Wikipedia talk:Copyright problems

For image or media copyright questions, see Wikipedia:Media copyright questions.

See also: m:copyright, m:Do fair use images violate the GFDL?, m:GFDL, m:GFDL Workshop, and m:non-free content

A copyright issue in mwl.wikipedia

Hello. I come here to pose a question, and yet it doesn't regard en.wikipedia. The reason is I've been working in mwl.wikipedia lately, and mostly it has been me - the community is almost non-existing, otherwise dispersed. I came here in the hope of finding some advice, since the en.wikipedia community is experienced in copyright issues. I believe there is a serious copyright issue in mwl.wikipedia. I've talked about it earlier in Commons and I got some answers here. There are very few native mirandese speakers. According to what I've learnt with my analysis of mwl.wikipedia, probably since its incubation there was only 2 users, maybe 1 only (one seems to have been a sockpuppet of the other) native speaker. His last edit was a year ago. But when you look to mwl.wikipedia, you see a huge encyclopedia with almost 1000 articles. How? Because there is a machine [1] that has been used since the very beginning to transform text in portuguese into text in mirandese. The whole editorial process in mwl.wikipedia has been this: they select something from pt.wikipedia, feed it to the machine, and paste it to mwl.wikipedia. So, the whole mwl.wikipedia comes from pt.wikipedia. A derived work. It seems all right. But there is no attribution, none whatsoever, nowhere, never. Someone creates a new page, for instance mwl:Psicologie in April 2009 with more than 30 thousand characters, apparently from the air. When you look at it closer you suspect that, most probably, it has been translated from pt:Psicologia around April 2009. Now, according to CC-BY-SA, attribution is unavoidable. So, if I don't want a copyright violation to exist, either mwl:Psicologie is deleted, or attribution is ultimately made. Can I make the attribution myself? I suspect, but I'm not sure, that mwl:Psicologie is derived from pt:Psicologia. Can I attribute, not being sure? And if I decide to make the attribution myself, which revision of pt:Psicologia should I choose? I can't attribute a work to someone who hasn't participated in its creation, neither I can miss one single author, so I can't choose neither a too earlier revision nor a too later. Which? Must the page in the end be deleted or can I somehow make the attribution myself? That is the crucial question, because if the answer is delete, then mwl.wikipedia must be completely blanked. Garsd (talk) 00:46, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

You can attribute by means of a direct link to the Portuguese article. I don't think it needs to be to a specific revision. What I usually do to repair such issues is put a dummy edit in the article and in edit summary note "Article created as a translation of [[:source]], which see for attribution." You can also put a note on the talk page. I think if I were trying to fix this problem, I might modify the approach a bit. If you can get a bot to tag all suspect articles and create edit summaries, what about an edit summary like this:

Article may have been translated from [[:pt:title]]. See talk page for details.

And then on the talk page say something like:

This article is almost certainly a translation of [[:pt:title]]. Please see that article's history for attribution, prior to the date of this article's creation.

As long as the translations are attributed, they can be retained. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 13:09, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks! That was a relief. Garsd (talk) 20:57, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

MoonriddenGirl's comments are correct (as usual.) But to clarify: You raise two distinct questions. First, how should you honor the CC-BY-SA when using a translation from one WP to another WP? Second, can one editor repair a copyvio made by another editor? For the first, you can find the Wikipedia interpretation of the CC-BY-SA at as it relates to en.wikipedia articles at Wikipedia:Reusing Wikipedia content. I suspect that this should apply to all wikipedias in the absence of an explicit alternative. In your case check for any alternative at pt:wikipedia. There may be explicit (and looser) rules for inter-wiki translations: I seem to recall seeing them, but I cannot find them. For the second: yes, one editor can repair a copyvio of another editor. Based on Wikipedia:Reusing Wikipedia content, any website (not just another wikipedia) can meet the CC_BY_SA obligation by linking back to the source article. There is no need to link to the specific version of the source article and there is no requirement to attempt to list all editors of the source article. I think that a null edit in the article as Moonriddengirl reccommends is acceptable, but if you are extemely conservative, you may choose instead to add an annotation to the same effect to the reference section of the article itself, probably via a template. -Arch dude (talk) 00:17, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

Long time editor with apparent copyvios

I have come across a long time editor with hundreds of articles under his belt and in the few articles I have looked at he has copied text (sentences and short paragraphs) directly from copyrighted sources. This is clearly good faith editing since the sources are cited but there is no effort made to reword the content. I contacted the editor but have been rebuffed with admission of the copying but denials of the policy violations, since this editor apparently feels that citing the sources is sufficient attribution and acknowledgment. I would like advice on how to best proceed. Am I incorrect in my concerned about this? Jojalozzo 22:47, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

As a courtesy, I notified Rosser1954 about this discussion.

I should hope that Rosser1954 will discover that copying published text is not the way to build articles, not even if the copied text is cited. I also hope that he will help to pore over past contributions to find and correct each instance of copying copyrighted text. Binksternet (talk) 01:42, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, Binkster. I also would have identified and notified him once it was established that this was not a misinterpretation of policy on my part. Jojalozzo 02:15, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

This editor has not responded here nor contributed for the week or so since this discussion started. I am still seeking advice on how to proceed. Is there a process for reviewing the work of prolific editors who may not have adhered to copyright policy? Do administrators need to be notified? Jojalozzo 20:33, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

Yes, there is a process for that. If you are afraid of many copyright violations from one editor you can ask for a review at Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations. Garion96 (talk) 21:10, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

Rajbari District

Is this really the best way to add the Copyright issue tag? The way it has been done has deleted the ten citations for those parts of the article which have not been deleted. Skinsmoke (talk) 14:34, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

Sorry for the delayed response. If the tag was aimed just at that section, you can put a </div> tag at the end of the section in question, and the rest of the article (and references) will appear normally. —Darkwind (talk) 06:48, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

Many thanks for that. I'll have a look. Skinsmoke (talk) 12:04, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

Copyright violations in Excess chemical potential

I've tagged the Excess chemical potential article as having a major copyright violation. This is the first time I've done this, so please let me know if I have made any mistakes in doing so. The content in question has been around for five years (!) and looks to be a copy of some class notes on the subject from 2003-2004. It is not a strict copy and paste, as some of the text is different, but steps in the derivation and the equations are an almost perfect copy of those in the notes. Thanks, --Mark viking (talk) 17:11, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

This one is a bit unusual. As it happens, mathematical equations are not subject to copyright, so the removed material may not be a copyvio. If there are any "creative elements" in the wording of the steps, it might be subject to copyright, but you indicated that the article's is not identical to the source you found, and sufficient paraphrasing avoids copyvio, especially in this context where the phrases are not the crux of the work. Since we don't have an online version of your source, you will need to make this determination yourself. Note that even if the material is not a copyvio, it is still plagiarism if the source is not attributed, however, you can cure plagiarism simply be attributing the source, i.e., by adding a cite that says something like Equations taken from {{cite book|title=whatever....}}<!-- not a copyright violation--see talk page-->. It is quite possible that the source you found has itself taken the equations from somewhere, perhaps even from the reference in the article: I don't have access to that, either. Oh, and thanks taking action. We treat copyvio very seriously and very aggressively, so you did the right thing even if you find on re-analysis that it's not a copyvio. -Arch dude (talk) 14:52, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

That mathematical equations are not copyrightable is something I did not know. As the article is mostly equations, this is then probably not a copyvio, but just plagiarism. Sorry about not being clear; the class notes are those written by a professor for his molecular dynamics course and the source is online at [2]. I'll revert the copyvio notice at Excess chemical potential, add the citation you recommended, and let the author know that this was determined to be not a copyvio. Thanks for your help, --Mark viking (talk) 19:52, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Possible copyvio in image

Hi all. Pretty new to this so not really sure what the correct protocols are, but ...

I came across this map on the List of LNG terminals page and I thought it unusual that the map includes the text of source URL (www.chinagasmap.com) but the attribution says it is all the authors own work. Is it a copyvio? Or not?

TIA Atlas-maker (talk) 10:23, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

Hi. :) Possibly. The upload default is "own work", so that text is kind of meaningless. There's a chance that she's actually associated with the website, since all of her uploads refer to them (see [3]), but we can't know that without such verification and the website itself is clearly copyrighted. Since that image is on Commons, there's nothing we can do about it here - Commons has its own separate administrative system and policies. But I know my way around there, so I'll go ahead and tag the images with {{npd}} and notify the uploader that we need external permission. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 11:50, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

Thx Atlas-maker (talk) 13:10, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

St John's Church, Peasedown St John

I added a copypaste banner to St John's Church, Peasedown St John in December, and it appears on this list for 30 December. Should I take any other action to get this looked at?— Rod ^talk 12:19, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Sadly, all I can say is that the only action you could take is to encourage more people to work at this noticeboard. Only a handful of people do, and there's no way we can keep it current. There's only supposed to be a week's worth of listings. At this point we have, what, seven weeks including the week we're supposed to have? :/ Better than it was, but not optimal.

Please remember, though, that you don't need somebody else to address issues you find. If you are sure that content is copy-pasted or too closely derived from its source, feel free to remove it. All editors are empowered to do this; see WP:CV. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:43, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Spider mite control copied

I found several paragraphs copied word for word from University of Colorado webpage to the wiki page Spider mite. I put a tag on it as explained at WP:DCV which also said to leave a note here. Additional details on Talk:Spider mite. Ellin Beltz (talk) 20:55, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

Euro of Barrymore,Richard Barry- born 1769. Newspaper clipping

I have a newspaper clipping picture I would like to send you about Richard Barry Earl of Barrymore's life... Don't know if it would be of interest to your information? Regards Traci Barry