Wikipedia talk:Standard GFDL violation letter

Old talk
I changed "GFDL copyright notice" to "GFDL notice", because a GFDL notice tells you about licensing, not copyright. Copyright is a different issue altogether. -- Tim Starling 04:17 9 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I saw the page which this page discusses in the recent changes list and had a look. In fact, I have an enquiry concerning licensing which I would like to raise and was wondering how best to do it. In the event, this page might be a good way to start the enquiry.

I notice that the letters have "Dear Website owner's name here,

We're delighted to see that your website, web page here, uses content from Wikipedia"

Now, the letters both presume the use is in a website.

I have an idea for content from Wikipedia to be used on broadcast channels, broadcast using the Digital Video Broadcasting - Multimedia Home Platform system (DVB-MHP) of which technology there is a lot of information in the http://www.mhp.org webspace and the http://www.dvb.org webspace.

I am hoping that that idea will get taken up by broadcasters and to make that possibility one step easier I am hoping that I can find a clear statement that such use for broadcasting is permitted. From reading the license document my own thinking is that use for broadcasting is fine, yet such reading and thinking does not carry the provenance of an explicit statement on a web page to which I can refer people.

Due to issues of provenance of information which will arise with broadcasting I am thinking more of the nupedia project for the long term, though the licensing seems the same yet I am unsure as to how much of nupedia is available at present.

If this is not the correct place for this topic, please feel free to delete it or move it.

Songwriter 22:55 9 Jul 2003 (UTC)


 * It is my understanding that as long as you a) credit Wikipedia as the source and b) provide a clear means for the reader to find Wikipedia's site so they can access the source (ie the raw editable wikitext), then it's fine -- Tarquin 08:58 10 Jul 2003 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure that this is accurate. I believe all derived works must be released under the GFDL.  MB 19:28 10 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Thanks to you both. Although a broadcaster could use the text 'as is', one possibility, (which would, in fact, not alter the wording of articles, yet which, in a like manner to a translation would be a modification of the article), would be to use colour codes rather than the sequence of two [ characters in an article.

I have produced a set of possible colour codes and these are to be found in the following web page.

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/courtcol.htm

The font Quest text has authoring-time logos for the code points used for colours, based on the Petra Sancta system often used in black and white illustrations in books about heraldry. Thus the colour characters can be viewed in a black and white display in a text editor such as WordPad when using the Quest text font at authoring time, with the intention that when the file is displayed upon the screen of an interactive television the logos are not displayed yet the colour of the text changes.

The Quest text font is available as follows.

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/font7007.htm

Readers might find the SC UniPad program useful as well.

http://www.unipad.org

The need to make the modified file GFDL licensed is an important consideration. For me, such licensing is not a problem, so hopefully in the future files of text from Wikipedia and Nupedia will be broadcast from terrestrial television transmitters and from direct broadcast television satellites so that they can be viewed on interactive television sets, with no need for a telephone line connection or any return information link back to the broadcasting computer.

Songwriter 06:48 11 Jul 2003 (UTC)


 * please add any comments into the Village Pump page.Songwriter 06:46 10 Jul 2003 (UTC)


 * Please don't. It's better to include simply a link and v. brief summary on the pump, and have the discussion here. The village pump gets very full very quick, so it's a bad place for real discussion.
 * Not a criticism - just so you know for next time... Martin

As discussed at Wikipedia talk:Sites that use Wikipedia for content, we have now come to the point where we need to send out a "sternly-worded followup letter." So lets start cracking! And, if anyone feels like it, maybe we could get cracking on the "final warning" as described by Mav on Wikipedia talk:Sites that use Wikipedia for content. { MB | &#12510;&#12452;&#12459;&#12523; } 14:20, Aug 19, 2003 (UTC)

Ok, here's my first go at it: --Gutza 11:49, 21 Aug 2003 (UTC)

GFDL Violation Letter Followup
Dear Website owner's name here,

This is in regard with your web page here which uses Wikipedia content (http://www.wikipedia.org).

As we suggested in a prior message, your using Wikipedia content automatically makes you a Licensee of that material, according to the Wikipedia Copyrights page and the international copyright laws. As a Licensee of the GNU FDL, you have to abide by that respective license, which in turn means you have to perform the following steps:


 * You must include links to the article(s) in Wikipedia you copied on the pages containing the copied/modified material;
 * You must include a visible GFDL notice on every page using Wikipedia content.

This is the second message we send you, after more than one month, in which time your copyright violation status didn't ameliorate. Please make sure you follow the steps above in a reasonable time frame.

For more information on your righs and obligations as a Licensee of the GNU FDL, see http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html

Thank you, Your name here


 * Good start! I'm copying it to the main page space so that others can easily edit it. { MB | &#12510;&#12452;&#12459;&#12523; } 19:49, Aug 25, 2003 (UTC)

Copyright status of the letters
I would prefer that we release the sample letters into the public domain, rather than licensing them under the GFDL. Requiring that senders of the letters include a GFDL notice on the emails themselves is potentially confusing to the recipients, who are likely already confused enough about the GFDL as it applies to their site as it is. It's also completely unnecessary for something that is 5-6 sentences long, and looks a bit pedantic and free-software-zealotish (like the people who release their .sigs under the GFDL with a GFDL notice that's longer than the sig is). --Delirium 19:57, Aug 25, 2003 (UTC)


 * I have no problem with someone removing them. { MB | &#12510;&#12452;&#12459;&#12523; } 20:00, Aug 25, 2003 (UTC)


 * I doubt that a form letter is copyrightable anyway. It is supposed to be a generic thing; after all it is just a suggestion, any seasoned Wikipedia editor would know how to re-edit it so that it is not just copying. Of course each individual letter may be protected by copyright and privacy rights, but that is not really against the spirit of the GFDL, after all the point of the letter is to get the person to comply with the GFDL in material they are already using, not to release the sample letter under GFDL. (which is already the case, so if they want to do it, all they have to do is link back here).Alex756 04:14, 29 Aug 2003 (UTC)


 * I like the idea of having the copyright notice on the letter, because it provides a good example of how to do it. { MB | &#12510;&#12452;&#12459;&#12523; } 15:12, Aug 29, 2003 (UTC)


 * You can put a sample notice in the email, but it's confusing to have that notice apply to the email (it also may not be legally valid) Does anyone object if I remove the GFDL versions? Superm401 - Talk 01:00, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Done. Superm401 - Talk 02:03, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

What to do if they don't respond
I can't find any discussion of what to do if the violation letter falls on deaf ears. Shouldn't there be a policy to send the ISP hosting the site a DMCA OCILLA takedown notice? Or are we just going to allow infringement. This is not a good position to be in as the GFDL license will basically become meaningless because the demands to comply are not followed up once there is knowledge on Wikipedia of the infringements (not to mention the statute of limitations). &#8212; Alex756 13:46, 15 Nov 2003 (UTC)
 * I guess we'd need a lawyer to write one of those.. which I'm not. - Evil saltine 10:41, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Do they need to link to Wikipedia?
It looks to me as though they can link to any copy of the source that lists a copy of the user page of the contributors and their contribution history, not necesarily to Wikipedia, am I missing something? Mark Richards 17:01, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)

You're not missing anything. The suggested means in the letters don't comply with the requirements of the GFDL, so it's certainly possible for people to find ways to approximate that degree of compliance in other ways, or to actually comply with the requirements of the GFDL. One way to more closely approach the requirements of the GFDL would be to include a link to the wikitext, the GFDL and, depending on whether you view the work as a whole as the work or individual articles as the work: A link to the Wikipedia page is one way of linking to the copyright holders of the work and to the wikitext, so it's one way of not complying with the GFDL which is usually accepted by the copyright holders (the individual contributors here). Any way which actually complies with the requirements of the GFDL is certainly fine and any way which approximates compliance as well as what is suggested by the letters may well be as fine as what is suggested by the letters. If someone wanted to have a mirror which didn't point back to the Wikipedia site at all, one approach might be: The result is arguably closer compliance with the requirements of the GFDL than is suggested by the means in the letters, depending in part on whether you take the one work or multiple works view. To get closer still, drop the use of links and put all the text from the links on the article page. Jamesday 04:02, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)
 * a link to or a list of the top contributors or all contributors to the whole Wikipedia.
 * a link to or list of the contributors or top contributors to the individual article.
 * 1) place the normal readable view of the article text on the page
 * 2) list the top five contributors to the Wikipedia as a whole (taking the single work view)
 * 3) link to the raw wikitext or place the raw wikitext on the page as well
 * 4) link to a copy of the GFDL
 * 5) say that it's from the Wikipedia with no link - I haven't fully considered whether this is necessary at all.


 * There's no requirement to include a copy of the user page. In fact, many users have objected to mirrors taking their user pages. Angela. 18:39, Aug 23, 2004 (UTC)


 * I dodged mentioning that specifically, but suggested alternatives which didn't do so. Since you raise it again, though: If all of the contents of the Wikipedia articles and all user contributions pages were included, that would appear to be one possible way to meet the requirement to identify the authors, if the view is taken that all of the articles taken together are a single work. The user pages themselves would be of interest in this mainly because they may provide the name and contact details of the copyright holder, something the account name often doesn't do. Simply a field for the legal name wouldn't really be sufficient - there are way too many duplicate names in the world. It's unclear how far the GFDL requires you to go to get the name of the author. However, see 17 USC 1202, which prohibits the removal of copyright management information, including  the name of, and other identifying information about, the copyright owner and author of the work. Including the user page is the simplest way I know of to avoid breaking that law - if the user page contains the name and other identifying information and license information, it appears safest to include the user page somewhere.


 * I'm someone who has objected to a mirror displaying my user page in a way which suggested that I was associated with that project. It's not clear that I'd object if it was presented differently, solely to address the author identification and 17 USC 1202 requirements. Jamesday 10:53, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)

This is crap. You need to acknowledge the copyright holder. In no event is Wikipedia the copyright holder.


 * You're right that Wikipedia isn't the copyright holder. These emails don't need to mention the copyright holder though - they aren't intended to be OCILLA takedown notices. Those may come after these emails, if necessary. I've personally offered to send an OCILLA/DMCA takedown notice to an infringer in my position as a copyright holder of the OCILLA article, after an infringer didn't respond to earlier steps such as those described here. Jamesday 10:53, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Most of these copies are verbatim copies, in which case they only need to include the license, the copyright notices (there are none), and the notice that the license applies to the Document. This does raise the question of what is the document, but that's very tricky since the database dump would presumably have to include the entire document in order to be GFDL compliant. Arguably you also have to distribute transparent copies if you get more than 100 hits. The HTML could be argued to fall under this, or otherwise a link to the db dump or individual links to the wiki source would be acceptable. anthony (see warning) 13:43, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Dear _____
Would it be better to replace "Dear {name}" with "To whom it may concern"? It seems more professional to me. - Evil saltine 22:16, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)


 * IMO "To whom it may concern" seems very unprofessional. If you know the name of the responsible party, buisness letter normally stsrt "Dear :" and when you don't, they can be "Dear " or "Dear Sir" or "Dear Sir or Madam". DES (talk) 22:14, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

We need a "Javascript only links are not acceptable" standard letter
A lot of our mirrors now seem to be using the SEO trick of including the required links to the GFDL and Wikipedia page as javascript, so they don't appear to search engines. This is not acceptable(as many possible viewers of the content may not have javascript on, and so will not know about the GFDL status of the content, which is a violation of the GFDL), but we don't have a standard letter for this. Could somebody write one? I'll do it myself, eventually... JesseW 02:43, 23 July 2005 (UTC)

What to do when there are no contact details
This revision of the Hypermutation article has been used on the following site, MrSci.com without referencing the GFDL or Wikipedia. I would send a letter to them but they do not have any contact details available on the site as far as I could tell from explorations. Ansell 01:47, 26 February 2006 (UTC)


 * You could try a WHOIS client such as http://www.whois.net to find the details of the domain holder. --Kwekubo 14:20, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Reporting violations?
Is there anyplace to report violations of the Wikipedia's GFDL license that are not for clones and mirrors of the Wikipedia? Specifically, when I was looking at Yahoo! Answers, one of the answers was a wholesale copying of the Wikipedia Zip Code article without any attribution, GFDL notice or link back to the original article. I have a feeling that for many of these new Answers websites (Google has one as well), that we could find plenty of violations of the Wikipedia's license requirements. Blank Verse 07:41, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Websites - what about books?
All the letters here seem to be desinged for online plagiarism. How do we address plagiarism of Wikipedia in printed sources?--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 16:51, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
 * These should still be reported at Mirrors and forks. You can add a letter here (preferably public domain) if you like! Superm401 - Talk 22:25, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Is there a GFDL violation letter log?
Is there any log to track sent letters to see whether the perpetrators complied? `'mikka 22:29, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

My cause: Talk:Alexander Lukashenko. `'mikka 22:42, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Detailed records are kept on the subpages of Mirrors and forks. Superm401 - Talk 03:54, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

what about modified documents?
Everything I've seen, the mirrors and forks page, this page, seems to address unmodified documents. Do we have any means of tracking and coordinating efforts for sites that make use of wikipedia but modify the content? Do we have any sample letters to send such sites in order to help them comply? Miss Mondegreen talk  05:51, May 24 2007 (UTC)


 * There don't seem to be any standard letters for this as far as I can see, but I just sent an E-mail to a site that is using modified content from Wikipedia with no GFDL notice, which I have copied here. Would anybody object if I put a generic version of this up as another standard?  GrahamN (talk) 01:57, 8 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Go for it. --Philosopher Let us reason together. 05:15, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Followup wording
The followup letter includes the following sentence: "To use that content without copyright infringement you must either comply with the requirements of the GFDL or use the more convenient approximation described on the Wikipedia Copyrights page by doing both of the following" [my emphasis]. This implies Wikipedia will accept non-compliance with GFDL. Informally we may very well take the attitude that we only want content reusers to comply with the spirit of the GFDL if not necessarily with every last point in pedantic detail: this is a good attitude to have. But we can't say this as over 5 million people hold copyright to parts of Wikipedia and no one person (not even Jimbo) can presume to speak for them all. Our position has to be full compliance with the GFPL. That doesn't mean we have to jump on anyone who infringes via some smalll technicality: we can still use common sense. But equally we can't go telling people that non-compliance is acceptable, even if, to us personally, it is. IANAL etc. — ras52 (talk) 13:06, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Use of contractions
Folks, as far as I am concerned, the use of contractions such as "I've" and "We've" in letters like this is distinctly unprofessional. I am going to replace with the proper forms. – ukexpat (talk) 12:54, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Examples
I'm not sure I understand how a example section is useful for this page. How is showing examples of when wikipedia text was used without proper attribution going to help? It has happened in the past. It will happen again. I don't see the point in listing each occurrence. --Onorem♠Dil 12:51, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Copyvios in books
What is to be done about things like this: "". Do the give GDFL notice? I've found a number of such books on googlebooks, that are just copies of leads from (old) wikipedia.YobMod 14:51, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Actually, from the Preface, it looks like they are complying with the GFDL. What exactly is the problem? --Philosopher Let us reason together. 05:11, 8 May 2009 (UTC)
 * No problem, as you've answered my question perfectly :-). I had searched for "GDFL", not "GNU", so that explains why i missed it. Thanks, now i just have to be careful to never use them as sources - I only noticed this one as it has entries written by me, which was confusing. At first i thought i had somehow accidentely plagerised!YobMod 07:08, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Technical violation -- (I think)
I noticed that some (actually, most) of the captions for (or, whatever you call the text accompanying [with]) the photos in the facebook group "Jews Kick Ass" (http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=8552239929) (there were 276 such photos in that particular facebook "group" the last time I checked) seem to be using GFDL material without proper attribution. For one example, see this. By the way, when I say "GFDL material", I am missing an opportunity to be more specific; - in the cases I saw, it was [usually] Wikipedia material.

Since the material was copied and used and is being disseminated on the internet (www) without mentioning the GFDL, I think it is [technically] failing to "extend" certain GFDL-mandated [GFDL-required] "rights" to all users. (It may also be - "in some way" - a violation of facebook policy; -- but that is outside the scope of this memo).

Why this report is anonymous
Sometimes when someone (S) has a neighbor (N) who in violation of certain zoning or HOA rules, S might prefer for someone else to "report" the violation, partly because of the risk that, if S reported the violation himself, (not anonymously), then and and -- most importantly --
 * [1] N might become upset,
 * [2] the above ([1]) might lead to some kind of friction or other unpleasantness between N and S (who might not be friends, and might not care to become friends, but both probably just "do not want any trouble")
 * [3] the above ([2]) has the potential to result in either S or N, or both, suffering all kinds of negative feelings, way out of proportion to the tiny issue which was the original "pebble in the shoe" minor infraction of the rules.

This example is a good one because, often, many residents of a town or HOA care little for forcing compliance with the myriad technical rules, so - typically - if someone is in violation of some rule, it is either ignored, or else the hassle of complying (and, of "causing" compliance by letter writing or other bureaucratic steps) may very possibly turn out to be more trouble than it would have been, to just ignore the small infraction, in hopes that either it might be remedied eventually anyway, or else that there would be little or no [serious] consequences of the small infraction.

The point is that, it is sometimes preferable for S to either keep quiet, or else report the violation anonymously. If S does nothing, then either nothing will be changed, which might be just fine with almost everyone, or else some other neighbor might report the violation. If that happens, or if S reports the violation anonymously, then N might cheerfully start obeying the rules, or else, eventually, N might be pressured (or even forced) to do so. This may be a "don't-care" to S. Even if S does care about this, sometimes it is still far less important than the main concern, which is to avoid [2] (see above) and - especially! - [3].

Does anyone care enough to report this? (not me!)
I am S. I do not want any trouble. N might be able to see my IP address here, but I am hoping that even if N does see my IP address here, no one will go ballistic enough to go start tracking down whose IP address it is.

So - if there is anyone out there who cares enough to report this, then could that person please step up and explain to the facebook user[s] involved, how they can properly credit [and link to] Wikipedia, where appropriate, and link to Wikipedia's copy of the GFDL, (or maybe the official FSF dot org  ), if it is not convenient for there to be a copy of the GFDL right in that "group" on facebook, or elsewhere on that website, which contains some material that [I think] was copied from Wikipedia. --130.13.18.*** (talk) 03:14, 17 May 2009 (UTC)