Wikipedia talk:Copyrights/Archive 16

Police photos and selfies of deceased persons
I've been writing a few law and crime articles and would appreciate some advice by the experts. I believe that I can use these images for fair use but wanted to check if any of these situations might be considered public domain (allowing larger pictures on Commons than small ones on en.wiki) or if there are other considerations I should know. The jurisdiction is Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Also, what is done if the photographer is unknown or wishes to remain anonymous for privacy reasons? – Reidgreg (talk) 18:14, 14 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Self-portrait photographs (selfies) taken by a person now deceased
 * Widely published photograph (in a section discussing said photograph)
 * Police photographs (wanted notices, missing persons notices)
 * Police photographs submitted as evidence in court and published by the media


 * None of those would be PD by default in Canada, although it's of course possible that an author would release an image under a free license. If the author is unknown, Canadian copyright persists for 50 years from publication or 75 years from creation, whichever happens first. Nikkimaria (talk) 01:22, 15 February 2019 (UTC)

Rip-off of International Directory of Company Histories
There is lots of website re-published  International Directory of Company Histories. For example, encyclopedia.com version of Stouffer Corp. seem fine that it stated the copyright owner Thomson Gale, as well as stating the author of the article April S. Dougal. The Terms and Conditions point 2.1 seem stated that the site had properly licensed the content.

However, almost exact rip-off was appeared in [www.company-histories.com/Stouffer-Corp-Company-History.html company-histories.com] and fundinguniverse.com, which it rather seem someone write a web scrapper to copy the content from somewhere else (or using OCR?), which oddly omitting the name of the author and attributing Thomson Gale as copyright owner.

Yet another website [ https://www.referenceforbusiness.com/history2/39/Stouffer-Corp.html referenceforbusiness.com] had republished the same article from International Directory of Company Histories, but don't even stated it was from the book. Despite the website may be licensed to use the content as claimed by the [www.advameg.com/contact-oth.php owner] of referenceforbusiness.com (i had stated the same thing in Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 259).

Since some of the website that republish International Directory of Company Histories had incomplete or entire licenisng attribution was missing, (e.g. fundinguniverse.com's term and licenses page are in fact not exist) can we assume all (but encyclopedia.com, answer.com haven't check but they did claiming they acquired the licensing of the content) are pirated copy and add those domains to the black list (before that, may be converting them all to encyclopedia.com or answer.com) Matthew hk on public computer (talk) 08:17, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

Help Desk question was unanswered
I asked if the problem had been solved here.—  Vchimpanzee  •  talk  •  contributions  •  16:05, 23 March 2019 (UTC)


 * I've answered it on their talk page.  Hut 8.5  16:30, 23 March 2019 (UTC)
 * Thanks.— Vchimpanzee  •  talk  •  contributions  •  16:32, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

Protected edit request on 1 April 2019
Hemahejash (talk) 10:24, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

Hemalatha Gopal — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hemahejash (talk • contribs) 10:25, 1 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Red question icon with gradient background.svg Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. – Þjarkur (talk) 11:27, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

Poor example
Since withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq is history, present tense for "a [U.S.] soldier on patrol in Iraq" should be altered. Or maybe an entirely different example chosen. ☆ Bri (talk) 18:07, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

Excerpts of copyrighted music
I wrote this on Wikidata, at d:Wikidata:Property proposal/quotation or excerpt (music):

Is my understanding of this correct? For example, would it be legally acceptable for me to add the first four bars of the piano score of to its Wikidata item, even though the score will most likely not enter the public domain in the US until the 22nd century? (The four bars comprise right-hand arpeggiated chords, left-hand block chords, a tempo marking, pedal markings, chord names and chord diagrams. If I were to elaborate a little further all four bars could be entirely reconstructed from this description.) Jc86035 (talk) 09:42, 6 April 2019 (UTC)


 * Different wikis have different rules as regards fair use - for example, this wouldn't fly on Commons, and although I don't know whether Wikidata has a specific rule in that regard I would expect based on conversations around licensing there that this might be a problem. Nikkimaria (talk) 16:01, 6 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Wikidata does not have any sort of non-free content policy, although the existence of indicates that some degree of fair-use quotation is acceptable. Perhaps following the NFCC policy would be a good start. (I don't think the different license would have any effect.)
 * Autumn Leaves (1945 song) (copyrighted until the start of 2040), Edelweiss (song) (start of 2050) and Close Encounters of the Third Kind (composer is living) contain excerpts in LilyPond form. Presumably either these are fair use or should be removed? I don't know if they would still be fair use if added to Wikidata, because they might not have contextual significance (NFCC criterion 8).
 * d:Wikidata:Project chat/Archive/2018/05 could be helpful here, although it's mainly about database rights (other discussions). There is little legal precedent and Wikidata has never received any DMCA notices. Jc86035 (talk) 10:50, 7 April 2019 (UTC)


 * It would make most sense to have this conversation at Wikidata. Nikkimaria (talk) 13:09, 7 April 2019 (UTC)
 * I've made a post on the project chat. Jc86035 (talk) 12:21, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

Discussion on copyright status of biography.jrank.org
There is a discussion on the copyright status of biography.jrank.org, which appears to republish text from various Gale publications. If you're interested, please participate at. —  Newslinger  talk   17:30, 10 April 2019 (UTC)

"Linking to copyrighted works"
In the third paragraph of this section, the term "Internet archives" appears in both the first and second sentences. In the former, "Internet" is capitalized, in the latter, it is not. These sentences should be reconciled, preferably by capitalizing it in both, although lowercase in both would be far more preferable than the seemingly random "one-and-one" appearing now. Joefromrandb (talk) 07:17, 17 May 2019 (UTC)

Protected edit request on 2 August 2019
The embeded external link to c:COM:Copyright rules in WP:COPY should be converted to an interwiki link. -- Marchjuly (talk) 04:26, 2 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Done. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 09:07, 2 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Thank you . -- Marchjuly (talk) 13:01, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

RfC on copyright status of Company-Histories.com
There is an RfC on the copyright status of Company-Histories.com, which appears to republish text from Gale's International Directory of Company Histories. If you're interested, please participate at. —  Newslinger  talk   14:22, 1 April 2019 (UTC)


 * Actually i had started a thread but no one replied. Matthew hk on public computer (talk) 11:58, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

Mention of EU court ruling
I ask an admin to confirm a small addition I made a few months ago. I realised only now that the page was fully protected at the time and I could edit it only because of global permissions. Nemo 12:41, 24 August 2019 (UTC)
 * ✅ thank you for the notice . — xaosflux  Talk 12:52, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

Noticeboard discussion on copyright status of documents hosted by Semantic Scholar
There is a noticeboard discussion on the copyright status of documents hosted by Semantic Scholar. If you're interested, please participate at. —  Newslinger  talk   06:36, 25 August 2019 (UTC)

Protected edit request on 24 August 2019
In the "Works by the United States Federal Government" section, please:
 * Change the link to the Law Information Institute to use  instead of

In the "Linking to copyrighted works" section, please:
 * Replace the link to, which redirects to Internet Archive, with a link to Web archiving, the general concept
 * Change the link to the University of Houston Law Center to use  instead of

In the "See also" section, please:
 * Remove the link to, which redirects to WP:Copyright problems, which is linked to further down in the list
 * Change the link to FAQ/Contributing to point to FAQ/Contributing, the relevant section
 * Remove the link to m:Permission grant extent, which is tagged as historical
 * Remove the link to m:Wikipedia and copyright issues, which is tagged as historical

Thanks, --DannyS712 (talk) 21:30, 24 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Yes check.svg Done Mostly done, except changing the uh.edu link. The canonical website linked is at http. Izno (talk) 15:16, 25 August 2019 (UTC)

Linking to copyrighted works
Stated in that section is: "Knowingly and intentionally directing others to a site that violates copyright has been considered a form of contributory infringement in the United States (Intellectual Reserve v. Utah Lighthouse Ministry [1]);". That case, not only being old (1999), and is only at the level of a District Court, is only binding in one Federal judicial district, the State of Utah. Has this case, or a similar one, been upheld at an appeals court level, or even the US Supreme Court? How about a contrary ruling in one of the 12 (Circuits 1-11 and DC) Appeals Circuits? It was also issued relatively shortly after the Internet became available to a majority of the American public. It is also impractical to determine where a given website physically is, or if it is actually bound by the laws of a particular nation: Websites can be "anywhere", and people who cite them do not necessarily know the laws of whichever country the material is hosted in. Another factor is the passage of the DMCA, or Digital Millenium Copyright Act. See: http://www.ipinbrief.com/dmca-contributory-infringement-vicarious-liability/. It would be utterly impractical for WP to dig through all of these factors on its own; The only realistic path is to allow copyright holders to make claims, where they believe them to be valid. Aardvark231 (talk) 04:48, 19 August 2019 (UTC)


 * Wikipedia doesn't expect you to do exhaustive research into a site before linking to it. However if you know that a link contains a copyright violation, or is likely to, then don't link to it. That's all the policy says. As this is a policy with legal considerations amateurs should not be attempting to rewrite the legal parts anyway.  Hut 8.5  06:45, 19 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Yes. But by "legal parts" do you mean the parts which are drawn from the Terms of use? If not, can you point out what lawyer wrote the section in question or what legal opinion it is based on? I don't see anything relevant at Wikilegal, for instance. Nemo 16:13, 19 August 2019 (UTC)
 * When it comes to adding external links, the burden tends to fall upon the editor wanting to add the links to establish a consensus that the link should be added per WP:ELBURDEN; this is similar to to WP:BURDEN when it comes to article content in general. I think the same reasoning can be applied here based upon WP:ELNEVER; the burden seems to fall upon those wanting to add a link to establish that it is clearly not a copyright violation, not the other way around; moreover, whenever there's any reasonable doubt, the link probably shouldn't be added. -- Marchjuly (talk) 06:50, 19 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Marchjuly, your interpretation is practically the opposite of Hut 8.5's. I suggest to re-read the guidelines and see if perhaps there was a misunderstanding. For instance, where do you draw your "any reasonable doubt" criterion, which is quite different from "Knowingly and intentionally"? Once we identify what parts of the guidelines are unclear, we might want to clarify them.
 * I'll also point out that for sources the guideline is at WP:LINKVIO and WP:ELNO doesn't apply. Nemo 16:13, 19 August 2019 (UTC)
 * I didn't mention ELNO, but ELNEVER does seem to specifically apply to such a thing. Regardless, ELNO, ELBURDEN and ELNEVER are all subsections of WP:EL, which does seems applicable. As for "reasonable doubt", I was basing that on my reading of If there is reason to believe that a website has a copy of a work in violation of its copyright, do not link to it. in item 1 of ELNEVER and However, if you know or reasonably suspect that an external Web site is carrying a work in violation of the creator's copyright, do not link to that copy of the work. from WP:COPYLINK; so, I don't see what I wrote as being practically the opposite from Hut 8.5's comment as you're claiming. The burden still, at least in my opinion, falls on those wanting to include a link to demonstrate that it's clearly not a copyright violation, not the other way around. Nobody has the right to add links or any other type of content to Wikipedia and Wikipedia is not obligated to host links or content just because someone wants to add it. Editors can be bold, but they are expected, in principle, to discuss when their edits are challenged by another editor. So, that should also apply to an external link whose source is questionable per COPYLINK. It seems in such cases that removing the link as a potential copyright violation is what COPYLINK is asking use to do as a precaution until any concerns about the link can be resolved. -- Marchjuly (talk) 02:22, 20 August 2019 (UTC)
 * WP:ELPOINTS: "This guideline does not apply to inline citations or general references". It's practically the opposite because you reverse the burden of proof compared to what Hut 8.5 said. It's also impossible to prove a negative (absence of any reasonable doubt), especially on something we have no direct information about: how do you suggest that happens in practice? If I raise a doubt about 10k links/articles at once, are now all the editors of those articles forced to remove all those links all of the sudden from their references until they manage to file 10k lawsuits to prove that every usage is cleared by some court? Nemo 09:50, 20 August 2019 (UTC)
 * We weren't discussing (at least I didn't think we were) adding a link as an inline citation, but rather adding a link as an external link to the "External links" section. However, even if we were discussing a link added as part of a citation, WP:ELNEVER clearly states Policy: material that violates the copyrights of others per contributors' rights and obligations should not be linked, whether in an external-links section or in a citation. and this is further clarified by WP:EL. Once again, I don't think I've posted anything that is practically the opposite of However if you know that a link contains a copyright violation, or is likely to, then don't link to it. You seem to be interpreting "know" as meaning with "100% certainty", whereas I think However, if you know or reasonably suspect that an external Web site is carrying a work in violation of the creator's copyright, do not link to that copy of the work. as stated in WP:COPYLINK doesn't necessarily mean 100% certainty. I'm not suggesting links be removed on whim and perhaps "reasonably expect" is too open to interpretation. However, if an editor removes a link and another editor disagrees with its removal, then I think the burden of discussing the link and establishing a consensus in favor of re-adding it (perhaps even on WP:ELN) falls on the person wanting to re-add the link; moreover, this discussion probably should take place prior to the link being re-added. If a consensus is established in favor of re-adding the link, then it will be re-added; if not, it won't. A local consensus, however, cannot supersede a community-wide policy so eventually a community discussion might be needed to sort things out. Your example about one editor questioning/removing 10k links/articles at once sounds a bit WP:POINTy and would likely be considered WP:TE and WP:DE more than anything else; however, if there was a formal RFC about the suitability of a certain source/link and the consensus reached through that RFC was the link shouldn't be added to any Wikipedia pages at all, then all those instances where the link is being used should be removed per that consensus. -- Marchjuly (talk) 13:26, 20 August 2019 (UTC)
 * ELPOINTS's reference to citations means that if you use a copyrighted source as a reference, you can link to the copyrighted source in the citation. If that source is infringing someone's copyright (e.g., someone reposted a WSJ.com article), then it is better to link to the original source rather than the copy. In general with copyrights, since you can't prove a negative as you say, we want the source to be explicitly published under a free license; lack of a copyright notice is not usually sufficient to show a free-license, as copyright exists the moment content is "fixed in a tangible form". All that said, as Hut originally mentioned, we don't require exhaustive research into the copyright status, but it also comes with the risk of being summarily removed by another editor who thinks it may be. At that point it will require resolving the question. CrowCaw 16:20, 20 August 2019 (UTC)
 * The original message by Aardvark231 quoted WP:COPYLINKS and did not mention external links, so I think it was a general comment. It's fine to mention that the "external links" section has strict rules (due to being abused more often) but some of the messages above seem to forget that links in general, and citations in particular, follow different rules.
 * Given the continued confusion in this area, we may consider a few changes:
 * "if you know or reasonably suspect that an external Web site is carrying a work in violation of the creator's copyright" → "if an external website is known to carry a work in violation of copyright";
 * add after the previous sentence: "thanks to a final judgment against it or an identical case in its home jurisdiction our in the USA" (otherwise we would have stopped linking Google Books for ten years until the Google Books Settlement came);
 * replace "Linking to a page that illegally distributes" with "Linking to a page known to illegally distribute" (otherwise the bad light would have inundated us for those ten years);
 * replace "a site hosting the lyrics of many popular songs without permission from their copyright holders" with "a site providing access to video streaming of popular movies despite contrary court rulings", because 1) lyrics sites are often complex cases, claiming fair use and so on; 2) most of them nowadays gain licenses and it's impossible to know details about it; 3) even Google search would fall under this prohibition if strictly interpreted (see recent kerfuffle); 4) it's easy to find court rulings on streaming, like Pelispedia, which is a more compelling example; 5) it's not only about "hosting", one can be sentenced for less clear-cut cases as well.
 * These are relatively minor changes, in that they don't automatically resolve the matter in either direction for the most commonly debated cases. They would only nudge the discussions towards a more constructive method. Nemo 13:20, 24 August 2019 (UTC)
 * I think what you're missing here is that the term "external links" does not only mean "links added to an 'External links' section"; it means any link to a external/outside website (i.e. not an internal link (a.k.a Wikilink)) added to an article. So, even links added as part of a citation are external links to third-party websites. All links to external websites used anywhere in an article are, in principle, subject to WP:EL and this is stated in the very first sentence of that page. An "External links" section is just the preferred way of presenting such links when they aren't being used as inline citations or general references; moreover, WP:ELNEVER and WP:EL apply to all external links, even those not used in an "External links" section. -- Marchjuly (talk) 14:57, 24 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Aardvark231 was a sock of Slyfox4908 and thus not allowed to edit - we typically strike through sock edits and I've done that. Doug Weller  talk 15:20, 25 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Marchjuly, thanks for pursuing additional clarity but no, I'm not confusing anything. External links explicitly excludes citations and references in the body of the article (and inline external links are generally to be avoided), so in practice it's about the "external links" section and similar. On the other hand, WP:COPYLINKS applies to all external links. Nemo 17:56, 25 August 2019 (UTC)
 * I'm actually not disagreeing with you about citations and references; I'm only saying that WP:ELNEVER (and WP:EL#cite_note-copyvio_exception-1), which is part of WP:EL, does apply to all external links (including citations and references). So, at least that one part of WP:EL does apply here. If a link is deemed to be a copyright violation per COPYLINK (or ELNEVER), then it shouldn't be added (even as a citation); furthermore, if an editor isn't sure but believes/thinks the source of the link might contain copyright violations, it would be best for them to avoid linking to it and seek input from others. In cases when there's clear disagreement over whether the link is a COPYLINK/ELNEVER violation, things should be discussed and the link only be considered OK to add if a consensus has been established that it's not a violation. Even if a link is clearly determined not to be a COPYLINK/ELNEVER violation, then there is still no automatic right of usage. If it's intended to be used as a citation and its value as such is challenged, then it should be discussed on the article's talk page or WP:RSN and a consensus established as to whether it should be used; if it's intended to be used as an external link and its value as such is challenged, then it should be discussed on the article's talk page or at WP:ELN. In either case, the burden (WP:BURDEN and WP:ELBURDEN) is upon the editor wanting to add the citation/link to establish a consensus in favor of adding it.The OP (who has since been confirmed to be a sock) wanted to add a link to a particular article, but other editors were disagreeing. The main disagreement was about whether the link was a violation of COPYLINK, and the OP strongly believed that the COPYLINK policy either wasn't applicable or was wrong altogether; so, the OP posted here to try and get/propose a change in policy to strengthen their argument. Even if the COPYLINK policy was changed, however, that wouldn't mean (even though the OP seems to think it would) that the link would automatically OK to add; when this was pointed out to the OP, they started posting stuff about there being some kind of conspiracy (by those opposed/afraid of the content in question) to keep the link out of Wikipedia and accusing others of aiding this conspiracy.All policies/guidelines probably should be reassessed/reviewed every now and then, and now might actually be the right time to do this for COPYLINK. WP:COPY is, however, a really major policy with legal considerations; so, changing one part would likely have a huge impact. What you're proposing might actually be a good thing, but it's probably not wise for a few editors to decide to do. It would be better for something like this to go through a WP:RFC involving lots of members of the community to see whether there really is a strong consensus of making such a change. -- Marchjuly (talk) 22:09, 25 August 2019 (UTC); {Note: Post edited my Marchjuly to add the word "might" to the second to last sentence. -- 07:35, 7 October 2019 (UTC)]

CiteSeerX copyrights and linking
Are there any concerns about linking to CiteSeerX without first checking the link and verifying the copyright status? AManWithNoPlan (talk) 16:21, 20 February 2019 (UTC)
 * 1) CiteSeerX is a federally funded, state-associate college run site
 * 2)  and citation include it as a parameter
 * 3) CiteSeerX has a DMCA link on each page
 * 4) Federal immunity links:   you must register copyright and the feds are largely immune
 * 5) State immunity links: a copyright violation case brought by a photographer against a state university in USA: Indiana 1:16-cv-02463-TWP-DML and similarly in Kentucky. And Ohio, Indiana, Florida (more elaborately, with consideration of "established state procedure to deprive of property" and due process), Michigan, Michigan again
 * 6) I am refering to filling in the template parameter, not linking to a PDF
 * We cannot be 100 % sure that a court would clear CiteSeerX/Penn State University, but then every single thing out there on the internet is potentially subject to copyright litigation. What matters is that we cannot possibly be considered to "know or reasonably suspect" that CiteSeerX operations infringe copyright in USA, as there is no relevant precedent warning us it could, and indeed it's a reputable and solid institution which would likely have a very strong case in court based on various precedents. As armchair lawyers we can make hypotheses about how it could end up on the wrong side of the law, but until something happens in the real world out there they're just hypotheses; in articles we would require extraordinary sources for such an WP:EXTRAORDINARY claim as the potential illegality of CiteSeerX, or a fortiori of the linking to it or even the reuse of articles linking to it. Nemo 13:10, 27 February 2019 (UTC)
 * That is a somewhat one-sided and limited presentation of the issue. A more comprehensive discussion can be found at Edit filter/Requested/Archive_12. Also pinging who initially raised the issue and may wish to be aware of this discussion. However, a central point is that CiteSeerX may feel they can get away with things (are unlikely to be sued, or unlikely to lose if sued) under various academic fair use theories; but these do not apply to Wikipedia and our reusers, and our standard isn't actually a legal calculus of risk but a (more conservative) policy prohibiting linking to such material. It is long established policy on Wikipedia that we do not link to known or probable copyright violations: which is why the argument above focuses on claiming there are no copyright violations on CiteSeerX. The above is also in the context of a bot automatically adding links to CiteSeerX, which is why the argument is focussed on establishing that adding such links do not require any human judgement and verification of copyright status (which an automated process is unable to provide). In other words, I think this (WT:C) is the right venue to discuss this issue. --Xover (talk) 06:21, 28 February 2019 (UTC)
 * that’s exactly why I started this discussion here. It’s not really Bot related question other than a tangential outcome of the conclusion.  Lastly, the people who hang out on the Bot talk page are mostly smart and knowledgeable; but not necessarily well-versed and knowledgeable about this specific topic.   AManWithNoPlan (talk) 14:43, 28 February 2019 (UTC)
 * None of AManWithNoPlan's points/justifications/excuses actually address Wikipedia's copyright and linking policies and Wikipedia's fair use policies, which are much stricter than what is legally required. My position is that: (1) Although CiteSeerX provides other useful metadata, the primary purpose for readers of providing CiteSeerX links is to guide them to the online copies of publications hosted by CiteSeerX. (2) Because of its greater permanence, CiteSeerX is useful to include as a link even when more direct links are also available. (3) Because most CiteSeerX copies of papers are derived from author copies, author-uploaded repository copies, or publisher copies of papers (all ok to link here) and show their provenance to those copies, we can link to them and should not have a blanket ban on all CiteSeerX links. (4) A significant minority of CiteSeerX copies (maybe 10%) come from other sources, including pirate sites, stashes of related work by non-author researchers, and course reading lists by non-author instructors. (5) These other copies clearly do not respect copyright, and it is not up to us nor relevant to determine whether they are legal under fair use for CiteSeerX to include, but they also clearly do not fall within Wikipedia's more-strict-than-legally-required fair use requirements. (6) We cannot evade Wikipedia's fair use requirements by the pretext of linking to other sites with weaker fair-use requirements and letting them make the determination of whether something is fair use. (7) Therefore, we should not link to CiteSeerX pages that are of type 4 rather than type 3. (8) It is not currently feasible for a bot to distinguish between links of type 3 and of type 4. (9) Therefore, CiteSeerX links should only be added under human oversight. (10) If an automatic tool such as Citation bot provides the capability to add such links, it should only do so in a mode that provides a human editor with the ultimate decision over whether to include it, and that shows prominent warnings about copyright that can educate human editors over which links to include and which not. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:06, 28 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Much is to be found like https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.816.3205 but you are concerned about linking to things like https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.641.9966 https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.337.4 and https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.714.3910  Those are some awesome titles too 🤪.   I am not sure where the balance tips so we pick one of the following three choices: we ban citeseerx like we did zonodo, ban bots from adding citeseerx, or just make it a free-for-all and just add them willy-nilly.  AManWithNoPlan (talk) 20:46, 28 February 2019 (UTC)
 * what an enormous waste of time. google scholor has all these exact same links. if we started adding the cluster parameter like this link https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=17866832921325231667 to citations, would that also be cause for blocking? —Chris Capoccia (talk) 03:08, 17 March 2019 (UTC)
 * Ooh, the "someone else is doing it too so it must not violate our internal policy" defense. How convincing. —David Eppstein (talk) 03:11, 17 March 2019 (UTC)
 * No. Chris Capoccia has asked a specific question about the implications of your argument. Try again? Nemo 09:53, 17 March 2019 (UTC)
 * Ok, Chris asked a specific question, which appeared to be rhetorical and the answer to which should have been obvious from my previous position, but since it was apparently not obvious to you: Google scholar links arguably fail WP:ELNO #9, but let's ignore that for the purposes of this answer. Google scholar has many other purposes (searching, tracking citations, ranking scholars and publication venues, etc) but the specific purpose of the "cluster" links is to help you choose among online copies of the paper. Just like with CiteSeerX, most of those copies are legitimate but some are not. The specific cluster you link to appears to include only legitimate copies (official publisher copies and an open-access journal hub), so that would be ok. Even in the case of clusters that mix those kinds of copies with the non-copyright-respecting ones, it would still be ok. The only links I want to keep out are the ones where all copies are non-copyright-respecting. If Google scholar has clusters for which that is true (less likely because it also includes subscription-only publisher copies), I think those specific clusters should not be linked. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:22, 17 March 2019 (UTC)
 * Ok, so now Google Scholar is also "know[n] or reasonably suspect[ed] [...] carrying a work in violation of the creator's copyright". What about the web pages which link such Google Scholar clusters? Nemo 09:17, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
 * You are the one saying it is suspected of that. I have said above that all-copyvio clusters are much less likely on Google scholar than on CiteSeerX. Can you point me to even one of them? Or are we going to go farther and farther into a maze of less and less likely hypotheticals until we reach one that you declare is absurd enough to win whatever point you are trying to make? The copyvios on CiteSeerX are real. —David Eppstein (talk) 15:53, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
 * I have no familiarity with the very peculiar standards you use to declare that a PDF is a copyright infringement, so I suggest that you search on Google Scholar any of the titles which you declared infringing and report back on your results. Thanks, Nemo 16:46, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
 * I suggest that you stop assigning meaningless makework delaying-tactic tasks to other people, stop basing your arguments on wishful thinking or denial, and seriously address the question of linking to copies of publications that are neither provided by the author nor publisher. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:25, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your suggestion but I already did: I personally consider actual legal standards when deciding what edits are appropriate. Your personal proposed standards are unknown: we only have WP:IDONTLIKEIT arguments on certain domains or URLs you dislike. My understanding of your argument is "let's not (systematically) link any domain which might link to ", in which case we would not be able to link scholar.google.com or doi.org because they have millions such links. Nemo 18:19, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
 * My standards are only unknown to people who are unwilling or unable to read my clear statements above, and they are not subjective. Copies of papers with clear provenance to the author, to the publisher, or to an author-uploaded preprint archive are ok. Links to web scrapers like CiteSeerX that provide a provenance to one of those things are also ok, even if the same cluster of copies also has others mixed in. Everything else is not. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:59, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
 * normal people do thousands of edits with this bot and now it's shut down over some stupid argument about what one parameter might facilitate when google facilitates the exact same thing. —Chris Capoccia (talk) 14:15, 17 March 2019 (UTC)
 * alternatively, there are citations like this one where the publisher gives the full pdf at their site accessible through the DOI, but the CiteSeerX links are all broken :D —Chris Capoccia (talk) 22:36, 17 March 2019 (UTC)

In case anyone is drawn here from Nemo's new link: in rough outline, my opinion is WP:ELNEVER bans links that do not have a clear provenance to the author or publisher of a work and that (regardless of what WP:EL says at the top about not applying to references) the same ban should clearly apply to links within references. Nemo's position appears to be (because the only relevant policy is ELNEVER and it doesn't cover references) that links within references are completely unrestricted, and that if something can be found anywhere on the net it can be linked to in the references. Nemo has been working with software (OABOT) to automatically add these links at mass rates to Wikipedia articles, at rates too quick to allow manual checking of their provenance and has encouraged other editors to run the same software. I believe that editors must check the provenance manually and have so far blocked two users of OABOT for not doing so. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:48, 2 October 2019 (UTC)
 * This entire stuff smacks of copyright paranoia. &#x222F; WBG converse 12:24, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
 * The nature of the Internet makes it impossible to comply with Wikipedia's policy to the letter. For example Wayback and 20+ other archive sites scrape content from other websites, which we relink here. There are degrees of compliance based on COMMONSENSE, a no-tolerance compliance is a recipe for endless fights that will degrade Wikipedia needlessly. -- Green  C  15:51, 19 March 2019 (UTC)
 * Huh? I am not asking to ban CiteSeerX, Wayback, or other sites that might sometimes include inappropriately copyrighted content. All I am asking is that when they do include content that has no proper provenance, we avoid linking to that exact content. —David Eppstein (talk) 16:14, 19 March 2019 (UTC)
 * I find it dubious that anyone every checks the provenance of these links. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 17:06, 19 March 2019 (UTC)
 * How would we determine programmatically? It would require an army of trained specialists given the volume of links, difficulty in tracking down and determining copyright ownership (sometimes impossible). This is not a new problem, sites like Wayback say they honor take-down requests, but because they are operating programmatically they can't check every page of 150 billion for copyright content. Just as telephone companies can't monitor every conversation for illegal activity with their equipment. If we show some effort, we should be OK. Even a simple warning to users might be sufficient - or a list where known problem URLs are kept and the bot can bypass when it finds them and users can add to the list. -- Green  C  20:50, 19 March 2019 (UTC)
 * I agree that it does not look possible to check this programmatically. That's why I think such links should only be added manually. There are far too many bad links (my estimate: roughly 10% of all CiteSeerX pages) to make maintaining a whitelist feasible. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:13, 19 March 2019 (UTC)
 * If they were to be checked manually, the labor would be better spent improving a blacklist so bad links only need to discovered one time. The bot will prevent all future additions elsewhere. Otherwise, the same link has to be manually discovered every time it is added which is redundant labor and error prone. And the blacklist will reveal patterns of domains so it will be possible to blacklist entire domains. This is basically how IABot works, there is a database where URLs are maintained and users can adjust as needed. -- Green  C  23:38, 19 March 2019 (UTC)
 * I have posted a notice of this discussion on WT:CP and requested the input of editors with experience in this area. --Xover (talk) 17:35, 19 March 2019 (UTC)
 * And now I've linked it from WP:VPP. Nemo 11:05, 2 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Thank you for commenting. No, that's not my position; my position is expressed in my comments above. Nemo 10:39, 3 October 2019 (UTC)


 * Links within references that are know to be to copyvio versions should of course not be included, and DavidE's case 4 way above in the discussion explains very well what they  are. The question is in adding references, how carefully we need to screen them--whether the likelihood is so low that we can use an automatic process. I think the first step would be a redetermination of the actual state of their links now, as it's a while since this discussion was initiated.  (the analogy with GoogleScholar is irrelevant. CiteSeerX hosts copies of articles; GoogleScholar does not.  )  DGG ( talk ) 07:31, 7 October 2019 (UTC)
 * But we don't host copies either, we merely link them. Nemo 08:03, 7 October 2019 (UTC)
 * To facilitate the discussion, and make sure everybody can base their opinion on realistic legal standards (if they choose to), I'm pursuing a legal opinion from a renowned copyright lawyer and scholar. LIBER is helping me formulate the question in a correct way and I hope Wikimedia Italia will cover the costs. Nemo 07:00, 15 November 2019 (UTC)
 * You are aware that Wikipedia's standards for content are significantly stricter than merely what is legal, correct? Perhaps you should re-read Non-free content. From a strictly-what-is-legal perspective that link might not seem relevant, since it's about hosted content rather than external links, but I think the principle is important. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:54, 15 November 2019 (UTC)
 * I didn't say anything about asking "what is legal". If you have legal questions to ask I can try to incorporate them (I'm not planning to ask anything about whether adding links is fair use in USA, for instance). Nemo 09:35, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

Use of External Links and citations to link to scanned technical manuals, documents and others
This issue has implications beyond the local pages where the confusing is occurring and I am reaching out here to reach a guiding consensus regarding links in external links and citations to infringing or potentially infringing external links to personal websites and hosting services (Scribd.com, manualslib.com and other) containing various materials, service manuals, internal documents, academic journals as external links. One argument came up that if they were published before 1977 and they're not specifically marked "copyright" it is fine; however according to Cornell University's copyright Per https://copyright.cornell.edu/publicdomain#Footnote_2 unpublished documents, such as corporate authorship documents even before 1977 may be under 120 year copyright protection. The espeically grey area is the linking to personal sites containing a vault of scanned stuff between 1923-1977. (or I could call it using EL like a "torrent seed" to links to vaults of scanned manuals without actually hosting potentially infringing materials on Wiki server). Do we err on the exclusion if there's no clear and convincing evidence they're not infringing; or do we side with including them unless there's a clear and convincing evidence the stash of scanned documents are infringing? I interpret WP:COPYVIOEL to be suggesting if in doubt, leave it out.

Such as, Notifying users whom I believe to be experts on copyright matters on Wikipedia. ,
 * scanned potentially copyrighted material posted on Scribd like hosting service: Special:diff/929714575 (I say potentially, because it's 1972, the extent of scanning is far beyond "fair use" and I'm uncertainty about registry or publication status).
 * A PDF scan of academic conference posted in its entirety on personal website such as a PDF scan of copyrighted conference
 * Citing service manuals, factory notes, etc, then citing to fan sites large assortment of fan scanned technical manuals and such that are likely unauthorized a PDF scan of copyrighted workshop manual
 * What about when copyright registry status is uncertain? Let's say for the sake of discussion, say on a page about a Ford vehicle, citing contents from a factory shop manual, then linking to directory listing that contains all kinds of full PDF scans of service manuals of numerous vehicles that have been authored prior to 1977. If there are no "copyright" in those PDFs, is that deemed acceptable on Wikipedia? One user commented that such a practice is particularly common railroad/train related articles, but is it acceptale on Wikipedia? Graywalls (talk) 09:57, 8 December 2019 (UTC)

Previous discussions that have taken place for reference:
 * User_talk:Sphilbrick
 * Talk:EMD_F7
 * User_talk:Mackensen

I've been involved in previous discussions as they relate to railroading articles; operator manuals are a useful source for performance characteristics of locomotives (as built, anyway). I think the question is somewhat complex:
 * Unpublished material is indeed probably still under copyright, shouldn't be linked to, and probably isn't even usable as a source, per WP:V.
 * Published material from 1923-1977 which doesn't have a copyright notice may be in the public domain. I don't think it's possible to have a single uniform answer; you'd probably have to do it document-by-document. Such material is acceptable as a source either way, but if still under copyright shouldn't be linked to. Anything that's held in a library preemptively passes WP:V and is usable as a source.
 * Given the harm to article stability and related WP:INTEGRITY problems, challenged sources should be flagged as such and discussed, but not removed. Removing a source without tagging the information it supported is harmful.
 * If there is a site which was found to host an overwhelming amount of copyright-violating material, blacklisting that site would be appropriate.

That's my view, to get the ball rolling. I appreciate Graywalls for centralizing the discussion here. Mackensen (talk) 14:50, 8 December 2019 (UTC)


 * Being held in library establishes that it's published, but the material being available in library is not a pass to link to PDF scans of such article instead of using a basic citation, as said in one of the linked discussions, such copyright issues can be corrected by removing the link and replacing it with basic citation. The material being in library doesn't equal it's acceptable to link to a PDF scan of such material being hosted on someone's page, or Google Docs or like. We don't have a rule of thumb that says anything prior to 1977 that's in library and doesn't have copyright appended is a "public domain". On somewhat more complex situation, a university instructor may have a chapter of a book scanned and that maybe considered fair use for educational use for use by classes he teach, but linking to that course page and making it available for everyone on Wikipedia likely is not within "fair use" even if it maybe available to Google index. That issue is easily avoided by not linking it, but simply treating it as if you were citing from a physical book. I believe links and citations that reasonably appear to be infringing are something that should be converted to basic citation on sight; or removed if that's not practical due to lack of clear information. Graywalls (talk) 15:33, 8 December 2019 (UTC)


 * Sphilbrick and Diannaa didn't mention in the referenced discussion above they were ok/not ok because of age for published things created between 1923 to Jan 1, 1978 and it was suggested that removing the user scanned journal and replacing it with the basic cite was a proper approach. Since this has implications much beyond trains, I hope we develop a crystal clear global consensus regarding scans of numerous materials. Graywalls (talk) 00:50, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

New addition at WP:Copying within Wikipedia
See Wikipedia talk:Copying within Wikipedia. A permalink for it is here.

Anyone interested in commenting on this there? Flyer22 Frozen (talk) 21:10, 2 February 2020 (UTC)

Semantic Scholar
Is there a policy about linking to full-text articles on Semantic Scholar? My understanding is that authors upload their own journal articles to the SS site. In many cases copyright is owned by the journal, not the author, so it cannot be assumed that the author has the right to post such material. The SS terms and conditions require uploaders to "represent and warrant that (i) you own and control all of the rights to the User Content that you post or you otherwise have the right to post such User Content to the Site". Does anyone know if SS does any monitoring or checks on the copyright status of articles it hosts, or is it just a case of "trust the user until someone complains"? In short, is it safe to link to an article on SS? Thanks Kognos (talk) 14:13, 5 February 2020 (UTC)
 * My understanding, from talking to them about a case I found where it was clear the authors did not upload, is that they scrape the web for pdfs, sometimes pick up pirated ones, and remove them quickly when that is called to their attention. But of course hardly anyone ever calls it to their attention. I don't think it is ever useful to link to the pdfs on their site: either it is available elsewhere or it should not be available. On the other hand, linking to their indexing pages (with citations etc) could possibly be useful, even when those indexing pages do not have pdfs available. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:14, 5 February 2020 (UTC)
 * citation bot only adds ones that are licensed and not the ones that are scraped. So, they know which are which and their API exposed that information. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 18:49, 5 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Do there exist papers that are licensed for open distribution by the publisher through SemanticScholar but that are not directly available openly from the publisher? —David Eppstein (talk) 19:02, 5 February 2020 (UTC)
 * That's a very good question! I was using OAbot. The first free-to-read link it suggested was this one: http://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/ae76/b5c8c2f18a0b82e5a15ebcd574fa0e0f4616.pdf. I checked before making the change, and this paper is released under CC-BY-3.0, so I accepted the suggestion. The next suggested link was to a paper that had a 1995 copyright notice and no indication that it was released or licensed for open distribution. This raised my suspicions, leading to my initial query above. I am investigating the second paper, and will let you know what I find out. On the question of whether legitimate papers exist that can only be found on SS, I checked the first paper, and it is indeed available from the publisher, here: https://www.mapress.com/j/zt/article/viewFile/zootaxa.3882.1.1/33563. I have edited the article (Limnochromini) to link to the publisher's version, rather than SS's. So I agree with David's suggestion to avoid linking to Semantic Scholar. If anyone finds papers on SS that can't be found anywhere else, then I'd be happy to reconsider. Kognos (talk) 10:39, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

RD1 in case of old edits
The decision to do a revision deletion when the problematic edit is old has always been something that troubles me.

The good news is that with the successful implementation of Copy Patrol, coupled with a small number of volunteers willing to work in this area, most new copyright problems are detected within hours, sometimes minutes, and a revision deletion almost never has any collateral damage.

In contrast, we still have a number of CCI's not yet completed, and one notable CCI in progress with several detected problem edits in 2006 and 2007. A revision deletion of those edits hides a substantial portion of the history the article from non-admins.

The issue came to a head with a recent RD1 performed on Pinsk, prompting a discussion here: Talk:Pinsk

I thought this talk page would be a better place to have a discussion about what should be done.

I mulled over whether there should be a formal RFC, but my current thinking is that we should start with a discussion, see where it leads, and then possibly open an RFC. One additional advantage of starting this informal discussion is that it may help clarify the issues.

One important point is that, unlike many issues, we cannot simply reach a consensus as editors on what to do. There are legal implications, and if we decide to codify a guideline, we will need to involve legal at some time. At one time I was thinking that we only need to involve legal if we choose to do something other than apply revision deletion all the time, but one editor raise the interesting point that revision deletion might constitute a violation of the creative common's license for interim edits, so whatever we decide will almost certainly require legal signoff.

Issues:
 * 1) a revision deletion which is not performed immediately after a problematic edit will hide some of the history of the article. In the case of a multiyear gap between the problematic edit in the time of the revision deletion, this may seriously hamper the ability of editors to understand the history of the article which is often important  in disputes as well as ordinary editing questions
 * 2) failure to do a revision deletion when we have detected a copyright problem, even when that copyrighted text is removed, means that there is problematic material in the history of the article, and the community along with legal generally agrees that we need to ensure that we do not have copyrighted material in either the current version or historical versions of the article
 * 3) a revision deletion which is not done immediately will also hide intervening edits. Is this a violation of the Creative Commons license-- S Philbrick  (Talk)  15:49, 16 February 2020 (UTC)
 * The legal code states that all contributing authors must be credited. ("The credit required by this Section 4(c) may be implemented in any reasonable manner; provided, however, that in the case of a Adaptation or Collection, at a minimum such credit will appear, if a credit for all contributing authors of the Adaptation or Collection appears, then as part of these credits and in a manner at least as prominent as the credits for the other contributing authors.") It does not state that each sentence and phrase in the document must be credited to an individual author. Therefore in my opinion providing a list of contributors via the article history is adequate attribution, even if the edits themselves are no longer visible. If we took the stricter reading of the policy, revision deletion would be extremely rare - it would only be permitted if there were no intervening edits whatsoever, and that rarely happens. That's not the way that most of us active in this area interpret the policy. — Diannaa (talk) 15:58, 16 February 2020 (UTC)
 * I agree with Diannaa--Ymblanter (talk) 16:43, 16 February 2020 (UTC)


 * Revision_deletion already discusses the application of revision deletion on old edits on on pages with many revisions, it says that it is generally not a good idea but that there is an element of judgement involved. I generally agree that revision deletion shouldn't be used in those situations, although there are exceptions (e.g. if almost all the article's contents has been removed as copyvio). I don't think there is a general expectation that copyright violations must be revdeled all the time and the revision deletion policy isn't written with this in mind. There are no issues with the licence for the reason Diannaa gave.  Hut 8.5  16:53, 16 February 2020 (UTC)
 * There are two factors to consider: the scale of copyvio and the amount of other modification made to the article since the copyvio was inserted. More modification requires a bigger copyvio to trigger RD1. MER-C 17:35, 16 February 2020 (UTC)
 * A busy article on a recent current event, where a lot of diffs would have to be hidden, is a place where revision deletion might not be appropriate, even for an egregious violation. Likewise an article on a controversial topic where who-added-what might be germane to an ongoing discussion or for settling an edit war.— Diannaa (talk) 19:23, 16 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Hmm.... This is something I thought about as well. I think it depends on how severe the violation is. I'm not too sure how an rfc would pan out; I feel like everyone would just point to us, but even we aren't too sure about what is and isn't excessive. It's always been a ymmv thing. 💵Money💵emoji💵Talk💸Help out at CCI! 23:29, 16 February 2020 (UTC)

My concern is this: if an editor made an edit to a non-copyvio section of the article, but the revdel hid it as well, isn't this a violation? As in, while the author is still attributed, it is no longer possible to see what they have contributed, even through we can be 100% certain they neither introduced the copyvio, nor changed it. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 10:40, 17 February 2020 (UTC)


 * That isn't a violation of the Creative Commons licence. The licence only requires that you credit the contributors of a work, it doesn't require you to specify exactly what each of them contributed. You can satisfy the Creative Commons attribution requirements just by providing a list of people who have edited the page.  Hut 8.5  22:19, 17 February 2020 (UTC)

Discussion at WP:ELN
You are invited to join the discussion at WP:ELN. -- Marchjuly (talk) 21:57, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

Stearn's botanical names (U–Z)
This is a page that I've created and am still working on. I don't think there's a copyright problem (and if there is, it's easy to fix), but in case someone raises the issue, I'd like to be able to point them here so they can see what you guys think. Bottom line: William T. Stearn was one of the preeminent botanists of the 20th century. He worked primarily as a botanist rather than as a linguist. Stearn's botanical names (U–Z) includes a list of species and genus names that come from Stearn's book (with a lot of curation ... well over half of the words are discarded). But this is really a glossary of Latin and Greek terms, and the definitions come from some authorities older than Stearn (who he borrowed directly from) and from some younger than Stearn (who built on and updated his work). In every scholarly field, researchers tend to look to previous giants of the field, and then frame their own work as building on the previous work ... botany is no different, so it's not really possible to put together any kind of list like this one without acknowledging that recent authorities rely heavily and specifically on Stearn. So ... I don't think there's a copyright issue per se, but of course, I'm not interested in doing the minimum to avoid problems, I want the list to be the best it can be. Any suggestions would be welcome. - Dank (push to talk) 12:47, 6 April 2020 (UTC) P.S. I just got a question about this at WT:PLANTS, so I'll add one more point: I started out creating the list according to what appeared in any two of my four modern sources, with a few extra rules for what to discard. When I changed the rule to "Stearn plus any other source", the new list was nearly identical. That shows the esteem the more recent sources have for Stearn, and indicates that in some ways, this curated list is largely their curation, and not mine. - Dank (push to talk) 19:03, 7 April 2020 (UTC)
 * I don't think you have any copyright issues as it stands. As you said, this is basically a list of greek/latin terms translated. There may have been creative reasons why these terms were chosen for the thing they name, but that's a degree or two of separation removed from here. And maybe one or two of the terms could be a "stretch" in the translation given, but taken in context to the character of the page as a whole that would be de minimis. CrowCaw 20:17, 7 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks Crow. (Btw, the rule I eventually settled on for species is "Stearn plus another two sources".) - Dank (push to talk) 14:31, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

Loss of public domain
This [] needs more expert eyes.Slatersteven (talk) 17:37, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

How do we handle items published under the Tcl/Tk License?
The Tcl/Tk license (archive.org) basically says you can do whatever you want as long as you include a copy of the license. It says include, not link to.

I rolled back an edit to One-liner program and am about to roll back some more, as well as an edit to the user talk page of the editor who copied the text into Wikipedia.

It would be very useful to include things published under this very permissive license. The requirement that we and anyone who copies from us include the license itself is problematic and appears to be a deal-breaker.

Has this issue been addressed before? davidwr/ (talk)/(contribs)  22:58, 26 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Update: This particular situation may be resolved quickly, see Talk:One-liner program. The general issue still stands though.  davidwr/  (talk)/(contribs)  23:18, 26 September 2020 (UTC)
 * The requirement that anyone who copies us be subject to the same license is not problematic when we use it in CC-BY-SA licensed images, and in those cases the requirement that we include text (attributing the image) has been deemed to be addressed by putting the attribution on the linked image page rather than in the article itself. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:20, 26 September 2020 (UTC)
 * So, if I put something, be it code or prose, that is licensed under the Tcl/Tk license, in an article page, I should also put the entire Tcl/Tk license on the same article page and hope well-meaning editor removes it later? I guess that would work, but for the well-meaning editors who would delete it. Thankfully, this is going to become "academic for now" with respect to One-liner program, I hope.  That means we can kick the can down the road until next time something like this happens. davidwr/  (talk)/(contribs)  23:37, 26 September 2020 (UTC)

Attribution in a case of deleted history from a cross-wiki translation
I need assistance or advice in a case of providing required attribution in a case of translation from es-wiki to en-wiki, where the es-wiki article has now been deleted. There are two questions inherent in this, and one follow-up:
 * 1) given the conditions described below, what must one do to provide proper attribution for this article at en-wiki?
 * 2) what do the licensing requirements imply about "maintaining history" (not deleting the source article) when the source and target of copied content are on two different wikipedias?
 * 3) follow-up: shouldn't the translated page template contain advice about not deleting the source article, as the copied template already does?

A specific case of es→en translation with deleted source

It is my belief that the en-wiki article Travesti (gender identity) is a translation in whole or in part, from es:Travesti (identidad de género), now deleted. The English article was created in 2007, and has undergone expansion lately by &#91;noping&#93;. I'm not able to compare the two texts, and I can't tell when the es-wiki article was created because it was A5ed (duplicate article of low quality) on 15 September 2020 by Spanish user Marcelo (talk · contribs). As an additional wrinkle, it appears that Bleff may have cached a copy of the now deleted es-wiki article at User:Bleff/sandbox3 (perma), but one can't be sure of its provenance.

My understanding of WP:COPYRIGHT and WP:CWW tells me that an attribution statement such as the model proposed at WP:TFOLWP is required when content is translated from a foreign-language enyclopedia. I've messaged Bleff at their Talk page about the general attribution requirements. But I don't know what to tell them, given that the boilerplate translation attributions states in part,  but the es-wiki article is gone, so there is no history anymore.

Does notification about non-deletion apply cross-wiki?

I'm aware in cases of same-wiki copying, that the source article should carry the Copied template, to let editors at the source article know not to delete the article, because of the history required for the attribution at the copy-destination article. But what about in the case of cross-wiki copying or translating? Es-wiki gets to make it's own policies, that I know, but don't licensing requirements transcend policy and guidelines, and become a requirement across all Wikipedias? Doesn't this imply, that the source article on es-wiki must be kept, or at least, its history must be?

Regarding this second question, my instinct is that we should undo the A5 at es-wiki and restore the article. However, they find it to be of low quality, and a duplicate; so turning it into a redirect to the existing article, should solve our concerns, and theirs. Accordingly, I've left this discussion at Marcelo's talk page on es-wiki, asking that he do this.

Feedback needed for this case

Can I get comments on this approach for this particular case? Also, doesn't this imply that editors who translate content from other Wikipedias, in addition to adding the attribution described at WP:TFOLWP, should *also* be adding the equivalent of our "copied" or "translated" template to the source article at the other language Wikipedia?

Possible template changes needed in the general case

If so, I can beef up the /doc page at Template:Translated page/doc to mention the fact that 89 languages have their own version of Translated page template, and that the source article should have one added. I can probably also alter the English Translated page template, to add some boilerplate text that actually provides copy-pastable code suitable for adding to the other-language Wikipedia that would generate their version of the template. Or is maintenance of the foreign source's history not needed, in a case of cross-wiki copying or translation?

And as a corollary of that, shouldn't our translated page contain the same boilerplate about keeping the source page around, that the copied template already contains? Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 00:28, 25 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Strictly yes, if the page originated as a translation from a deleted page on another Wikipedia then we should add attribution for it. We can do this without the deleted page existing or being restored, as it can be done by making a dummy edit with the names of the authors, or posting the deleted page's edit history on a subpage of the talk page and linking to it WP:PATT. So you could go to an admin on the Spanish Wikipedia and get the history of the deleted page for this to be done.  Hut 8.5  06:49, 25 September 2020 (UTC)
 * The history necessary parts of the history are at . —&thinsp;JJMC89&thinsp; (T·C) 07:50, 25 September 2020 (UTC)
 * , very nice, thanks for that. Here it is again in jsonfm format. Can I just port that result to Talk:Travesti (gender identity), and add a dummy edit to the article pointing to it as sufficient WP:RIA? Mathglot (talk) 09:30, 25 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes that would do, but all you actually need is the names of the editors and there's only two distinct editors in that list, so you could just name them in your dummy edit and skip the subpage entirely.  Hut 8.5  12:19, 25 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Ah, good point. Thanks to all for this point. Mathglot (talk) 20:44, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

Am still interested in the general question concerning the templates: translated page doesn't have anything to say about "retaining the source page" the way copied does. Please see this proposed change (diff) at Template:Translated page/sandbox. Seems like that boilerplate should be there. I there any reason I shouldn't make that change to the template? Mathglot (talk) 21:25, 25 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Well we don't actually have any control over whether the source page is deleted, because the different language wikis operate separately. It would be very difficult as well to check that none of the foreign language wikis has translated something when we decide to delete it here. And as we've seen here it isn't actually necessary to retain the source page.  Hut 8.5  08:00, 26 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Is there any reason to believe that copied can be relied upon if used for notices on the English wikipedia? I seem to have provoked a lot of anger by making the point at Templates_for_discussion/Log/2020_October_3 that the template's history needed to be preserved, and now the notice has been deleted from Template_talk:High-use/num by .  Since I added that notice, I also have discovered the alternative of comments to avoid the need for history preservation when there have only been a few editors, but it is still a lot of work to go back and apply these comments for all the material copied.  A few copied pages have had a lot of editors. --RichardW57 (talk) 01:51, 5 October 2020 (UTC)
 * We don't give a toss about CC attribution unless it is to complain about editors we don't like. Every time we delete an article or a file we risk breaking attribution being provided by external users using a link for attribution. Thincat (talk) 11:33, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

Protected edit request on 29 December 2020
Under the section "Works by state governments of the United States", the link with the text "check copyright information" should link to Copyright status of works by subnational governments of the United States, not Copyright status of work by the U.S. government, as the section is discussing the status of copyright by subnational governments (states). Elliot321 (talk &#124; contribs) 06:53, 29 December 2020 (UTC) Elliot321 (talk &#124; contribs) 06:53, 29 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Done. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 11:07, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

Do WP:ELNEVER and WP:COPYLINK apply to archive.org, archive.is, etc? If not, why not?
My apologies if this has been answered before, searching the discussion archive using "archive" as an argument is rather self-defeating.

There is a discussion at talk:backslash about a link to a very valuable repository of early C20 technology documents. Editors accept (unhappily) that WP:COPY says that we are not allowed to link directly to the document. But the question then arises: what makes archive.org so special? Not only can we link to it, it is even institutionalised via archive-url= in cite. I can persuade myself in the case of cite news that the material was originally open access so no need to quibble about current access methods. But archive.org also has many books that are clearly still in copyright even though long out of print. Are we permitted to cite those? (I certainly have.) Use quote= in cite book? If so, why/how is that legitimate? In what way is it different from the collector's repository being questioned at talk:backslash]]? --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 12:42, 5 January 2021 (UTC)
 * On the books question, Authors Guild, Inc. v. Google, Inc. (and subsequent) is the relevant case law. Nikkimaria (talk) 13:17, 5 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I see that Authors Guild, Inc. v. Google, Inc. covers my question explicitly: a legal action against archive.org over its Open Library opened in June 2020. Its legality cannot be assumed but I would have to argue that if the challenge fails (as it did with Google), the personal repository being discussed at talk:Backslash would seem to be equally legitimate. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 15:18, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

How to Ticket?
I read a bit about 'free' and 'non-free' images. I am contacting a website that, in a mail to me, allows some freedom ('you can ..').

My question is: How can I make that mail (that website) into commons-usable images? What is the "Ticket" process? -DePiep (talk) 22:27, 8 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Do you mean WP:OTRS? There is a page about it on the commons as well, at Commons:Commons:OTRS.  davidwr/  (talk)/(contribs)  22:31, 8 January 2021 (UTC)
 * + -DePiep (talk) 22:33, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

British Open Government Licence
Thanks in part to Wikipedia's influence, many documents on the British governments websites are now covered by Open Government Licence. Parliament is covered by a similar licence (Open Parliament Licence). As the Wikipedia page make clear version 3 of the OGL is compatible with Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) licence and so the text can be copied into a Wikipedia page with the appropriate attribution.

Therefore mention of this should probably be added to this policy. Even if it is not the paragraph

ought to be amended, because while technically correct, people may mix up British Open Government Licence and Crown Copyright.

-- PBS (talk) 20:40, 14 February 2021 (UTC)

Typo
Change "the GNU Free Documentation License. unversioned, ..." to "the GNU Free Documentation License, unversioned, ...". --Pokechu22 (talk) 01:04, 19 March 2021 (UTC)
 * ✅ — xaosflux  Talk 10:35, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

LINKVIO
The current version of the policy says, in the middle of a paragraph: An example would be linking to a site hosting the lyrics of many popular songs without permission from their copyright holders.

I'd like to expand that to cover more cases, perhaps with language like this: For example, unless the copyrighted material was posted by the copyright holders or with their permission, do not link to:
 * sites hosting the lyrics of many modern songs,
 * films or music videos copied or uploaded to a video-hosting site by a fan,
 * a bootleg music recording or copy of music purchased by the uploader, or
 * a copy of a news article in someone's blog or an internet forum.

These are probably the ones that are most tempting. What do you think? Would it be helpful? And is this the right place, or is there a guideline that already goes into more detail? WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:35, 19 March 2021 (UTC)


 * Seems reasonable. This is also discussed at WP:COPYVIOEL. —&thinsp;JJMC89&thinsp; (T·C) 00:37, 20 March 2021 (UTC)
 * The one I see most often is: a copy of a paywalled academic article without evidence of being released publicly by the publisher or authors. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:51, 20 March 2021 (UTC)
 * I agree, @David Eppstein! I'd even meant to put that in my list, but forgot by the time I got the others typed up.  I'd be happy to include something like "sites that host paywalled academic articles without the permission of the authors or publishers". WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:04, 21 March 2021 (UTC)
 * My only question with that wording is that it's not so much the whole site as the individual link that we should be checking. So for instance CiteSeerX should not be barred, because they show the provenance of each file and in many cases it does come from the authors, but CiteSeerX links whose provenance does not show it coming from the authors should still be avoided. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:07, 21 March 2021 (UTC)
 * That makes sense. I'm not quite sure how to phrase it concisely at the moment.
 * I've just run across a particularly strange copyright issue, actually, and it makes it hard to think about the right phrasing. It appears that there's a bootleg music album with a bootleg photo on the album cover.  We won't even permit a link to the copyvio music, but someone assumed that it would be okay to upload the (equally copyvio) album cover to Wikipedia.  I suppose most editors don't understand that fair use doesn't stretch infinitely, and of course it's the sort of complication that doesn't come up often enough to have its own special entry in the documentation. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:10, 21 March 2021 (UTC)

RfC announce: Attribution when copying within Wikipedia
There is an RfC about attribution when copying within Wikipedia here. Your input is welcome. --Guy Macon (talk) 17:02, 21 March 2021 (UTC)

Satellite images of ship in Suez
Can someone look at for copyright? It has been tagged, but given the widespread interest in the event and paucity of decent free satellite images, it has propagated to several wikis already (but is no longer in en.wiki). Kablammo (talk) 20:15, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

Image of Coffee Mug
I am interested in adding a photograph of a coffee mug I took and wanted to be aware of the copyright laws regarding adding such an image. The Anthropocene Reviewed is a podcast where author John Green reviews different facets of the modern world. As a bit of a joke, a coffee mug was produced and sold that contained a review of coffee mugs. If I were to upload a photograph of the mug, would that be violating any copyright restrictions? --Cerebral726 (talk) 19:29, 7 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes, probably. You might have copyright on the photograph but that doesn't override the copyright on the design of the mug, and you would need permission from all copyright holders to open-license the image and upload it here. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:43, 7 May 2021 (UTC)

CRANDO shortcut to add
I created the shortcut WP:CRANDO, should someone want to display that in front of the Copyrights section. (WP:CRO was taken.) Largoplazo (talk) 10:13, 2 July 2021 (UTC)


 * ✅  Hut 8.5  11:34, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

Protected edit request on 8 July 2021
From

To Dr Salvus 21:52, 8 July 2021 (UTC)
 * ✅ — xaosflux  Talk 22:25, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

Links to copyrighted material on Open Library
For those interested:. <span style="display:inline-block;position:relative;transform:rotate(-3deg);bottom:-.1em;">Paradoctor (talk) 06:26, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

Fully-protected edit request on 2 July 2021
This page uses the phrase "copyright owner" – a misunderstanding of copyright law. Please implement the following changes to correct the page:
 * 1) "The Wikimedia Foundation does not own copyright on" → "The Wikimedia Foundation is not the copyright holder of"
 * 2) "a soldier who takes a photograph with his/her personal camera while on patrol in Iraq owns the copyright to the photo" → "a soldier who takes a photograph with their personal camera while on patrol in Iraq is the copyright holder of the photo"
 * 3) "Moreover, images and other media found on .mil and .gov websites may be using commercial stock photography owned by others." → "Moreover, images and other media found on .mil and .gov websites may be using commercial stock photography where the copyright is held by others."
 * 4) "If you are the owner of Wikipedia-hosted content being used without your permission" → "If you are the copyright holder of Wikipedia-hosted content being used without your permission"
 * 5) "If you are the owner of content that is being used on Wikipedia without your permission" → "If you are the copyright holder of content that is being used on Wikipedia without your permission"
 * 6) "Either way, we will, of course, need some evidence to support your claim of ownership." → "Either way, we will, of course, need some evidence to support your claim of being the copyright holder."

In the section "Works by the United States Federal Government", please change the following:
 * 1) "though they may be protected by copyright outside the U.S." → "though they may be copyrighted outside the U.S."
 * 2) "Note that while the United States government does not claim copyright protection on its own works" → "Note that while the United States government does not copyright its own works"

I am not sure why a quoted legal document in this section is itself incorrect on this (possibly this is a newer legal document where the author themself has been misled or they intend to mislead others), but copyright is not (and is not intended to be) "protection" for a work. I am not sure if we are allowed to correct this mistake. If we can, then please make the following change: If not, please add the sic template:
 * "Copyright protection under this title is not available for any work of the United States Government" → "Copyright under this title is not available for any work of the United States Government"
 * "Copyright protection under this title is not available for any work of the United States Government" → ""Copyright protection [sic] under this title is not available for any work of the United States Government"

Please also correct the punctuation in the "Copyright violations" section:
 * "that material–and the whole page, if there is no other material present–should be removed." → "that material—and the whole page, if there is no other material present—should be removed."

Thank you. DesertPipeline (talk) 05:24, 2 July 2021 (UTC)


 * The page does not misunderstand copyright law. The "ownership" phraseology you object to is used almost universally by everyone who is not a specialist copyright lawyer. It's perfectly normal and natural to talk about "ownership" of a property right, and is not in the least misleading. Your objection to  "protection" is even less comprehensible, given that that very term appears in the title to the Berne Convention of 1886, and in multiple other places including US primary legislation (17 U.S. Code § 105). MichaelMaggs (talk) 08:55, 2 July 2021 (UTC)
 * User:MichaelMaggs: Copyright is not a "property right"; intangible ideas and concepts cannot be "property". Copyright is held, not owned, because it expires after a certain length of time. Calling someone a "copyright owner" does not communicate this fact.
 * I am not sure why "protection" is used in these older contexts. Perhaps these people also wished to mislead. The problem with the word "protection" is it implies that some sort of harm is being prevented – copying is not a harmful activity. Due to the misleading terminology being pushed, many people unfortunately seem to believe that copyright's intent is to ensure authors are "rewarded for their work". This is (supposed to be) merely to change their behaviour in a way that benefits the public; the presumption is that they would not be (in their view) adequately "rewarded" for their work without copyright, and therefore would not publish their work. Copyright trades away some of the public's freedom so that (presumably) they will in return get more published works. You can read more about the misinterpretation of copyright here: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/misinterpreting-copyright.html
 * While Wikipedia is forced to make mistakes that "reliable sources" make in its articles, we do not have to do that here. We have the ability to fairly describe the copyright system outside of articles; considering how many people are misinformed on these matters, it is all the more important to rectify problems where we can. Of course, I don't think this will change much – but I would rather do what I can than do nothing. DesertPipeline (talk) 11:43, 2 July 2021 (UTC)
 * The concept of rights in non-tangible property has a venerable legal history, with copyright falling into a category generally now known as Intellectual Property rights. You may not like its terminology but the political and philosophical opinions of Richard Stallman notwithstanding, it does exist as a matter of fact and international law. MichaelMaggs (talk) 14:54, 2 July 2021 (UTC)
 * User:MichaelMaggs: "Intellectual property", like "copyright owner" and "copyright protection", is another term intended to mislead. It groups together laws only related in the sense that they apply to intangible concepts and ideas and then acts as if they're all one unified concept. Due to this, people are manipulated into allowing practices which harm the public to continue, due to the belief that there has to be a "balance" between corporate interests and the public interest.
 * There is no such thing as scarcity when it comes to digital data – computing is a post-scarcity area of life. But corporations don't like that; they know that without artificially manufacturing scarcity, they're not going to be able to fill their swimming pools with as much money as they could before. So of course, they manipulate the public into doing things against the public's own interests, to believe the concept of sharing is ethically wrong, and to believe that something which has no physical form can somehow be "property" and is "stolen" if copied.
 * Again, though: we don't need to agree with popular opinion here, on a Wikipedia project page. We can get it right. We can be neutral and fair. It won't do much, but with the situation we're currently in, anything is better than nothing.
 * Ask yourself this: would the changes I propose harm this page in any way? It already uses the term "copyright holder" at points (so I'm not sure why the erroneous "copyright owner" is present at other points). "Copyrighted" is a term that people understand. Removing "protection" isn't going to make them misunderstand what the page is saying. So if the changes I propose are not harmful, surely there is no reason not to make them? DesertPipeline (talk) 04:45, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
 * User:MichaelMaggs: Awaiting your reply. Do you think the changes I propose will harm the page? DesertPipeline (talk) 13:06, 6 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Your changes aren't suitable here as this is a Wikipedia information page intended to provide practical information for editors. It does not contain encyclopedia content. Discussion of various philosophical approaches copyright might go onto the Criticism of copyright encyclopedia page. You could suggest that at Talk:Criticism of copyright, as long as there are are published Reliable Sources that could support a neutral presentation. MichaelMaggs (talk) 14:32, 6 July 2021 (UTC)
 * User:MichaelMaggs: I disagree that the changes aren't suitable for the page this talk page is for; precisely because it isn't an article, we can accurately describe the copyright system without having to worry about reflecting what supposedly authoritative sources say that get it wrong, either intentionally or by mistake. Do you think my proposed changes will harm the page? If not, do you have any other objections? DesertPipeline (talk) 15:02, 6 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes I do, for the reasons stated above. I believe they should be clear, and don't think there is much merit discussing this any further. MichaelMaggs (talk) 15:29, 6 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Why would you say that the changes make the page less clear? Regarding the word "protection": 1. If copyright is "protection", then saying "copyright protection" is surely redundant and unnecessary. 2. If copyright is not "protection", saying "copyright protection" is incorrect – and therefore shouldn't be used. This demonstrates that, either way, removing the word "protection" is not going to be a harmful change to the page. It will only make it either more concise or not inaccurate. Regarding "copyright owner": As copyright is temporary, "copyright owner" is incorrect – holdership and ownership are distinct concepts. Ownership does not expire; saying "copyright ownership" therefore communicates an incorrect idea about the copyright system. For these reasons I believe the changes I propose are not harmful. DesertPipeline (talk) 02:31, 7 July 2021 (UTC)
 * User:MichaelMaggs: Sorry; forgot to ping you. DesertPipeline (talk) 02:33, 7 July 2021 (UTC)
 * User:MichaelMaggs: Do you have any comment on my preceding message? DesertPipeline (talk) 10:00, 13 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done for now: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the template.  Cabayi (talk) 09:27, 2 July 2021 (UTC)
 * I found your thesis most interesting, though I can understand why it was rejected: like dictionaries, we record actual usage without making a judgement on whether or not it is 'correct' provided that it is not wp:FRINGE. But I wonder if your intent might be delivered another way? Could you propose some cited text that gives the alternative perspective, that would follow and accompany the existing text? --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 18:42, 2 July 2021 (UTC)
 * User:John Maynard Friedman: In articles we unfortunately have to express a non-neutral point of view because that's it's the point of view expressed by most of the media – although I actually don't think we "have" to. I don't understand how an argument like "this is how it's described" can override "it's a non-neutral and inaccurate term, and there are sources to demonstrate this, and it makes articles no less clear"; but there's no point in me debating about the contents of articles here.
 * When you say "propose some cited text that gives the alternative perspective, that would follow and accompany the existing text", what do you mean? Do you mean that I should find citations for this and then ask for text to be added after the current text I consider to be incorrect? If that's what you mean, I'm not sure if I can find any citations for this. I don't like to visit many websites because I have paranoia about malicious websites hijacking my computer or collecting data on me; therefore, I'm limited in where I can go. That's one of the reasons I don't really write new information for articles that would require a citation.
 * To be honest, though, I don't understand why the text can't just be changed. Above, in reply to MichaelMaggs, I asked if the changes I propose are harmful to this page. Personally, I don't think they're harmful. I think that it will remain just as clear as it was before – and in my view, it will be neutral rather than expressing a point of view, so actually improved compared to the old version. Of course, others have other opinions on this. But I don't really understand it; when I read about this, it seemed clear to me that there was indeed a problem. But often when I speak to other people here on Wikipedia about this, they don't see it the way I do. Are my language skills just too poor to make a convincing argument? Is it a deeply-embedded view and I'm introducing cognitive dissonance in people who don't want to acknowledge there's a problem? Or is it something else?
 * I just want to help try to solve things because I believe I've identified a problem. But I'm getting so much opposition, and I don't know its cause. It could be that I'm wrong. I don't feel like that's the case; but who ever does feel that they're wrong? DesertPipeline (talk) 04:45, 3 July 2021 (UTC)


 * Comment. This is the same line of argument that DesertPipeline also put forward at Talk:Patent a little while ago. It didn't prevail there, either.
 * I would oppose the proposal here as well, for style and awkwardness as well as the clear POV-pushing. TJRC (talk) 04:56, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
 * User:TJRC: Once again, your characterisation of an attempt to introduce neutrality into a piece of text that is currently pushing a point-of-view as trying to push a point-of-view itself makes no sense. Why is this happening? How severely have you been misled that you keep desperately trying to preserve something which hurts you and everyone else? Are you trying to avoid cognitive dissonance by pretending a problem doesn't exist? There is a problem. If you ignore it, it will not go away. Nothing will get better unless we acknowledge problems and resolve to fix them. This cannot go on forever. We're wasting time we don't have. DesertPipeline (talk) 06:35, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
 * You're getting far too worked up about this. "Copyright owner" is a commonly used and widely understood phrase. You've claimed that using it here is "misleading", but you haven't provided any evidence at all to support the claim that its usage is incorrect other than an opinion piece by Richard Stallman, who's hardly an authority on copyright law. Do you have any real evidence to support the claim that using this phrase is inaccurate? As in pieces written by actual experts who say that it's wrong and shouldn't be used?  Hut 8.5  08:20, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
 * User:Hut 8.5: I appreciate your concern by your statement that I'm getting too worked up about this, but I actually think I'm not getting worked up enough. This is just one of the many things wrong with the world that people refuse to acknowledge because they don't want to feel uncomfortable – or are just completely misled and don't realise it's wrong.
 * Like I said before, "copyright owner" is wrong because copyright expires. When you own a house, or any other physical property, your ownership of that doesn't expire. That's why it's called ownership. Copyright is held by its author (or more usually a publisher) for a limited length of time before expiring. Simply looking at the way in which copyright works should be proof enough that "copyright owner" is incorrect. I can't provide any citations because of a reason I stated above – paranoia about visiting unknown websites.
 * I know from an outside perspective that my actions may seem like silly ranting and overreaction, but I genuinely believe there is a problem here, and no matter how much the opposition of others frustrates me, in the end I'm making a fuss about this for their sake, too. We're all harmed by this. DesertPipeline (talk) 10:10, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Really? You think this is "harmful"? You're claiming that a website's copyright policy is using inaccurate terminology. Even if you were right that's simply not the kind of thing which can hurt anyone. If you want to get outraged then do it over something which actually makes a difference to the world. As you seem to acknowledge, the rest of the world is entirely happy with the concept of ownership expiring (e.g. patents or leases). People are also happy with the concept of owning something which is not physical property (e.g. companies, shares or digital money). You still haven't even presented any supporting evidence that anybody else holds this view. We're not going to make these changes just because you, personally, prefer them.  Hut 8.5  10:35, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
 * User:Hut 8.5: The two examples you give of "ownership" aren't ownership either. Patents are also something that are held and not owned; a lease is specifically referred to as a lease because you haven't bought (and therefore don't own) what you're leasing. DesertPipeline (talk) 11:39, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
 * "sufficiently addressed the opposition to the changes" is an interesting way of putting "nobody agrees with these changes and everyone else has given up arguing with me".  Hut 8.5  07:34, 20 July 2021 (UTC)
 * User:Hut 8.5: A proper debate involves voicing an opinion and either accepting opposition as valid or attempting to refute it; if the latter occurs, the participant who voiced the opposition in question needs to explain why the refutation is not correct. I attempted to refute the opposition; if you feel my refutations are insufficient or invalid, then please say so. DesertPipeline (talk) 13:54, 20 July 2021 (UTC)
 * You've got this backwards. As you were told in response to your first protected edit request, you need to get consensus for the changes first. There is clearly no consensus to make these changes, because nobody except you thinks they're a good idea. You can't get these changes in just by refusing to give up. Several people have explained why the changes are a bad idea and now don't see any point in discussing further. We're not under any obligation to convince you that the changes shouldn't be made, or to spend our spare time arguing with a stubborn stranger on the internet.  Hut 8.5  16:56, 20 July 2021 (UTC)
 * User:Hut 8.5: Several people have explained why the changes are a bad idea
 * Nobody has yet demonstrated that the changes will harm the page; in response to MichaelMaggs I feel I adequately demonstrated that they are not harmful, as the term "copyright holder" is already used on this page in places anyway, and "copyright protection" is either unnecessary or incorrect. If you think those points are incorrect, please say so. DesertPipeline (talk) 03:02, 21 July 2021 (UTC)
 * The only rationale for these changes is your strange objection to the concept of "copyright ownership", something the rest of the world has no problem with.  Hut 8.5  07:39, 21 July 2021 (UTC)
 * User:Hut 8.5: I have explained that the term "copyright owner" is incorrect; you have not refuted that. Therefore, unless you do so, you do not have a valid reason to oppose my changes. DesertPipeline (talk) 10:53, 21 July 2021 (UTC)
 * However, I should mention that "companies, shares or digital money" (examples you gave earlier) are unrelated to this. Copyright is held and not owned not because it is intangible but because that is how the copyright system works. You hold the copyright to a work for a limited number of years; then it expires. DesertPipeline (talk) 11:01, 21 July 2021 (UTC)
 * I don't see any point in continuing this further. I think it's entirely reasonable to use the phrase "copyright owner", and so does the rest of the world. Except for you, and I'm clearly not going to change your mind.  Hut 8.5  12:19, 21 July 2021 (UTC)
 * User:Hut 8.5: Then as you do not wish to refute my argument, the change should be made. If someone else later has a valid refutation of my argument (which nobody else can refute in turn), it should be changed back. DesertPipeline (talk) 13:02, 21 July 2021 (UTC)
 * DesertPipeline, No one is obligated to satisfy you. Just because other editors are exhausted by you does not mean you get your way. TJRC (talk) 16:33, 21 July 2021 (UTC)
 * User:TJRC: I'm not asking anyone to satisfy me. I'm asking for a proper debate to be conducted which is likely to result in the correct conclusion. Currently, it seems my changes are the correct course of action, because nobody has refuted that they do not harm the page. If that argument is refuted with a valid point and I cannot refute it, then the changes should not be made. If made, they can also be reversed at a later point if someone makes an argument which refutes that the changes are not harmful, and I cannot refute it. DesertPipeline (talk) 04:34, 22 July 2021 (UTC)
 * This repeated restatement of your arguments is what's referred to as bludgeoning the process. You've made a suggestion and it's been adequately addressed by many editors. The changes you propose will not be made. Move on. TJRC (talk) 17:51, 20 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done for now: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the template. There is visibly no consensus for the requested change. Wikipedia does not work on a "I'm more right" basis but on the basis of WP:CONSENSUS; a specific quote of that policy which seems like it may be relevant here is "Tendentious editing: The continuous, aggressive pursuit of an editorial goal is considered disruptive, and should be avoided." "Editors who refuse to allow any consensus except the one they insist on, and who filibuster indefinitely to attain that goal, risk damaging the consensus process."  Ben · Salvidrim!   &#9993;  05:19, 24 July 2021 (UTC)
 * User:Salvidrim: Do you have any refutation to my points? Consensus should be based on rational consideration of opinions, not on whose opinion is most popular. DesertPipeline (talk) 07:59, 24 July 2021 (UTC)
 * I am not party to the discussion, I've only assessed that there is lack of consensus for the proposed change. Consensus is not determined based on your feelings about how well others appear to have "refuted your points". Ben · Salvidrim!   &#9993;  11:57, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

GFDL
,, thank you for the proposal and the close. Now I wonder where we add this information? It appears this page is the equivalent of c:COM:L where a similar text is implemented. So, probably here?

ProcrastinatingReader, you asked "if GFDL-only media has been uploaded between that date and the implementation of this close". Yes, there has, by User:Jonathunder. It's unlikely there's any more. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 15:09, 3 July 2021 (UTC)


 * It has been implemented here. 1 August 2021 is fine with me. --MGA73 (talk) 15:22, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
 * , oh, good! Image use policy should probably be linked here, possibly in the lead or Copyrights. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 15:31, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Yeah and also we may need a c:Template:No more GFDL to add on /doc of Template:GFDL etc. so users will have a chance to know. I doubt all users check the policy page before they upload files. I know I don't ;-) --MGA73 (talk) 15:35, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
 * , thanks for creating No more GFDL, it looks good to me. I also made a suggestion on Wikipedia Signpost/Newsroom/Suggestions for the topic. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 15:59, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure exactly where links would be good but I think it should be safe to add links where ever it is believed to be relevant. Possible places: File copyright tags and File_copyright_tags/Deprecated. --MGA73 (talk) 07:29, 4 July 2021 (UTC)
 * The Copyrights section should be updated. It links to an essay, but not to the Image use policy, which makes no sense. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 14:55, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

Proposed update to the "Guidelines for images and other media files" section
ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 15:01, 4 July 2021 (UTC)


 * I think it is a good proposal. --MGA73 (talk) 20:25, 4 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Agreed, a good amendment. MichaelMaggs (talk) 13:21, 13 July 2021 (UTC)
 * ✅ — xaosflux  Talk 13:25, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

Fair use guidelines
I don't think the sentence " In some cases, fair use guidelines may allow them to be used irrespective of any copyright claims." is exactly always the case when it comes to Wikipedia. Fair use and non-free content use are similar, but very different as explained in WP:ITSFAIRUSE and WP:NFC. It could probably be pretty much argued that "fair use" could be applied to pretty much any image when it comes to Wikipedia, but the WP:NFCC are much more restrictive by design. As it is, many editors (including experienced editors) mix up the two and this can create confusion or problems when files end up being removed or deleted because they don't satisfy relevant Wikipedia policy. I think it's best to be consistent with the terminology used and "non-free content" use should be used instead of "fair use" whenever relevant Wikipedia policies and guidelines are being referred to. -- Marchjuly (talk) 22:31, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

Photos of food
Surprisingly, I couldn't find any mention of food, neither on WP:IMAGEPOL nor here; also couldn't find any food-related license templates, which makes me believe I know the answer to my questions already, but here goes:

Is food "design" copyrightable? If I photograph a cake that I didn't make, is that breaching the cook's copyright? Would I only be allowed to take pictures of foodstuffs that I personally made, or that I have been granted permission to?

(I understand a photo someone else took is copyrightable by itself, in this hypothetical I assume I'm the one who took the photo, and wondering specifically about the food's copyright)

I believe the answer to these questions to be "no", but I feel I must ask to be sure. — Avelludo 16:01, 5 September 2021 (UTC)
 * There is a scholarly discussion of the issue at Food Art: Protecting "Food Presentation" Under U.S. Intellectual Property Law. It is possible that a chef's food presentation design is protected under copyright law, but the issue of whether a particular design is covered by copyright probably would require a ruling from a court. - Donald Albury 16:43, 5 September 2021 (UTC)
 * MCC-38792 Koekplank met voorstelling van Sint-Nicolaas te paard (2).tiff cookie, too old for copyright protection]]
 * , if a complex design is made (usually with a mold), copyright can come into play. But it has to be judged on a case by case basis. To the degree that the design is functional (e.g. cherries on top of a cake), there is no copyright. But where elements serve no function like chocolate or a cookie made with a mold (e.g. Oreo's) or a photo that is printed onto a cake, the design may be eligible for copyright. For cake decoration (like complex swirls or drawings with buttercream), it's much harder to say. In many cases such decoration would end up being de minimis, and this may even apply to foods from a mold. For example: a pile of cookies without focus on any particular one possibly won't violate copyright while a single cookie in full focus possibly would. File:Spekulatius four pieces of.jpg for example may or may not be a copyright violation. (might still be argued either way and I don't know how old the design is) File:Birthday cakes.JPG would be a copyright violation if this photo of Marilyn Monroe is protected by copyright. (it may or may not be public domain already) File:Kuva kakkuun7.jpg is likely a copyright violation. The uploader claims to be the author and I'm sure they printed and photographed the cake, but unless they also photographed the tiger, it's a derivative work. The tiger photo has been used on the cover of Terrell Living of January 2009 and there's a larger version on Pinterest. The actual source is a mystery though, but it's not the cake. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 20:46, 5 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks guys. It's a bit more complex than I initially thought!
 * If I understand it correctly:
 * The plating itself isn't copyrightable, as it lacks the "fixation in a tangible medium" requirement and, to a lesser degree, isn't "separable from its utilitarian function". Thus, it can be photographed without breaching copyright:
 * For example, a fried egg on a plate isn't copyrightable, even if said egg was served by a fancy restaurant.
 * The design of the food might be trademarked, if it's distinguishable enough:
 * Mold designs (e.g. Oreo cookies, Goldfish crackers) could be trademarked, but that's possibly circumventable if the photo doesn't focus specifically on the design (e.g. a bowl of cookies);
 * Otherwise copyrighted works on the food should bar pictures from being uploaded: printed photos on cakes, Spider-Man themed candles, etc.
 * It might be interesting to add a summary of this information to WP:COPYRIGHT or WP:IMAGEPOL (or both!). I'm also thinking it could be useful to have license templates specifically for this sort of thing.
 * In any case, thanks a lot! — Avelludo 23:29, 5 September 2021 (UTC)
 * , you are confusing copyright and trademarks. Very simple things can be trademarked, for example the word "Apple". We don't care much about trademarks. (beyond sometimes tagging affected files with trademarked) A trademark only protects certain actions, like selling product with a specific name on it, and often only applies to a sector. For example, Apple Corps and Apple Inc. have been in conflict for a long time, one of the issues was that Apple Inc. had moved into the music industry with iTunes. As for whether food is "fixated in a tangible medium", I suspect it is, but it's potentially thin ice. Is an ice sculpture fixated? A sand castle? Sure, soup isn't fixated. But a cookie or chocolate bar? "fixation in a tangible medium" means you can't copyright an idea or something you said, you have to write it down first. But once it's recorded, it's fixated. Whether the actual creator or the recorder would own the copyright for the depicted work is unclear but I wouldn't recommend relying on that. Most food items, like your fried eggs, are utilitarian though. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 01:52, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I'm not all that familiar with copyright law, so I make these kinds of mistakes all the time. It's why I asked about food in the first place! I very much appreciate the patience and thoroughness :) Thanks a bunch. — Avelludo 02:10, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

Cheerios image
Hi all! I have been having a discussion with on the Cheerios article regarding an image. So this is the image in question (here used only for demonstrative, not copyright purposes, please do not remove until discussion is complete):



I took this picture with my phone of the back of a Cheerio's box. The question is that if I list this as "fair use" is it "fair use" or not? I know there are hundreds of corporate or company logos all over wikipedia that are effectively "screenshots" of the company logo but with the statement of "This image is copyrighted, but I believe it is fair use." If we cannot use publicly available material, with a warning that we do not own the copyright, and that we describe as "fair use", for non-commercial purposes... then jeez, we need to reform some laws!! Th78blue (They/Them/Theirs • talk) 21:04, 25 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I'll be the first to acknowledge that I don't have a lot of expertise in image copyright on Wikipedia. I just wanted to be cautious. I hope someone who knows more will give their blessing for using this image! Sundayclose (talk) 21:11, 25 October 2021 (UTC)
 * An image can't be "fair use" on its own. We can only say that using it in a specific context is fair use. In this case, I think the relevant guideline is WP:LOGOS. pburka (talk) 21:29, 25 October 2021 (UTC)
 * This is really not the best place to discuss individual files. A better place would be at WP:MCQ, but an even better place would be at c:COM:VPC since this file is uploaded to WP:COMMONS. Wikipedia and Commons do overlap a bit when it comes to files, but there a some differences between the two which is why it's generally better to discuss files uploaded to Commons on Commons and files uploaded to Wikipedia on Wikipedia. Since this file isn't being used anywhere on Wikipedia other than this page, there's really not a lot to discuss here. A couple things for general reference before discussing this further on Commons: (1) Commons is a global project and files uploaded to it can be used by any Wikimedia Foundation project; (2) Commons doesn't really care how a file is being used as long has an appropriate copyright license and the potential for encyclopedic use by some Wikimedia Foundation project; and (3) Commons doesn't accept any "fair use" content per c:COM:FAIR so whether this file can be kept is likely going to depend upon c:COM:Packaging. A couple of things about image use on Wikipedia for general reference: (1) Wikipedia (i.e. English Wikipedia) is a local project and files uploaded to it can only be used on Wikipedia; (2) Wikipedia accepts both freely-licensed images and non-free images (i.e. copyright-protected images); and (3) Wikipedia requires that all image use comply with WP:IUP, but non-free images also need to comply with Wikipedia's non-free content use policy. -- Marchjuly (talk) 22:04, 25 October 2021 (UTC)
 * It appears likely to me (but I am also not a copyright expert) that this image can and should be tagged as public domain, rather than free use, using PD-textlogo or PD-US-not renewed. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:15, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

IMDB - using their data without acknowledgment
IMDB information is being used without acknowledgement ""IMDb content is mostly user-submitted and often subject to speculation, rumor, hoaxes, and inaccuracies. The use of the IMDb on Wikipedia as a sole reference is usually considered unacceptable and is discouraged. Its romanization of Chinese titles does not follow the standard. Reliable sourcing from established publications cannot be stressed enough. Anonymous or pseudonymous sources from online fansites are generally unacceptable. So, while itself discouraged as a source, IMDB might provide information leading editors to the preferable reliable sites.""
 * 1) No reference is given, but their cast & crew orders (based on number of tv episodes which we don't record) and ours nearly all match (except main characters) The IMDB order is based on the number of TV episodes each character appeared
 * 2) We are using their data without acknowledgement eg (crew in info boxes)
 * 3) We are using sources that use IMDB data such as  NYT
 * 4) We are also using their data to "lead us"

Wakelamp d&#91;@-@&#93;b (talk) 01:05, 28 November 2021 (UTC) Wakelamp d&#91;@-@&#93;b (talk) 02:32, 30 November 2021 (UTC)


 * I doubt there is a copyright issue here because a list of actors who appeared in a TV series or similar is factual data with no creative expression involved, especially if they are ordered by a simple numeric metric such as the number of episodes. The reliability of IMDB is independent of copyright.  Hut 8.5  08:33, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
 * So it's more plaigarism ? Wakelamp d&#91;@-@&#93;b (talk) 11:44, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
 * It's not plagiarism either, there isn't exactly anything to plagiarise.  Hut 8.5  17:31, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

It's more coincidence and nothing to worry about. In your example above, we have (as recurring characters):
 * Ken Osmond: 1 vs 1
 * Rusty Stevens: 2 vs 2
 * Stanley Fafara: 3 vs 3
 * Rich Correll: 4 vs 6
 * Stephen Talbot: 5 vs 4
 * Jeri Weil: 6 vs 7
 * Patty Turner: 7 vs 23
 * Karen Sue Trent: 8 vs 14
 * Bobby Mittelstaedt: 9 vs 18
 * Richard Deacon: 10 vs 9
 * Frank Bank: 11 vs 5
 * (Wendy Winkelman and) Veronica Cartwright: 12 vs 30
 * Buddy Joe Hooker: 13 vs 12
 * Tiger Fafara: 14 vs 10
 * Cheryl Holdridge: 15 vs 16
 * Pamela Baird: 16 vs 22
 * Edgar Buchanan: 17 vs
 * Madge Kennedy: 18 vs 24
 * Diane Brewster: 19 vs 25
 * Wendell Holmes: 20 vs 26
 * Sue Randall: 21 vs 8
 * Burt Mustin: 22 vs 13
 * Doris Packer: 23 vs 11
 * Madge Blake; 24 vs 15

Basically, you saw that the first three matched, and assumed that this had to mean that someone copied this from IMDb and that this was a problem. The remainder is in a completely different order though. Nothing to worry about in general, and certainly not in this specific case. Fram (talk) 12:05, 30 November 2021 (UTC)


 * Thank-you for doing that work, and I should have noticed. I came across IMDB because I was looking through how can we make it more fair for new article creators eg if a ref is not reliable warn them)
 * As an aside, with IMDB reliability, I don't understand why we don't do a large scale comparison, and find the accuracy and if it's better. Or contact the newspapers and ask.
 * The Cast and crew really be referenced though
 * It was the comment about "leading editors" that worried me. I did a cross check a few days ago No_Time_to_Die, at first I thought the Swedish and French refs were odd, (but then I did translate and I thought they were excellent), and there were some odder ones (referring to a poster and something else) and were not necessarily about the actor in question. I assume the means of finding them was their search engine
 * (And we should really really really get rid of this
 * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Film/Resources
 * "Editors can prepare a list of resources on the article's talk page or on a sub-page in their userspace, depending if they want to work on the article directly or work on a draft in their sandbox to import into the article later. Online resources can be accessed quickly; for websites that are subscription-based, use the BugMeNot Internet service to bypass registration. Print sources can be located in libraries or book stores. Editors may find it easier to access some periodicals through library databases rather than seek out physical copies" Wakelamp d&#91;@-@&#93;b (talk) 13:56, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

==Discussion at WP:VPP § Requirement to contact copyright holders of existing content before allowing fair use== You are invited to join the discussion at WP:VPP § Requirement to contact copyright holders of existing content before allowing fair use. -- Marchjuly (talk) 23:23, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

citing linguistic examples
Just to head off potential issues of someone enforcing COPYVIO too vigorously, where would be a good place to note how linguistic data is cited? You can't paraphrase it -- that would be OR -- nor should you put it in quotation marks. The practice in linguistics is to copy the sample text, its interlinear gloss and translation verbatim, and add a citation, usually to the right, for each such passage. An editor might object that the translation passes the creative threshold and is copyrightable, but that's not how it works with linguistic publications. — kwami (talk) 08:59, 16 November 2021 (UTC)


 * It sounds like you're asking for a blanket exemption from copyright policies for linguistic examples, which isn't the case at all. They have to be treated the same way as other pieces of text. Yes they would absolutely pass the creative threshold for copyright protection (which is very low), and there's a difference between "enforcing COPYVIO too vigorously" and "enforcing COPYVIO". Other linguistics publications either aren't following the same copyright policies as Wikipedia or just don't care about copyright.  Hut 8.5  12:28, 16 November 2021 (UTC)


 * It's not an exemption because because it's not a violation of copyright. By your standards, nearly every 2ary source linguistic publication ever published, in every country and by every publishing house, is in violation of copyright, and a couple thousand WP article are in violation of copyright. That's not reality. If someone elicits the sentence "I bought some fish last night" in the language of one of our articles, glosses it and translates it, then it's not copy-vio for us to cite it verbatim to illustrate that language. That's standard practice. It would only be plagiarism if we didn't cite it. So yes, I would like clarification that verbatim linguistic examples are acceptable under WP policy, so that ppl don't erroneously think the situation is as you describe it. — kwami (talk) 20:21, 16 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Just a note of the recent discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Linguistics. – Uanfala (talk) 02:35, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Here's a link to a chapter (arbitrarily chosen) by Matthew Dryer in the online version of the The World Atlas of Language Structures. The Atlas was first published by Oxford University Press, and is now hosted by the German-state funded Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. The examples (1) and (4)–(7) have exactly the format that is described by kwami above, and all sources are fully copyright protected. Does anyone in all earnest insinuate that the scholar and the two legal entities mentioned above deliberately or neglectfully violate copyright laws here? –Austronesier (talk) 15:27, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
 * First of all there's a difference between a violation of Wikipedia's copyright policies and a violation of copyright law. The two are not the same thing and the project has tighter restrictions than the legal minimum in some areas because of our commitment to building a free content encyclopedia. Secondly the fact someone else is publishing this material does not mean it's not copyrighted or that it can be used. Possibly they didn't care about the copyright issue, didn't think anybody would notice, or didn't even consider the issue themselves. None of these are good reasons for us using the material. There is nothing wrong with using brief attributed quotations from copyrighted sources in some circumstances (see Non-free_content), but excessive quotation from copyrighted sources isn't allowed and linguistic examples are subject to the same principles which apply elsewhere.  Hut 8.5  17:44, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Your claim that all linguists, linguistic departments at universities and linguistic publishing houses world-wide are serial copyright violators, who for some reason are never prosecuted, is simply ludicrous. You obviously know nothing about the topic, and shouldn't be presenting your ignorant speculation as fact. The data is not copyrighted. Copying large amounts of data may be inappropriate for an encyclopedic overview of a topic, but it's not copyvio. The analysis, interpretation and conclusions are a different matter, for those are creative work on the part of the author.
 * If science is not allowed on WP because data violates WP's copyright policies, then WP needs to be abandoned as an encyclopedia. Better I think to modify our policies to reflect reality. — kwami (talk) 07:07, 22 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Don't be ridiculous. You've jumped from "excessive quotation from copyrighted sources isn't allowed" to "science isn't allowed on Wikipedia". Neither I nor anybody else has said anything like that, and if you're going to erect absurd straw men then I don't see any point in continuing this. What is definitely not allowed on Wikipedia are incivility and personal attacks. Seriously, try telling your colleagues that their comments are "ignorant speculation" and see how long you last in your job. Nobody is going to amend this policy to allow a magic exemption for linguistic examples (not that the community can change copyright policy anyway).  Hut 8.5  12:11, 22 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm asking how we can ensure that scientific data can be incorporated into our articles without over-zealous copyvio editors deleting it because it triggers plagiarism-detecting software. Your response was obstructive. Instead of helping work out how WP can host articles on scientific topics, you appear to think that standard scholarship is indeed a copyright violation, and therefor cannot appear on WP. If you understand that is not the case, and you were careless in your wording above, please contribute to this discussion in a positive manner, with your ideas on how this (or another) policy page can clarify to the copyvio people that copying large amounts of data from a copyrighted source is not in itself a copyvio problem, and the material shouldn't be summarily deleted. — kwami (talk) 12:58, 22 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm not going to discuss this with you. You're now accusing me of acting in bad faith (I'm now "obstructive" as well as "incompetent") and you're still claming that I want to stop Wikipedia having articles on scientific topics, which is ridiculous. If you can't accept that people who disagree with you aren't all stupid and may not be out to severely damage the project then it's not going to be possible to have a constructive discussion.  Hut 8.5  18:13, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

Another example would be the large amounts of data we copy verbatim in astronomy articles. All the orbital parameters of the thousands of asteroids and moons we have articles on, for example, are copied verbatim from sources that are often copyright-protected. Is astronomy another field that isn't allowed on WP?

In biological classifications, we've copied lists of tens of thousands of species and their interrelationships verbatim. Is biological cladistics forbidden on WP because of copyright concerns?

The characteristics of atomic isotopes. In probably all fields of science, there are areas where data needs to be copied verbatim if we are not to engage in OR or even falsify our coverage of the topic.

We could say something like,
 * "Data that is not subject to copyright may be, and indeed often should be, copied verbatim. Examples are parsed and translated example sentences in linguistics, orbital and physical parameters in astronomy, and lists of member species and their interrelationships in biological classifications. Paraphrasing in such cases is inappropriate as it can distort the data and run afoul of WP:OR. Paraphrasing or other alteration in such cases is inappropriate wp:OR because the change will produce different data and thus invalidate the citation."

— kwami (talk) 07:38, 22 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I would word your last sentence more firmly. How about "Paraphrasing or other alteration in such cases is inappropriate wp:OR because the change will produce different data and thus invalidate the citation."
 * 's concerns are not groundless, see for example Climatic Research Unit email controversy, fourth paragraph (An editorial in Nature ...): data may indeed be subject to IPR, so we do need to identify precisely that which is in the public domain and that which is not. "Everybody does it" and "custom and practice" aren't really strong enough: do we know for sure that the authors cited above haven't paid to 'clear' the rights? Can we cite an RS that says "you may do this"? Not easy! --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 11:46, 22 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes we do, actually. Ask anyone who's published in linguistics. You can copy data from copyrighted sources as long as you don't engage in plagiarism. That's standard practice, and no-one pays to get the rights. (People even copy data from works that copied it from other works, which of course can be a problem if there are copy errors, but copyright isn't an issue.) It's not like copying poetry, where you do need to pay if you use more than Fair Use allows. Similarly, you don't have to pay to reproduce orbital data for astronomical bodies, or to list the boiling temperatures of various elements, even though it was expensive to collect that information, you just need to say where you got the data from. — kwami (talk) 13:03, 22 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I've have published articles with Routledge and OUP in volumes that went through the hands of the volume editors and series editors. I have cited verbatim interlinear examples from non-free sources. All instances involved are keenly aware of plagiarism and copyright violations, and my citations (and many others by other contributors) did not require any payments "to 'clear' the rights".
 * I want to stress that this is not about making room for an "anything goes"-policy, but rather to overcome a potential "nothing goes"-attitude that is not in accordance with WP-policies. Large reproduction of data without in-text citation that also reproduces the expositional structure framing the data is of course not acceptable for plagiarism and copyright reasons. But this is not what we are talking about. I have linked to a concrete example before, but based on the reply (that even didn't stop from questioning the professional ethics of the explicitly named scholar, publisher and research institution ), I will reproduce it here to elicit a more specific answer:


 * colspan=3 |Anywa (Reh 1996: 199)[1]
 * Dìmó || ā-rúBó || kī || tìí
 * Dimo || PST-thread.ANTIPASS || OBL || beads
 * colspan=3 | ‘Dimo threaded beads [and then ...]’
 * }
 * [1] The citation Reh 1996 is linked to a full bibliographical reference
 * What is excessive about this kind of citation if we made it here in WP? What makes it different from a 50-word blockquote?
 * I am aware of the pre-emptive care that requires WP policies to be stricter that copyright laws, but this falls way below the line of any violation, and doesn't enter any gray area either. –Austronesier (talk) 14:07, 22 November 2021 (UTC)
 * –Austronesier (talk) 20:00, 22 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I don't think there would be a problem with including that example by itself, but I don't see anybody actually saying this example isn't OK in the first place. The rules on copyrighted quotes are here: they have to be brief, they have to be used to illustrate a point, they have to be formatted as a quotation and they have to have an inline citation. This example is brief and has a citation, so if it's formatted as a quotation and is used to illustrate a point then it's OK. If you wanted to include a large number of examples like that (say all seven examples in that link), then that's no longer brief and so it's not OK. The only concrete cases of these things being removed that I can see are and, which both use substantial amounts of text from copyrighted sources.  Hut 8.5  20:43, 22 November 2021 (UTC)
 * So there might have been misunderstandings in this thread, ok, let's try a clean start then. What other ways do we have to format it as a quotation when using actual quotation marks is not really feasible due to the standardized layout structure of interlinear examples? Would something like "The following interlinearized example is quoted from :" immediately preceding the example suffice? –Austronesier (talk) 21:04, 22 November 2021 (UTC)
 * –Austronesier (talk) 20:00, 22 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I don't think there would be a problem with including that example by itself, but I don't see anybody actually saying this example isn't OK in the first place. The rules on copyrighted quotes are here: they have to be brief, they have to be used to illustrate a point, they have to be formatted as a quotation and they have to have an inline citation. This example is brief and has a citation, so if it's formatted as a quotation and is used to illustrate a point then it's OK. If you wanted to include a large number of examples like that (say all seven examples in that link), then that's no longer brief and so it's not OK. The only concrete cases of these things being removed that I can see are and, which both use substantial amounts of text from copyrighted sources.  Hut 8.5  20:43, 22 November 2021 (UTC)
 * So there might have been misunderstandings in this thread, ok, let's try a clean start then. What other ways do we have to format it as a quotation when using actual quotation marks is not really feasible due to the standardized layout structure of interlinear examples? Would something like "The following interlinearized example is quoted from :" immediately preceding the example suffice? –Austronesier (talk) 21:04, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

My concern is the statement "if you wanted to include ... all seven examples in that link, then that's no longer brief and so it's not OK." It is extremely common to use seven examples from a single source, so you are essentially saying that FA-quality articles in linguistics are not allowed on WP. That's not acceptable, and we're here to make sure that kind of spurious (c)-enforcement isn't a problem in the future.

I could see a different argument in this case: that there is creative judgement on Dryer's part in selecting which examples from which sources best illustrate the grammatical pattern in question, and that copying all of his examples would violate Dryer's copyright in selecting them. But it wouldn't violate copyright of the original sources. If we went to the sources that Dryer found, and chose seven different examples -- or maybe added some additional sources as well -- then there would be no (c) concern. If we took all seven from a single source there would still be no (c) concern. I suppose it amounts to what you consider to be "brief", but seven examples would almost certainly be needed for an FA-quality article, and if we were illustrating a language that only has one good source for it, then that would mean seven (or more) examples from that single source.

Point of clarification
Hut8.5, as a point of clarification, can I ask what the copyright standards are for verbatim copying of published data in other fields? For instance, do covid case numbers on Wikipedia have to be sourced from public domain publications? I can't speak to copyright law itself, but I think the reason this discussion is a little baffling to professional linguists is that verbatim copying of published data sentences isn't merely permissible but obligatory in our professional lives. I would get fired if I got caught altering a data sentence (unless I was a native speaker), and could even conceivably go to jail. Botterweg14 (talk)  00:12, 22 November 2021 (UTC)


 * Generally speaking you can't claim copyright on statistics because there is no creative element involved. At least in the United States you can't claim copyright on something unless there was some degree of creativity or judgement involved in its creation. There's a famous legal case in which the Supreme Court ruled that a company couldn't claim copyright on a phone book because it was just raw factual data with no creative expression involved. So something like COVID-19 case statistics can't be copyrighted. If you were writing about, say, an Olympic cycling race then you could copy a list of the athletes' times from a copyrighted source because it would be raw factual data with no creativity, but you couldn't copy an analysis of the race written by a journalist.
 * Again, nobody is saying you can't ever copy things from copyrighted sources on Wikipedia. Brief quotations from copyrighted sources are fine as long as they are used to illustrate a point, they are formatted as quotations and they are cited to the original source (Non-free content).  Hut 8.5  18:01, 22 November 2021 (UTC)


 * But you have to calculate the statistics, and the orbital parameters of an asteroid. There's a degree of judgement involved in that (what kind of error regression you use etc.). The judgement involved in parsing a linguistic example is comparable -- you might need to judge whether an element is a suffix or a separate word, or which of several homonyms it is. But neither is creative in the sense that copyright protects. We might even note that source A concludes that a morpheme is a suffix, and source B treats it as a separate word, just as astronomers might come to different conclusions as to whether an object is a dwarf planet. Copying someone's list of dwarf planets isn't copyvio despite the judgement involved, and even if there are 120 of them (as there are according to some sources). The author of the linguistic source didn't create the example sentence or the translation -- they only parsed it. — kwami (talk) 21:15, 22 November 2021 (UTC)


 * You're arguing about how copyright law should work: not how it does work. My understanding is that years of precedent have established that speech (i.e. words) are creative and protected by copyright, but numbers generally are not. You say the author of the linguistic work didn't create the examples, but someone must have. They're elements of speech, so presumably they're protected by copyright and they're being used in the linguistics source under a (perhaps implicit) fair use rationale, just like an attributed quotation. If I understand correctly, you're arguing that you don't have to attribute these quotes, but I don't see why you shouldn't. pburka (talk) 22:37, 22 November 2021 (UTC)
 * So if I say "Hey, how ya doing?", I have copyright over that utterance? You can't use it yourself? That's not how copyright works. — kwami (talk) 23:57, 22 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I think everybody here is in agreement that data sentences need attribution. The question is just whether their use with attribution can go beyond a snippet here and there. I'm getting the sense that there might be less disagreement about that than it seemed at first. Botterweg14  (talk)  23:08, 22 November 2021 (UTC)


 * pburka, what we're talking about here is someone asks, "how do you say, 'the dog chased the cat'?" and then writes it down. Such simple things are not subject to copyright. If someone is having a public conversation, and you write it down, can the speaker really claim copyright over it? But in practice, the researcher will have people sign release forms allowing use of their data. That was a university requirement in my case; I had to sign documentation that I would abide by policy for both copyright and privacy. I do have some data that hasn't been released for general use, and where I archived it it's marked as such. The problem wasn't copyright, but that one person was speaking badly of another and they didn't want it played on the radio. There are cases where linguists use copyrighted material such as poetry for examples, and in such cases they mark it as copyrighted. We would know not to make excessive use of such material precisely because it would be marked. But in most cases you have something like "speaker B6" (who wished to remain anonymous) said "the dog chased the cat". We're not infringing on anyone's copyright when we use that data. It's not a matter of using it in small amounts as Fair Use, it's not copyrighted at all. The author of the source has no copyright because they didn't create it; the speaker either released it or it isn't subject to copyright because it's a trivial statement with no creative content. — kwami (talk) 23:53, 22 November 2021 (UTC)


 * You can't claim copyright on facts, like the orbital parameters of an asteroid. There is no creative expression involved in calculating those. There would be no problem with using the phrase "the dog chased the cat" in a Wikipedia article either, but that's not the issue which prompted this discussion. The edit which did involved adding eight examples, most of which were longer than that one. That isn't appropriate under Wikipedia's copyright policies. If you were writing an article about a poet then you could probably quote one line from a copyrighted poem they wrote, but you couldn't quote an entire copyrighted poem. If nothing else there is definitely judgement on the part of the linguist for deciding that those eight examples were particularly representative of aspects of the language, and there is creativity involved in translating sentences from one language to another.  Hut 8.5  08:58, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
 * So we appear to be in agreement that the English sentence 'The dog chased the cat' is below the threshold of originality. But that should be equally true of the French 'Le chien a chassé le chat.', or to the pairing of the English with the French sentence. Right? I can't see how the straightforward translation of a simple sentence may introduce the sort of creative content that could push the whole thing above that threshold. Again, before we turn to the longer or more complex cases, it will be good to have some idea where we stand on the basics. – Uanfala (talk) 20:40, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Linguistic examples usually will include an additional line which contains the analysis of the sample clause and which IMO primarily makes up the part that involves creativity. If the analysis is in prose, all doors to paraphrasing are open, but mostly we have a formalized parse as in the example I gave above, and this – as we all agree – cannot be altered (except maybe for different abbreviation conventions). But as already has clarified above, a single example marked as a quotation with an inline citation is ok. –Austronesier (talk) 21:45, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I would think the formalised parse is the part that's least susceptible to interpretation as being subject to copyright. Yes, it's the bit that requires the most thinking on part of the linguists, but its form is not really creative: in most cases, different linguists carrying out an analysis should converge on substantially identical parses. So, they're comparable to elaborate chemical formulas or to very precisely calculated orbital parameters. Also, I would think it's acceptable – and in a text aimed at lay readers like Wikipedia, often desirable – to alter them, omitting detail or simplifying presentation (e.g. "do.PFV.PST" -> "did"), as long as the underlying analysis hasn't been altered. But that's a question for another discussion.  More importantly, I still don't see any sort of shared understanding here. Why should it be a relief to know that a single example is usually OK, if the examples concerned happen to all be below the threshold of originality and so copyright considerations shouldn't enter the picture in the first place (if we don't indiscriminately reproduce hundreds of simple sentences per article, that's for ethical reasons that are unrelated to copyright law, at least the way it's understood in the US). And a single example each is not what we have on Wikipedia. A well-developed language article will have dozens of such examples (at least some of which will be complex enough for copyright to be relevant) and if it's a lesser known language, then chances are that most of those examples will come from a single source. There are nuanced considerations here (extent of fair use, or the differences between authored narratives, folk tales and elicited sentences), but before we get there we need to at least have some common understanding about the basics, and I'm not seeing that here. – Uanfala (talk) 17:28, 24 December 2021 (UTC)
 * So you still maintain that linguistics of any depth is not allowed on WP because good coverage of a language would be a copyright violation. Just about any FA-quality language article is going to need more than half a dozen examples. If that truly is WP policy, and you simply aren't misunderstanding it, then policy needs to change. It's ridiculous to say that a scientific field isn't allowed on an encyclopedia.
 * Take Latin grammar. In the "Use of cases" section alone, I count 28 translated examples. That's way beyond your limit. Do you really maintain that we need to gut that article because of copyvio concerns? — kwami (talk) 09:31, 23 November 2021 (UTC)


 * I'm not going to respond to you again as you seem to be incapable of having constructive disagreements. You have repeatedly accused me of trying to stop science or linguistics from being covered in Wikipedia, which is absolute rubbish. Nor did I say that whether something is a copyright violation is determined purely by the number of examples. It isn't. It's not clear to me that the examples Latin grammar are copyrighted in the first place, e.g. some of them are sourced to Cicero.  Hut 8.5  12:43, 23 November 2021 (UTC)


 * That's because you've repeatedly said that. We'd all like a straight answer. If you're not going to give one, you shouldn't be here.
 * You again contradict yourself. You said twice that it's the number of examples that matters. You also said that it doesn't matter if the examples themselves are copyrighted to begin with, because the fact that the source selected them as pertinent examples makes them copyrighted. So it shouldn't matter if they're from Cicero. Regardless, that won't be the case for most of our language articles, where the speaker is anonymous.
 * What I'm hearing from you, and the reason I'm frustrated, is that anyone can gut an article at any time for apparently arbitrary reasons, claiming copyright violation. We'd all like clarification that there are some actual standards, and what those standards are. — kwami (talk) 16:57, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I understand you want a formula, but copyright law isn't as clear as you or I might like. The best guidance you'll get is don't copy extensively from a single source, unless it's explicitly public domain or licensed under a compatible free license. If you do copy small excerpts verbatim, fastidiously attribute the copied text. I suspect that it's possible to cover linguistic topics in an encyclopedic manner without wholesale copying from others' works, but if it's not then perhaps those topics aren't compatible with our third pillar and ought not to be in a free encyclopedia. pburka (talk) 18:13, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
 * But that's the point. Even when we have only a single RS, extensive verbatim copying of data *is* compatible with a free encyclopedia. It's precisely that misunderstanding that we wish to clarify. If you don't wish to participate further, fine, that's up to you -- but we need to get this clarified so that others won't have the same misunderstanding that you do. — kwami (talk) 19:20, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

Enochian
We have an interesting copyright violation here - it got correctly revdel'ed, but then that revdel was reversed. The issue at hand here is a list of pronunciations of Enochian - a language for which the only native speakers are angels. The editor who introduced the material is pretending the situation is like any natural language where the pronunciations are simply lists of agreed-upon facts. However, this is essentially a fictional language: no native speakers have been interviewed, only one real linguist has addressed the issue, and there is no agreement or corroboration of the 'facts' from other linguists. Therefore this material is a shorthand description of a linguistic theory rather than linguistic facts. As a theory it is unique, and thus protected by copyright. Skyerise (talk) 20:21, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Please provide the names of the "several linguists" other than Donald C. Laycock claimed in the article (with a citation needed tag) to have addressed Enochian. Please also provide the papers or books in which they describe how Enochian is pronounced. Then please show that there is agreement between say even three linguists about the pronunciation. If you can do this, I will concede that the pronunciations are indeed 'fact' and that there is no copyright violation; however, if on the other hand, Laycock is the only qualified linguist to have addressed Enochian pronunciation; or perhaps there is one more, but their opinions aren't in agreement - then Laycock's theory has not been corroborated into fact, should not be presented as fact, and is indeed a unique creative product of Laycock's research which - not being actual agreed-upon fact - would indeed be protected by copyright. Skyerise (talk) 20:31, 17 January 2022 (UTC)


 * I take it I may edit the article then without accusations of 3RR? That's why we're back to the stable version in the first place.
 * I'll look into it. But if there's only one RS, there's only one RS. There are no "facts" here -- see WP:TRUTH. If there is more than one RS, then we need to present them per WEIGHT. If you know of any others, please provide -- I'm only aware of Laycock. As for your claims that the only native speakers are angels, I can't tell if you're being serious -- such an approach would certainly run afoul of FRINGE.
 * Your copy-vio claims have been rejected -- reporting an analysis is the essence of what we do on WP. I assumed you were arguing in bad faith (arguing that anything you don't like is copyvio), but that's no longer relevant. — kwami (talk) 20:47, 17 January 2022 (UTC)
 * No, you leaned on one copyvio person to reverse their decision. They reversed it without taking into account my arguments. That is not a rejection, just a temporary setback. You still need to show that the material is agreed-upon fact, as that is the exception you are attempting to claim. Skyerise (talk) 20:50, 17 January 2022 (UTC)
 * "Truth" is irrelevant for WP. We go by RS's. You should know that after 12 years here. We can follow RS's, including your (valuable) corrections and improvements, or we can revert to the stable but inferior (sloppy) version of the article. Your choice. I'm not going to argue about silliness. Meanwhile, I've tagged the statement you contest as 'cn' and am seeing if there's anything to it or if it should be deleted. — kwami (talk) 20:58, 17 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Skyerise, your post here comes across as an elaborate prank. In case it isn't, then the section FAQ/Copyright may be useful, in particular the quote: Ideas and facts are not copyrightable in most places, only the form of expression of them. Information about entities, whether they exist in the real world or are fictional, or about the claims people have made of those entities, is not subject to copyright. – Uanfala (talk) 22:54, 17 January 2022 (UTC)
 * The information presented is too simple to be copyrighted. I concur with Uanfala's assessment that there is no copyright violation in the table. If it soothes over ruffled feathers, the mapping to English and the Enuchian letters are all Public Domain in the first place. Formulas, pronunciations, and chemical structures are some things that simply are not protected by US copyright. Sennecaster  ( Chat ) 23:10, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

January 2022 Copyright Policy Appears to Contradict Put-back provisions under DMCA statute
This policy appears to be problematic in that it appears to be expressly contrary to the counter-notice provisions contained in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which holds force of statutory law and which may create a potential cause of legal action under the existing copyright law for injunctive relief to compel compliance with the law. It is worth noting that where the law establishes a particular procedure and manner of analysis and doing things, platforms are not then free to choose their own procedures in contravention of what the statutory law explicitly requires, because of the requirement imposed on all to abide strictly by the law. 98.178.191.34 (talk) 22:04, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

1944 photographs from the RAF archive
Hello, a question for some copyright expert from the United Kingdom: this photograph was taken on 11 September 1944 at the Parc de Princes in Paris, France, by a Royal Air Force's photographer prior to a rugby union match between RAF RU team and Paris Universitaire FC. Can there safely apply PD-UKGov? Thanks --  Blackcat  Ar Icon Contact.svg 00:02, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

Invalid markup
The list in the lead section of this page after "To this end" is indented using two leading colons. This produces two description lists with a single description, but no term. This is invalid, and an incorrect way to indent a block of text. I don't think this list needs further indenting than simply being a list provides it, but if it really must be indented, use instead. Otherwise, simply delete the colons. Hairy Dude (talk) 21:38, 14 April 2022 (UTC)
 * ✅ outdented a level. — xaosflux  Talk 23:12, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

Linking to archive of page which was a LINKVIO
Currently the following is the text under WP:LINKVIO: "The copyright status of Internet archives in the United States is unclear, however. It is currently acceptable to link to Internet archives such as the Wayback Machine, which host unmodified archived copies of webpages taken at various points in time."

I think it would be good to add something like "as long as that original archived website was the copyright holder of the published work." Since, the webpage might have been taken down due to being a copyvio itself, as to not keep keep linking to that archived page in that case. Jonatan Svensson Glad (talk) 20:07, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

International differences in copyright terms and COPYLINK
On WP:COPYLINK, what about a work which is PD in a non-US juridiction and hosted on a website in that jurisdiction, but is not yet PD in the US? As the US has rather long copyrights, this is a common issue. Wikipedia readers in jurisdictions where the work is in the PD have every right to access, copy and read the work as PD, and telling them where to find it is useful and in line with Wikipedia's mission to make the world's knowledge more accessible. But readers in the US can't legally access the work. Should we link? Provide some sort of warning? Link in a template that renders differently depending on the country the IP is from? Some countries, like Mexico, have even longer copyright terms than the US. If a US-made work is PD in the US but not in Mexico, do we need to provide a warning for Mexican readers? The internet has been around for decades now, you'd think we'd have this settled. HLHJ (talk) 17:17, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

Re-use of Conservapedia edits, seemingly by their original contributor
As I understand it from WikiProject Copyright Cleanup/Sources, third-party editors here can't copy material from Conservapedia, because of the revocable licence issue. (Setting aside such considerations as good taste and sound judgement for the time being.) But if an editor makes a contribution there, and then the same person makes an identical addition here, does the same still apply? I'm not clear if Conservapedia's 'copyright policy' [sic] claims ownership of submissions, or just publishing rights of some sort. Their document actually seems confused as to whether it's a copyright notice or a licence; I think the author should perhaps ask for a refund on his law degree. So I don't know if it has any valid legal effect at all, much less which. Any clarification appreciated. Context: a number of edits under discussion at Administrators' noticeboard, and indeed an editor who might intend similar such edits in the future. 109.255.211.6 (talk) 06:13, 20 March 2022 (UTC)


 * I am not a lawyer, but my understanding is that copyright of a work belongs to the author. While there was a time when publishers often made authors sign over copyright, I have not seen anything to indicate that the Conservapedia license includes such a transfer. Unless an author has entered into a valid contract to transfer copyright, I believe they retain copyright. Donald Albury 15:16, 20 March 2022 (UTC)
 * ... and there would need to be some exchange of consideration and formal documentation of a copyright transfer for it to be valid, would there not? Jclemens (talk) 18:05, 20 March 2022 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure a contract needs to exist just to 'give' someone something, like for example your copyright. Which isn't to say this 'legal binding document' isn't badly defective -- my hot take as a non-American non-lawyer is that it certainly looks to be.  Their page states "Content is copyrighted under the laws of the United States of America, as such you agree to be bound by applicable US laws and to submit to the exclusive jurisdiction of the United States District Court sitting in the City of Newark, State of New Jersey."  I'm not sure if that's trying to say "you retain copyright in your submissions -- but we have irrevocable right of publication, yet retain the right to revoke re-publication" or if it's trying to imply that they hold the copyright.  109.255.211.6 (talk) 20:43, 20 March 2022 (UTC)
 * From the site owner and "copyright policy" author's statements elsewhere, it's not intended to be a copyright claim, and he does envisage "dual use" of contributions. Specifically he suggests publishing on his site first and then elsewhere, rather than vice versa, and seems to believe this makes some unspecified crucial difference.  Sounds like magical thinking to me, but it would cover the above case, at least.  109.255.211.6 (talk) 21:07, 21 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Copyright transfer is still common. Academic publishers publishing under CC-BY licenses, notoriously including Elsevier, may make academics sign over copyright to the publisher, meaning the publisher can later paywall the article, impose licensing terms that restrict redistribution etc. quite legally. As their copy is the official one indexed, and no-one may have an old copy to post elsewhere, they can often get away with it. Some open-source projects require that you transfer copyright to your code contribs to some organization; the org may later discontinue the sharealike license and make future versions proprietary, obviating the purpose of a sharealike clause. HLHJ (talk) 17:27, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

Protected edit request on 26 October 2022
Add the link "Freedom of panorama" at the "See also" section, since it is about copyright in unfree architecture and the application of U.S. law for allowance of unfree architecture on Wikipedia. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 02:23, 26 October 2022 (UTC)
 * ✅ — xaosflux  Talk 13:15, 26 October 2022 (UTC)

Protected edit request on 2022-10-31
Please change the red box at the top. It says "[...] are the trademarked Wikipedia/Wikimedia logos, which are not freely usable without permission.". The Wikimedia logos have been freed and are licensed under cc-by-sa-3.0. Matr1x-101 (talk) 20:57, 31 October 2022 (UTC)


 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done: What's your source hat they've relaxed or released the trademark? —C.Fred (talk) 21:00, 31 October 2022 (UTC)


 * Hi, they haven't released rights to the trademark, but the box implies that the logos are still under full copyright restrictions. In other words, it implies that "all rights are reserved" to Wikimedia Foundation, when the logos are under cc-by-sa-3.0. Matr1x-101 (talk) 21:03, 31 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Change
 * "The only Wikipedia content you should contact the Wikimedia Foundation about are the trademarked Wikipedia/Wikimedia logos, which are not freely usable without permission."
 * to
 * "The only Wikipedia content you should contact the Wikimedia Foundation about are the trademarked Wikipedia/Wikimedia logos, which cannot be used under certain circumstances without permission." Matr1x-101 (talk) 21:13, 31 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done for now: There is a similar wording in WP:Copyrights that should be reviewed as well before accepting this change. Izno (talk) 07:51, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

Edit request - fix copyright redirect
I have not enough permissions to edit on this small change:

From:
 * Text of Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License

To:
 * Text of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License

Thanks folks --Valerio Bozzolan (talk) 13:06, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

Copyright policy experts needed concerning chatbot-generated text
A draft of a policy covering the pasting of chatbot-generated text into Wikipedia is currently being written. Copyrights, that is, who owns the output of a chatbot (such as Chat-GPT), is a key issue that should be clarified during the drafting process. Your input is needed at Wikipedia talk:Large language models. Thank you. Sincerely,  &mdash; The Transhumanist   10:02, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

Odd phrasing
"Linking to a page that illegally distributes someone else's work sheds a bad light on Wikipedia and its editors."

I've never heard or read anyone say it in that way. To "shed light" usually has altogether a different meaning, one concerning enlightenment. I suspect the phrasing the writer was looking for is "..casts Wikipedia and its editors in a bad [or unfavorable] light." See here. Harfarhs (talk) 12:09, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

Copyright policy regarding photoshopped portrait image
i would like to know about the copyright policy regarding photoshopped portrait images? I am looking for the information about ownership, licensing, or any specific aspect related to copyright and photoshopped images? What if only face changed?

Thesaurabhsaha (talk) 05:44, 22 May 2023 (UTC)


 * @Thesaurabhsaha Photoshopping is a modification of the original image, so all the ownership/licensing/copyright of the original information applies. If it's under a license that allows derivative work, then it is probably safe to license the derivative work under the same license listing both the original artist and the modifier. If, however, the original portrait is under an all-rights-reserved license, then the copyright restrictions would still apply, and WP:NFCC would come into play. —C.Fred (talk) 11:46, 22 May 2023 (UTC)
 * @C.Fred Thank you so much. You have already answered my question.
 * Do you think Pinterest is a reliable source to give a speedy deletion request to a file? And the second thing is the image is not used neither in any geniune news article, magazine or in the actors social media. The source images mentioned in speedy deletion request is less then 50kb, where mine was above 330kb. Please clarify.
 * Thesaurabhsaha (talk) 12:12, 22 May 2023 (UTC)
 * @Thesaurabhsaha If the image was on Pinterest, that's a red flag that it was scraped from somewhere else on the web, but that is not direct, conclusive proof of a violation. —C.Fred (talk) 19:13, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia talk:Copyright situations by country § This page is redundant
You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Copyright situations by country § This page is redundant. Snowmanonahoe (talk · contribs · typos) 02:52, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

Berne Convention
"The text of Wikipedia is copyrighted (automatically, under the Berne Convention)" is a bit masquarding how this works. Countries have ratified the Berne Convention, and implemented local legislation that follows this convention. There is also a different copyright treaty, the TRIPS agreement, which is used by countries that aren't a signatory of the Berne Convention. The lead sentence is better written like: "The text of Wikipedia is copyrighted automatically under legislation that follows the Berne Convention". PhotographyEdits (talk) 12:47, 29 August 2022 (UTC)


 * @Xaosflux Could you look into this? PhotographyEdits (talk) 12:15, 11 November 2022 (UTC)
 * the current sentence is:

.
 * What exactly do you want it changed to? I don't think it is a good idea to take out the parts about the licensing, that is a core component of the project. I am certainly not a copyright lawyer, but to the best of my knowledge the copyright belongs to the author, under the jurisdiction under where ever they happen to and possibly also under the jurisdiction they claim citizenship under. It is certainly tricky, especially if they author is from/in a non-treaty signatory. This page is primarily letting readers and editors know that the author "owns" the copy, likely has copyrights, and that they use a free license. Is it possible that a country doesn't allow for automatic copyrighting yes, I think Somalia has that issue (they require registering, and don't offer a method to actually register). I don't think this page is meant to be 100% inclusive of everywhere in the world.  Perhaps expanding that to still say it is automatic, under international agreements such as Berne and TRIPS?  Craft a complete replacement sentence that you think works and drop it in below, then activate the edit request at the top of this section and an admin (possibly me) will review it for updating.  Best regards, —  xaosflux  Talk 16:24, 11 November 2022 (UTC)
 * I think PhotographyEdits is thinking of the fact that, in the United States, the Berne Convention is not "self-executing": that is, the treaty itself makes no changes to US law. Rather, the US construes the treaty as an agreement to make its laws conform to the Berne Convention, and it is those laws that provide the copyright protection, not the Berne Convention itself.
 * (The US position can be found in the opening "Declarations" of the Berne Convention Implementation Act (BCIA), which reads "[The Berne Convention and its associated documents] are not self-executing under the Constitution and laws of the United States.... The amendments made by [the BCIAA]]...  satisfy the obligations of the United States in adhering to the Berne Convention and no further rights or interests shall be recognized or created for that purpose.")
 * If that position were universal, it would be correct to say that "automatically, under the Berne Convention" was incorrect and that maybe it should read "automatically, under laws pursuant to the Berne Convention". But that position is not universal; other countries do indeed treat Berne as self-executing; that is, the convention itself conveys rights without reliance on enabling legislation such as the US's BCIA.
 * We could, I suppose, tweak it to "automatically, under the Berne Convention and the laws made pursuant to it", but that's overkill. TJRC (talk) 21:12, 22 May 2023 (UTC)
 * @TJRC
 * "I think PhotographyEdits is thinking of the fact that, in the United States, the Berne Convention is not "self-executing": that is, the treaty itself makes no changes to US law."
 * Yes, that is my point indeed.
 * "other countries do indeed treat Berne as self-executing; that is, the convention itself conveys rights without reliance on enabling legislation such as the US's BCIA."
 * Interesting, I did not know there were countries that used the Berne Convention in a self-executing way.
 * I don't think that your last suggestion is overkill, I think that is a reasonable way to describe the situation. PhotographyEdits (talk) 07:49, 23 May 2023 (UTC)
 * @TJRC Are you able to make this change, or do we need broader consensus? PhotographyEdits (talk) 14:17, 12 June 2023 (UTC)
 * As I mention above, I think it's overkill. This is a Wikipedia policy page, whose purpose is to set out the rules; not a legal treatise that should go deep into the weeds. Don't count my nose as part of determining consensus to change. TJRC (talk) 16:56, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Logos not usable without permission
The red box at the top says you should email the foundation to use the logos which are not freely usable without permission. This isn't true anymore, right? Snowmanonahoe (talk · contribs · typos) 01:31, 11 June 2023 (UTC)


 * What would lead you to believe that the usability status of the logos has changed? Izno (talk) 02:54, 13 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Commons:File:Wikipedia-logo-v2-en.svg, for example. Snowmanonahoe (talk · contribs · typos) 13:02, 13 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Per https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Policy:Trademark_policy the Foundation authorizes the use of logos on sister projects. Frostly (talk) 15:25, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

Permissible length of quotes for reviews
I'm doing an FAC review for the book Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication. In the review section, there's currently a quote from a review used as a visual element, which I think is permissible editorially, but I'm unsure whether it's permissible on a copyright level. Do we have any relevant guidance on how long quotes can be before they start to become a copyright issue? &#123;{u&#124; Sdkb  }&#125;  talk 21:01, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

"Under copyright", not "copyrighted"
I was looking for where this was stated, but I hadn't considered there might be a difference until I saw this in the Teahouse archives referring to a photo.— Vchimpanzee  •  talk  •  contributions  •  21:26, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

wiki page Olberg AZ. attempt to post photo ; denied
I own a photo that is historic to the olberg AZ page and attempted to upload. That attempt was denied. I was told this may have to do with copyright. I have the photo if you would like to view it. How can i successfully upload? TIA Sloan80 (talk) 19:07, 29 June 2023 (UTC)


 * When you say you own the photo, do you mean that you own a physical copy of the photo? Do you mean that you are its original photographer and own the copyright on the photo? Or something else? —David Eppstein (talk) 01:43, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
 * I inherited the photo. It is a family photo.  I scanned it into a scanner.  the photo is probably from the 60s-70s.  A family member was the person who took the photo.  All those people have passed so I now own it. Sloan80 (talk) 13:46, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
 * You didn't answer my question, but I infer from your discussion of scanning it that you mean the physical photo. The physical photo is not the copyright. Ownership of a physical photo (even of its negatives, or of its only copy) is not the same as ownership of the copyright. The copyright still exists. Probably it was inherited by the estate of the photographer, but this situation makes it difficult to figure out exactly who owns it. We can only accept copyrighted photos when we know who owns the copyright and we know that the copyright owner is releasing it under a public license. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:25, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

Edit request
Greetings and felicitations. In the second paragraph of the "Linking to copyrighted works", would someone please italicize the link GS Media v Sanoma per MOS:NAMESANDTITLES? — DocWatson42 (talk) 13:30, 6 July 2023 (UTC)
 * ✅ Izno (talk) 02:59, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Thank you. ^_^ —DocWatson42 (talk) 03:32, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

Status of linking to works on the Internet Archive (and Google Books and HathiTrust)?
Primefac (talk) 06:09, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

Protected edit request on 7 June 2023
This is a long list of changes, so I apologize in advance. Updating to align with the new Terms of Use and CC-BY-SA license, in effect as of June 7. Thank you in advance!
 * You should then read the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License ->
 * Most of Wikipedia's text and many of its images are co-licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License (CC BY-SA) and the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) ->
 * Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify Wikipedia's text under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License ->
 * A copy of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License is included in the section entitled "Text of Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License" ->
 * For this purpose, a suitable URL is: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ -<
 * For further information, please refer to the legal code of the CC BY-SA License. ->

Sennecaster ( Chat ) 20:38, 7 June 2023 (UTC)


 * Please change “utilizes” to “uses” as well, and replace instances of “our” with “its” or “Wikipedia’s”. Thanks! Frostly (talk) 21:14, 7 June 2023 (UTC)
 * See somewhat related mostly technical stuff at: MediaWiki_talk:Wikimedia-copyright — xaosflux  Talk 13:59, 8 June 2023 (UTC)
 * I am not strictly certain these suggested edits are correct. There has been some discussion previously on the point of what exactly is licensed as what ( I think knows where, probably in the 4.0 RFC). My understanding of things is that:
 * Many old revisions are GFDL, up to date X. Pages are licensed exclusively as GFDL.
 * Many revisions between date X and date Y are CC by 3.0 where page is new and using totally new content, and dual licensed CC by 3.0 and GFDL for old pages or page is new but using old content. Pages are thus licensed exclusively as GFDL (pages edited before date X and not after), or GFDL and CC by SA 3.0 (pages existing before date X but edited after, or pages existing only after but edited using contribution from a page existing before), or CC by SA 3.0 only (pages existing after and containing only new text). (Consider user pages as a modern day case of GFDL only, and most events and newly-notable people since date X as the dominant modern case of CC by SA 3.0 only.)
 * Many revisions from date Y are CC by 4.0 (we're around now). Now we have the previous cases for pages (yes, we still have stuff licensed only under 3.0, because no changes have been made to them since date Y), various permutations of CC by SA 4.0. The licensing for a page ends up looking like one of the potential following:
 * GFDL only.
 * CC by 3.0 only.
 * CC by 4.0 only.
 * GFDL + CC by 3.0.
 * GFDL + CC by 4.0.
 * Where date X is transition from GFDL to CC by SA 3.0 and date Y is transition from CC by SA 3.0 to 4.0. Izno (talk) 03:13, 13 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done for now: Izno (talk) 03:01, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
 * It is unreasonable for this edit request to be declined when Legal has affirmed that the current license is 4.0 and the page footer also confirms the fact. If you are concerned about the legal status of the relicensing, you may email legal@wikimedia.org. Thanks! Frostly (talk) 23:53, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Well, you can either substantively comment on my points or you may take that opinion of things. I declined this because it was clear and obvious no one was going to do so after multiple weeks. Please feel free to respond to them. I would expect, at a minimum, some discussion in a modified edit request regarding these points, or some actual pointer elsewhere where this interpretation is wrong.
 * I have no fundamental issue with the license being 4.0 for contributions since date Y, to use the same nomenclature. I have an issue with an assertion, that such an edit here would make, that 3.0 contributions are relicensed automatically to 4.0 contributions as would be implied by a simple swap from 1 to the other. Especially when the GFDL crossover to CC by SA 3.0 was a "one time deal", which is what hung up Legal if no others up on making this upgrade in the first place for a long time. Izno (talk) 00:03, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
 * The FSF permitted large collaborative sites to relicense from GFDL to CC licenses for a period of time, which is why the GFDL --> CC relicensing could happen. The 3.0 to 4.0 relicensing is permissible because of this mechanism. Please let me know if you have any more questions or concerns! Best, Frostly (talk) 00:10, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Do not edit war over answered. Thanks. You can have a conversation with someone without setting that flag back and forth.
 * Yes, that is when the GFDL -> CC by 3.0 additional license was allowed.
 * Thank you for linking there. You should read the entire section and you will see my exact point made there: only adaptations are licensed CC by SA 4.0 (as modified in the TOU regarding database rights -- which is also relevant to the modification requested in this section). Izno (talk) 00:14, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

Old photo album
I have been looking at an album of photos taken by my father (deceased 40+ years), showing places across Scotland in the 1930s-40s. The prints are small (people did tend to economise on photo paper) and may not scan well. And a lot of the views haven't really changed, so his photos would be superfluous here. But I am wondering about the status if I do identify some that for scanning and uploading. They are not my own work but have fallen to me through the family: what license could I put on them? AllyD (talk) 07:25, 23 September 2023 (UTC)


 * If you are the statutory heir of the photographer, you are able to release them under any license you choose. Nikkimaria (talk) 14:28, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

Protected edit request on 13 October 2023
Please update the CC BY-SA 3.0 license to CC BY-SA 4.0 license, as WMF changed the license of text a few months ago. Awesome Aasim 14:00, 13 October 2023 (UTC)
 * ✅ if I missed any, please ping me. — xaosflux  Talk 14:55, 13 October 2023 (UTC)