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

Reusing deleted material

Is WP:Copyright problems the correct place to list possible violations of WP:Copying within Wikipedia#Reusing deleted material (guideline, shortcut WP:RUD)? I understand that they can be repaired and are considered less serious. The articles' deleted revisions have not been restored, and I did not find supplementary attribution. Flatscan (talk) 05:27, 18 December 2022 (UTC)

I will provide more information about a specific example. The article was deleted presumptively after listings at WP:Contributor copyright investigations and WP:Copyright problems. An administrator restored a cleaned version, but without undeleting any older revisions or providing attribution. The refs include old accessdate values, so it may not have been rewritten completely.

Is the preferred approach for repairing attribution to restore the deleted revisions and revision delete them under the RD1 copyright criterion, leaving the usernames visible? History subpages and {{Attribution history}} seem not to be used anymore: using Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Attribution history, I found Talk:List of international goals scored by Milan Baroš/Attribution (created 2016) and Talk:Ernst Rothauser/attribution (repaired 2018). Flatscan (talk) 05:21, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

@Flatscan: I have seen (and done myself), if the history is not filled with many users, manually listing all non-bot and non-minor edit contributors in a dummy edit. That method may be preferrable as it only requires an administrator to view the deleted page history, and then either provide a list to you or make the dummy edit themself. Sennecaster (Chat) 01:06, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

Thanks! A dummy edit is a good alternative that I should have remembered. Flatscan (talk) 05:24, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

Freedom of information requests

I noticed several good faith edits by user:IndependentSchoolsMonitor which include information from, and link to, an emailed UK Freedom of Information report. The articles and edits are Ardingly College [2], Farnborough Hill [3], Millfield [4], Dauntsey's School [5], The Oratory School [6], and Sherfield School [7]. The FOI report contain the following copyright notice:

The information supplied to you continues to be protected by copyright. You are free to use it for your own purposes, including for private study and non-commercial research, and for any other purpose authorised by an exception in current copyright law. Documents (except photographs) can be also used in the UK without requiring permission for the purposes of news reporting. Any other re-use, for example commercial publication, would require the permission of the copyright holder.

Is this copyright compatible with this use on Wikipedia? Meters (talk) 20:56, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

References

Meters (talk) 20:56, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

Not compatible, since it doesn't allow commercial re-use. See Wikipedia:FAQ/Copyright#Non-commercial licenses. DanCherek (talk) 21:15, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

Except it is being used as a reference, nobody is proposing to upload the document. We use copyrighted materials and links to them as references all the time. Nthep (talk) 21:34, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

It's not the link that has me concerned. It's the fact the information is in a personal response to a freedom of information request. The information is allowed to be used for the requestor's "own purposes", which include "private study and non-commercial research" and unspecified exemptions to copyright law. So, can this information be used on Wikipedia, where anyone can use it, including for commercial purposes? Meters (talk) 00:06, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

Copyright does not cover facts, just the creative part of a work. See Wikipedia:FAQ/Copyright, where it says Facts cannot be copyrighted. It is legal to read an encyclopedia article or other work, reformulate the concepts in your own words, and submit it to Wikipedia. StarryGrandma (talk) 00:39, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

Yep, concur with Nthep and StarryGrandma. DanCherek (talk) 00:40, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

It's fine copyright-wise, but I'd be shocked if it were WP:DUE without secondary coverage. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 19:24, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

Missing date

Why is Wikipedia:Copyright problems/2023 January 26 not showing on this page ? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 11:58, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

Is it a 26 thing? Wikipedia:Copyright problems/2023 February 26 is gone now. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:38, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Acceptable use question

According to the copyright statement from the journal Frontiers in Cellular and Infection Microbiology, "authors retain copyright on their articles" and "authors are therefore free to disseminate and re-publish their articles". In this edit, the corresponding author of this source copy and pasted a paragraph from this source into TRAF3IP2. Is this acceptable use, and if so, how should it be attributed? Thanks. Boghog (talk) 17:40, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

That article is licensed under CC-BY, which is compatible with Wikipedia's licence. You do need to attribute the content to comply with the licence though. In general though if someone who might be the author of some copyrighted text posts it to Wikipedia then we would usually expect evidence of that (see WP:IOWN) - just having a username which matches the author's isn't very good evidence. Hut 8.5 18:14, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback. I will try to obtain better evidence the editor is the author. Boghog (talk) 04:28, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

@Boghog: in this case you don't need to, because the content is licensed under CC-BY and anybody can use it with attribution. That was a more general comment about the case when the text isn't available under a free license. Hut 8.5 08:38, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

Good! Thanks for the clarification. Boghog (talk) 08:45, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

Why Bangladesh Football Federation logo is removing from Bangladesh national football teams???

Hello!

Since a year, many of us Wikipedians trying to add logo of Bangladesh football federation.svg on Bangladesh national football team & Bangladesh women's national football team. But everytime someone is deleting showing the reason: It was removed in accordance with the non-free content policy, with which you are obligated to comply.

My question is If we can't use that public domain logo how Argentina, India, Brazil and other national football teams are using their respective federation logo?

Also, this exact same logo is currently using on Bengali Wikipedia Bangladesh national football team pages including under 17, under 20, under 23 and the national teams (both men and women). See here: Men's National & Women's National

Please help by adding the logo and add some sort of file protection so that others don't delete this again!

At the end, it represents Bangladesh to the world with pride! — Preceding unsigned comment added by HridoyKundu (talk • contribs) 16:37, March 16, 2023 (UTC)

@HridoyKundu: The use of non-free images such as the Bangladesh Football Federation logo must comply with policy. The use of this logo for identification on the article about the federation is acceptable, but uses on team articles which are considered child entities of the federation are not. See Non-free Content examples of unacceptable image use, and specifically item 17 which states that the use of the parent entitiy's logo is not acceptable for use as identification in the child entity's article. In this case, the child entities are the men's and women's national squads. As for the usage on the Bangladesh wiki, each wiki has its own policies. I do not know if the usage on that wiki complies with their policies or not, but that is irrelevant with respect to its usage here on the English wiki, the use in articles aside from the federation article does not comply with non-free content policy. For ffuture refeences, this type of question would be btter posted at Media Copyright Questions. -- Whpq (talk) 17:23, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

I asked many administrators but all of their answers were unclear and unsatisfied. The best they said the policy Bengali wiki is different from English wiki so you can't use that here. Ok I agree! Then how other national teams are using? Like: India Men's National Football Team, Brazil Men's National Football Team etc. Their federation logo also comes under public domain. So how are they using? Aren't they

violating copyrights?

My simple request: Either add the Bangladesh Football Federation.svg logo to national football teams with file protection or delete all the federation logos from their respective football teams.

Thank you, HridoyKundu (talk) 19:18, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

The same thing is being discussed at WP:MCQ#Why Bangladesh Football Federation logo is removing from Bangladesh national football teams???. So, it's probably best to keep all relevant discussion there to avoid redundancy and confusion. -- Marchjuly (talk) 23:09, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

Despair not :)

Wizardman (and MER-C and Justlettersandnumbers), re this edit summary, despair not :). I believe I have gone through now almost all of Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/20210315, and identified those articles that are almost entirely DC content for submission to WP:CP. I may still find some stragglers, but from WP:DCGAR, I am fairly certain that you will find the workload goes away in about six more days. At most, if I continue to find WP:CP candidates from the DC CCI, they will be sporadic. Hang in there, and thanks for all the work! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:38, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for all your work on this, SandyGeorgia, I know how mind-numbing CCI can be (and just don't know how Wizardman manages to keep at it so tirelessly!). Just a thought: as I understand it, if a CCI subject was not the first editor of a page (i.e., it was created by someone else), then any editor in good standing is completely free to revert to the last revision before the first edit by the CCI editor. There's no need need to blank or list it, just revert, stick a {{cclean}} on the talk-page, and request revdel if that seems appropriate. Anyway, thanks all round, Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 18:37, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

That is also the understanding I have been working under, and I have only been sending to WP:CP those that were a) created by DC, and b) almost all DC content still. So I do hope I have by now listed all of those, so that as you work through the next six days, we should be mostly done with that side of things. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:59, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

Michael Faraday

Hello! I noticed the Royal Institution source "Faraday sent copies of his scientific paper along with pocket-sized models of his device to scientific colleagues all over the world so they too could witness the phenomenon of electromagnetic rotations themselves" vs our text "Faraday published the results of his discovery in the Quarterly Journal of Science, and sent copies of his paper along with pocket-sized models of his device to colleagues around the world so they could also witness the phenomenon of electromagnetic rotations" (as summarized by @DuncanHill) in the Michael Faraday article. I was recommended to discuss it here. Thx in advance, SwampedEssayist (talk) 17:46, 24 March 2023 (UTC)