman- (talk) 09:21, 28 February 2006 (UTC)


 * It's from NASA so I think it's ok...? There is a link back to the original page hidden away in there too. I am hoping it will be built upon, by the way. Pengo 09:26, 28 February 2006 (UTC) (the one who made the page)


 * Legally, it's acceptable. It's best if the text is wikified and improved upon, however. – Quadell (talk) (bounties) 13:20, 28 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Cool, I remember seeing some instructions somewhere on including text from the 1911B. I wonder if it is appropriate. But with wikipedia running as slow as it is I am not going to even bother looking for it at the moment. --Martyman- (talk) 21:53, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

Blanking by anon IP
I tagged the biography section of Beverley Knight because it admitted it was cut and paste from her official web site. Later the same day an anon IP with only 1 edit removed the copyvio tag and left it blank. Curiously, all the content on the page came from a series of other anon IPs who only edit Beverley Knight and her music. So this may be the original author, or it may be something else. Should I restore the tag as vandalism? Thatcher131 00:23, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Yes, that's the appropriate action. – Quadell (talk) (bounties) 14:49, 12 March 2006 (UTC)