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This is the current revision of this page, as edited by MalnadachBot (talk | contribs) at 11:08, 3 April 2023 (Fixed Lint errors. (Task 12)). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this version.

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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 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 196.201.133.109 (talk) 07:41, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

I got a question about a specific page and a specific issue: The article Jehovah's Witnesses by country is reusing a significant portion of information (a set of numbers) from one copyrighted source, where the source lists the information over several pages. The whole article is build on one specific source, and consists pretty much of a table. The table is reworked by a/some Wikipedia editors, as it lists the country by continent instead of alphabetic, and some of the numbers in the source are not reused, but the selection made seems to depend of interest to the article rather than of deliberately not copying the complete set of numbers. The article is dependent of the exact numbers as they given in the specific source, to be of any value. Is this ok, or could it be considered as violation of 2013 Yearbook of Jehovah's Witnesses (the site linked in the article, jw.org/en, do have it's own term of use as well). Grrahnbahr (talk) 23:06, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

Facts, including numbers, are not subject to copyright. Copyright protects "creative expression." Creative expression can include organization and selection. The article Jehovah's Witnesses by country does not appear to reuse any "creative expression" from the source, even under the most extreme interpretation of the term. Therefore the article does not violate the copyright of the source. -Arch dude (talk) 23:22, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
Thank you, all I needed to know. Grrahnbahr (talk) 00:59, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

Infringement of FIVB article

There's a tag on the FIVB article that says it sounds like an advertisement. That's probably because the first section was lifted wholesale from the FIVB website. Compare the FIVB Wiki article to http://www.fivb.org/EN/fivb/FIVB_History.asp . It becomes clear why there's such toadying for a gluttonous snake like Ruben Acosta in the Wiki article.

But it's just that first section. It's not the /entire/ article. I'm kind of a Wikipedia outsider (and I very much wish to remain that way) so I don't know what to do about it. Hopefully someone reading this will. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.160.130.14 (talk) 01:04, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

Thank you very much. I've addressed the problem. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:12, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

Where to list copyright problem - text from obit copied into article space

Please see User_talk:Moonriddengirl#Where_to_list_copyright_problem_-_text_from_obit_copied_into_article_space.

I'm not sure where/how to list this.

It looks like the original material in question has since been removed from the article by the editor that added it, but this issue could still use some looking into. — Cirt (talk) 17:39, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

I've recently started patrolling new pages again since NPP has a very large backlog and I regularly find article that set off my alarm for a possible copyright violation. I have my own ways of checking an article for violation but I'm curious to see how others check articles for violation.

When checking for violations, I basically just copy parts of the text and search for that text using Google. If a website seems to share a large portion of that text, I check to make sure that it's not a false positive (Google just searches for each word and can sometimes show a page that shares those words in a different order). I then check that website's copyright claim to make sure that the content is or isn't shared in a way that's compatible with WP's license. How do you search for copyright violations? I'm interested in improving my methods and I'm sure there are many of you whom have methods that might be beneficial to others. OlYeller21Talktome 05:59, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

In addition to the one you described above, I check the cited sources, any official websites and, if the red flags are strong, google books. There are plagiarism detecting programs that scan for you - for instance, Earwig's detector - that can be helpful. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:01, 31 March 2013 (UTC)
Thanks! This will definitely help me in the future. OlYeller21Talktome 22:29, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
I do the same, googling parts of the text, but one more step (if I find the same text on a website) is finding out who was first: Wikipedia or the site. And that is not always easy to find out. Lova Falk talk 06:42, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Interpublic Group of Companies

I tagged Interpublic Group of Companies with {{copypaste}} (see Interpublic Group of Companies § Copyvio). While there were clearly some sites that had cribbed from WP, others looked like they had not, and might have been the original sources, possibly from IPG-provided PR material. Do I need to do anything else, or will this come to the attention of those who patrol for these things? —[AlanM1(talk)]— 17:50, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

User removing copyvio tags, alleges own content

Hello. A user, Nasirir has been deleting copyvio tags on several articles, namely Abe Garm Larijan, Malek Bahman Castle‎, and Mir Bozorg Tomb. I replaced the tags and warned the user; however, he left a message on my talk page asserting he was the site owner of the site with the material in question. I don't know how to handle this, but thought I should mention it here. Since he reverted the tags again, I haven't redeleted them, although I believe someone else has, as of now. Thanks. Deadbeef (talk) 22:15, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

I've deleted the articles entirely. This is a clear sockpuppet of serial copyright infringer User:پارسا آملی. He recreated some of the same articles with exactly the same text, including previously published warning templates. He's been told over and over again how to submit permission, and he never does. There's also a clear difference in his use of English as evidenced at your talk page and as used in those articles. If he is the author of that content, as he asserts, his English has really degraded. Thank you very much for following up on this! --Moonriddengirl (talk) 23:10, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

Suspected copyvio image on Commons

The image commons:file:Picture_468.jpg might be lifted from an external site, a TinEye search shows several external hits, including http://www.medlibrary.org/medwiki/Veterinarian. However, the commons uploader marked it as self/ownwork/GFDL 1.2. I'm not sure if this is the correct place to report suspected copyvios from Commons; WP:COPYVIO doesn't mention the Commons. CS Miller (talk) 09:00, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

That's because Commons is its own project, with its own rules and administration. :) You can find guidance to dealing with copyright issues there at Commons:Commons:How to detect copyright violations and Commons:Commons:Deletion policy. However, I think that image is probably okay - the page you link copies content from Wikipedia - it says at the bottom "Content in this section is authored by an open community of volunteers and is not produced by, reviewed by, or in any way affiliated with MedLibrary.org. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, using material from the Wikipedia article on "Veterinarian", available in its original form here: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Veterinarian". Five if the TinEye hits are Wikipedia projects, and all of them are smaller than the one on Commons. The longer an image has been on Commons, the more likely it is to be used elsewhere, and that image has been on Commons since 2006. If you have concerns, though, you can always ask for feedback at Commons:Commons:Village pump/Copyright about how to distinguish when content is a mirror and if there are issues with that specific file. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:28, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

Link on a talk page to an external page with extensive copyright violations

I've alerted an admin who's offered help with problematic behavior on this talk page before, but I note that, when I posted to the admin's talk page, he/she hadn't edited today. Would someone please review my edits here and intervene if necessary, or slap me with a trout if I'm getting all hyped up over nothing. Thanks.David in DC (talk) 21:28, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

Copyvio Report

Sorry, the apparent way to report copyvio is braindead. Delete this if you don't like it, but better fix that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rumeli_map.jpg

This is almost certainly a copyvio, as there is no indication that the rights of the map have been secured. --91.10.32.201 (talk) 17:28, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

The file is on Commons, but I nominated it there for deletion, thanks for reporting.--Ymblanter (talk) 07:02, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Surinam Airways

Hi there. Can anyone of you please take a look at the article's talk page. I left some comments regarding the last edits made to the page, and one of them seems to be a copyvio issue. Thanks.--Jetstreamer Talk 13:42, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

I've removed the copied content and cautioned the contributor. You are welcome to do this yourself when you notice issues. WP:CV101 has some guidance. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 10:57, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

Acceptance of website so that I may copy paste from it.

I am the owner of www.majorforms.com. I have written several articles for the site and have noticed that some are not included in Wikipedia. I would like the opportunity to contribute our articles to Wikipedia. I would like to copy and paste the articles rather than have to write them over again. I give permission to Wikipedia to use the information. I was attempting to set up an article and the wiki wizard told me to apply here to be able to paste material before I created the article. Here is an example of one of our articles I am seeking permission to add to Wikipedia through a cut and paste.

The Anteaters Club

The Anteaters Club existed from 1940 through the mid 1960s. It was started by the director of the National Zoo (located here), William Mann, and Gordon Leech who had a concession to fine dining at the zoo restaurant (which no longer exists). While dining together one day, Mann half kidding, wondered why buffalo was not on the menu. Leech felt challenged and obtained a side of bison from Oklahoma and invited friends and family to dine. The group decided that it might be nice to meet periodically to further partake in the eating of exotic animals. They christened their club the Anteaters Club because it was the one animal everyone agreed they would not want to eat.

Animals were obtained from various sources (none were taken from zoos unless they had died naturally). Over the years the Club feasted on seal, beaver, turtle, whale, reindeer, elk, eland, wild boar, wild duck, kangaroo, sturgeon, ring-necked pheasant, elephant, Scottish stag, hippo, rattlesnake, alligator, bear, caribou, Canadian geese, iguana, moose, Chukar partridge, and venison to name just a few. Word spread and the Anteaters Club became the toast of the town. Its membership included important politicians, journalists, wealthy businessmen and women, well-known athletes, diplomats, and other distinguished people. The numbers grew into the hundreds. The chef of the restaurant had a special way of preparing the feasts, like cooking elephant in a light wine sauce.

references:

http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2009-05-31/opinions/36874192_1_national-zoo-exotic-animals-iguana

I would also reference our website because I knew several people that went to the meetings and have added pertinent information not found in the reference and we have located the specific site where the anteater club met in the Washington Zoo (the meeting place no longer exists)

http://www.majorforms.com/article_view.php?id=137622

Volcanoman7 (talk) 16:24, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

Hello Volcanoman7 and thank you for wishing to donate work to Wikipedia. We have a formal procedure that you can follow as outlined at Wikipedia:Donating copyrighted materials. However I would suggest you read over Wikipedia:Declaration of consent for all enquiries first.Moxy (talk) 17:17, 14 May 2013 (UTC)
Hi Moxy, I submitted articles for copy paste as you suggested weeks ago but have not heard back. I went ahead and submitted an article with a cut and paste from our website (a page I agreed to donate the copyright to Wikipedia. Let me know if I should reference our page in the article if you would. Volcanoman7 (talk) 15:36, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

Howto?

Hi, in what way is it allowed to use public information of motorcycle specifiations? I just started Kawasaki Z800 and User:MadmanBot alerted some little similarities to http://www.kawasaki.eu/Z800/Specifications + http://www.kawasaki-z800.de/#features – is it sufficient to reword the specs (what is a bit difficult to not change them technically)? For example, how can I use the technical info "Bottom-Link Uni-Trak, gas-charged shock with piggyback reservoir and stepless rebound damping and preload adjustability" properly. (That is the longest "phrase", all other info is only a few words) --Trofobi (talk) 06:47, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

Hi. :) I don't know much about motorcycles (other than that I get nervous when my husband is on his), so it's difficult for me to assess the degree of creativity in the phrase you quote, but when information is uncreative (that is, when everybody would describe it the same way) it is often sufficient under the U.S. law that governs us to rearrange it - if it's even necessary to do that. Again, it comes down to creativity. Wikipedia:Copyright in lists may help here, as it talks about how to evaluate for creativity in content and in arrangement. For example, you can create a chart showing actors who appear in a film by order of appearance, even if somebody else has made just such a chart and you use it as your reference. They don't own those facts, and that order is a natural one. Where things get fuzzy is where you aren't quite sure how creative something is, and here is where familiarity with the industry is helpful. Not having that, I tried a google search for the phrase, and while it looks promising at first (you can never trust what google says on the first page), it turns out there are 58 matches on the last page (as of this writing), and they all seem to describe Kawasaki. That suggests that there may be some creativity in the way that is expressed.
My advice with that particular phrase would be to consider how you can de-jargon it. What is "stepless rebound damping"? It can be helpful to revise (if necessary) by considering what exactly you're saying. I cannot help with that, as I have no idea. :)
I suspect that the rest of the chart is uncreative, but would recommend that you and/or other motorcycle enthusiasts consider if there are other ways to arrange it. If not, it's probably fine.
When Madmanbot leaves a note on an article, if you think it's not a copyright issue, it's always a good idea to put a note on the talk page explaining why not and leave a pointer to it in edit summary. :) Sooner or later a human being will review the article, so nothing wrong with getting your thoughts out there. And just to head off bad feelings (in case there might be any), if perchance the human who reviews the article flags it as a copyvio, please don't feel badly about that. This is just one of those gray areas where there's not great clarity in definition. I would imagine everyone would be aware that this is very different from an ordinary copy-paste situation! --Moonriddengirl (talk) 10:28, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

Help needed on how to properly paraphrase dense science/technology description

Hi folks. Oceansat-1 was recently deleted as a copyvio, and then recreated by the original author. I blanked a small portion of the recreated article as being a problematic instance of close paraphrasing. The author has now, quite reasonably, asked how they should properly paraphrase densely written technical descriptions of ten to twelve words at a time. They also mention WP:LIMITED. I do realise that in cases like this where the original text is very heavily laden with technical terms, it can be extremely difficult to paraphrase or summarise it properly. (Although I don't agree that it falls under WP:LIMITED.) Can anyone more experienced with properly paraphrasing, suggest how paraphrasing these pieces of sentences would best be done? Many thanks. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 00:52, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

Responded at his talk page - the answer here, I believe, is utilizing multiple sources, which is what I've done. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:30, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

St David's Church, Barmouth and St Mary and Bodfan

I reported these articles as possible copyright problems on 13 March. The pages these were copied from now have "Re-use of this work is permitted under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License" but the articles still have the copyvio templates. Is it still necessary for an administrator to check? Peter James (talk) 18:31, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

Technically, yes. Under WP:IAR, I think not, but I'll take a look anyway to make sure attribution is done correctly. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:32, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

stepladder technique: found copyvio while under AfD consideration

I noticed copyvio while checking this article which is under [AfD consideration.] I documented two possible instances of cut-and-paste in the AfD discussion and flagged them in the article. However, I presume that it would be problematic to tag the page with outright copyvio and thus blank it while it is under AfD consideration. Could an experienced editor or administrator advise?Truth or consequences-2 (talk) 14:19, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

Copyright trumps AFD (since it's a legal policy), so it's not uncommon to blank problematic sections or remove copyvio material from an article at AFD. I've reviewed and find copying more extensive than you did - I've blanked the article and notified the contributor, in case he can verify license. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:00, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

Photograph of old coins

Would the image on these page be considered free content:

...as a depiction of an out-of-copyrighted three-dimensional work?

--RA (talk) 11:02, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

Questions about media are best asked at WP:MCQ. :) Good luck! --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:31, 7 June 2013 (UTC)
Thanks! --RA (talk) 00:50, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

Template transclusion limit exceeded

Hi, it seems like the template transclusion limit's been exceeded for this page, just a heads-up as it's messing up the magic words at the bottom of the page. --RAN1 (talk) 20:28, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

Yes, it is. Sadly, there are simply not enough admins willing to do this work. :( --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:54, 9 June 2013 (UTC)
Here is a great example of why admin tools should be separated. I have no interste in being an admin...but would be more then willing to help over here..as i already fix alot of copyrighted work.--Moxy (talk) 14:13, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

Backwardscopy: Guidance needed on how to report it to a third party

There seems to be a growing trend for some organisations to create books based on Wikipedia articles. These range from well presented, to not much more than a hacked cut and past job which looks like something a ten year old might produce. If it is properly lichened then given the terms of the CC-BY-SA 3.0 License and terms of use both are legal. However there are a growing number of books which plagiarise Wikipedia content that do not follow the conditions laid out in the licences or the terms of use.

The most recent example I have come across is Charlotte Brontë see Talk:Charlotte Brontë#Backwardscopy. Have sent an email to Google under their "report an issue" link and "File a notice of infringement (US Digital Millennium Copyright Act)". They have replied. Is there any guidance/support about what to do next, as their email reply is designed for authors, publishers or their agents and is difficult to answer simply without possibly being open to accusations of false representation. -- PBS (talk) 09:33, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

Only stakeholders can use formal DMCA takedown requests - any person who has substantially contributed to the article can do this. Others do not have that standing, not even the WMF. If you are one of the major authors of the article and want to pursue it, you really ought to talk to an intellectual property attorney if you have doubts. I'm afraid that each of us is individually liable for the actions we take, and nobody who is not licensed in your jurisdction should be giving you legal advice. That said, the little bit the community has written is at WP:MIRRORS. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:39, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

The Dominion (Wellington)

This brief article about a newspaper has been bulked out very nicely, today. I went to check a fact and found the addition is a copy and paste from an official site on the subject of local newspapers. Is the copy and paste OK or an infringement? Eddaido (talk) 08:39, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Definitely not OK. I reverted and deleted the copyvio in the history. Thanks. Garion96 (talk) 08:54, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Copyvio Detector

When using this http://toolserver.org/~earwig/copyvios Copyvio Detector, at what point (percent confidence of a violation) does one take action (i.e., post a warning on the talk page, report the article, etc)? Thanks in advance for your advice.--Godot13 (talk) 06:15, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

That tool really just helps you see the issues yourself. I believe that this is a subjective evaluation - if you look at the article, and it looks substantially similar to you (especially in precise duplication, but also in general similarities - Wikipedia:Close paraphrasing) then I would recommend the following:
  • Look to see if the copying and close following is really egregious - if so, the content needs to be addressed urgently, either by immediate deletion or removal or by blanking it with the copyvio template. (Removal is always preferred if you're sure that there's copying and the person who placed it here doesn't say or imply that they have permission. If they do that, blanking is the default step.)
  • If it is serious, but you aren't sure if it is egregious, you might check to see if the article is currently being actively edited. If so, you might flag it with {{copy-paste}} or {{close paraphrase}} and explain the issue at the talk page. This will give the editors a chance to fix it. In that case (its being serious), I try to keep an eye on things, and if the article is not repaired or the note responded to within a few days, I will generally blank it with the copyvio template then or, if I can, remove or revert it.
  • If it's not serious, you can just add the template and explain and leave it. Eventually, the template will be checked.
My general rule of thumb is, if in doubt, bump it to the higher level. Better safe than sorry with copyvios - not only because the replication of our content everywhere means potentially serious loss to copyright owners, but also because copyvio content in our articles is a serious waste of time for our users. I hate, hate, hate seeing an article where somebody added a clear copy-paste at one point and other editors have wasted their time polishing and improving that content. Their efforts are lost when the copyvio is removed. :(
WP:CV101 does have some general advice on this that could be helpful. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:36, 16 June 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for the guidance! --Godot13 (talk) 01:26, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

I've been helping again cleaning copyright problems and did a few pages of Wikipedia:Suspected copyright violations. I just saw they are also transluded every day on Wikipedia:Copyright problems. Is that a good idea? Wikipedia:Suspected copyright violations can also be dealt with by non-admins and is always (I think) removed from a page by an admin. WP:Copyright problems is only dealt with by admins. I also am too lazy (and other editors seems to be as well) on suspected copyright problems to write down with every article why I kept it or deleted an article so when dealing with the page here, the admin has to look at it completely again. Garion96 (talk) 20:33, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

It used to be a good idea. :) I know when I was cleaning, I would make sure that days weren't missed and would often find that an article had been recreated after speedy deletion and was also a copyright issue. Given the backlog, maybe not. I've also been considering suggesting that we separate out items flagged {{copy-paste}} and {{close paraphrase}} from these listings. Somebody needs to look at them (because often they are truly egregious copyvios), but they don't have to be admins. Maybe we should create a third place to gather them? --Moonriddengirl (talk) 22:48, 16 June 2013 (UTC)
What do you suggest for a third place? Or only list them on Suspected copyright violations? Provided it is thoroughly checked by editors (and admins). Yes, they definitely have to be looked at carefully, even on the old backlog pages I still found so many copyright violations. On a side note. This backlog is getting enormous. :) I will try to help some again. Garion96 (talk) 07:24, 17 June 2013 (UTC)
I'm not sure what a good third place might be. I don't think it would be a good idea to list them on WP:SCV because that page is one of the more urgent, I think. When you find copying in a brand new article, the odds of it being a backwards copy are much lower - and when it is, it often means it's an unattributed copy-paste from another article. I worry that if we mix {{copy-paste}} and {{close paraphrase}} in with them, we'd just kill that workflow because those can be much more complex. Maybe it would be a good idea if we handled those two with a category system, somewhat like Category:Articles_sourced_only_by_IMDb? And, of course, having said that, I demonstrate ably what will happen to them - nothing. Some of those have been waiting for attention since 2007. :/ Ideally, we could get them somewhere that any editor would feel comfortable to triage them and make good instructions for what to do if on evaluation they turn out to be egregious. And, yes, the backlog is pretty horrific. Splitting off these work streams could make a huge difference. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:00, 17 June 2013 (UTC)
Why can not we just separate close paraphrasing into a third category, to be dealt by non-admins?--Ymblanter (talk) 17:24, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

I would be ok with un-transcluding SCV from here. I understand why it is, but that's allowing only half as many days to transclude, meaning we have a month's worth of backlog we can't even see yet, and as a result the bot is getting confused. I took out some completed SCVs which allowed a few more days to show and I'll try to clear some more of SCV. As for a third place, it would just end up with nobody being able to manage it, unfortunately. Between trying to finish the Darius copyvios and the two processes we're unfortunately out of users. Wizardman 19:07, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

A compromise approach would be to remove the SCV transclusion when it is all done and verified. This, of course, assumes SCV is ahead of CP (which it usually is). I removed a few more SCVs and deduped about a week's worth of listings. MER-C 13:14, 18 June 2013 (UTC)
That seems the best idea to me. I'd be worried about removing it entirely as it increases the chances they're be missed. Normally SCVs are dealt with pretty quickly but there has certainly been cases in the past where entire days have slipped through.
As for copy paste and close paraphrase, again I'd be worried about removing them elsewhere. I've seen plenty of pages tagged with these that should really have been tagged copyvio or even G12. Not sure what the answer is here. Dpmuk (talk) 22:52, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

File:CA Assemblyman Mike Gatto.jpg

This image seems to be used in violation of copyright at Mike Gatto. I list my reasoning on that article's talk page. I'd appreciate if someone can confirm. Kendall-K1 (talk) 01:33, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

Buried copy pasted content from another enwp article without attribution

Please check this series of edits. I think at least part of it was copy pasted from Thrikkadavoor or Religion in Kollam District because at one place I can see "[4]" at the end of a sentence, the same as appears in that article. But, it may have originated elsewhere.

Anyway, my question is basically what to do with it. Should I posthumously attribute it somehow or remove it as a copyvio? Please advise. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 13:41, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

Remove it as copyvio if you have no time and no energy to rewrite it. --Ymblanter (talk) 12:17, 19 June 2013 (UTC)
Done, and thank you or the feedback. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 00:08, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
Thanbks for taking it up.--Ymblanter (talk) 05:53, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Limited license?

The copyright holder for a graphic I would include in a related Wikipedia page is willing to grant permission for its use. But when he saw the terms of the Commons license, granting the right for overtly commercial users to use his material, he balked. Is there no way for such an owner to grant a limited permission for the use of his material in a Wikipedia article? If so, how would it work?

As a relative novice, I find the whole matter of use of non-free material to be enormously confusing. There seem to be an endless number of license options. There are clearly multiple places where questions about policy are answered. The answers are often conflicting. I was told (here I think, but now I can't find the response) to use the Upload File link rather than the Commons Upload link and simply declare fair use. I have a hunch that is the way most people deal with problems like the one I've sketched out above, but it seems like a cop-out. Please advise. Camdenmaine (talk) 12:17, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

Consider a photo whose owner is willing to grant Commons permissions for unlimited use: I fill out the Upload form, indicating that the photo has been given to me by the owner and selecting "The license hasn't yet been forwarded, but I will do so shortly or ask the owner to send it himself." The Upload form tells me that permission are to be sent to permissions-en@wikimedia.org but what do I tell the owner? What exact text should he send to permissions-en@wikimedia.org? Shouldn't this be posted somewhere? If it is posted somewhere, shouldn't it be posted somewhere where it can be found? Camdenmaine (talk) 12:39, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

I think I solved this problem myself: Apparently the form to use is Wikipedia:Declaration of consent for all enquiries. Might be nice if it were easier to find. According to the Creative Common license, the copyright holder has a right to require attribution; the aforementioned form, however, doesn't include a place to do that. Camdenmaine (talk) 19:45, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

Blue Whale of Catoosa

This article has had a copyright violation template for about a month now, but the source linked to doesn't appear to be the text used in the latest version of the article. PaulGS (talk) 21:36, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

Threshold of originality and countries of origin

See Template talk:PD-signature and Template talk:PD-ineligible, where we are discussing whether the threshold of originality licensing templates should either match {{PD-signature}} in requiring an check of the country of origin to see if it complies to the PD standards of that country or not, or match {{PD-ineligible}} in not caring if the country of origin's rules of the threshold of originality (or special copyright protections) is met or not, only using the US standard, and whether the template should be so named to indicate that only the US standard has been checked. -- 76.65.128.222 (talk) 03:47, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

No. 144 Squadron RAF

This article has been tagged and blanked for copyvio since 11 May, and a re-written version (hopefully avoiding copyvio problems) has been sitting at a temporary talk sub-page here since 12 May - this is almost 2 months. Can someone please have a look at the rewritten draft and either restore it to mainspace or put the article out of its misery.Nigel Ish (talk) 21:14, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

Editintro for fiction articles?

I'm sick of cleaning up plot summary copyvios, particularly on [BT]ollywood movies. There have been no less than eightnine CCIs this year (Snigdhasinghsweet, Tamravidhir, 20130409, 20130424, Arrwiki, Shipz, Madhuric, 20130702, Vlad4) on this subject. This calls for at least some preventative measures.

The idea is, if an article contains a heading "Plot" or "Synopsis" or is titled "List of [...] episodes", an ugly notification will appear above the edit box in a similar manner to Category:Living people. This requires modifying MediaWiki:Common.js, so it will likely need a wider audience. Before I do so, I would like to get some feedback on whether I should proceed and some proposed text. Thanks.

P.S. where is everyone? MER-C 04:49, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

That would probably be best. I've noted that plot and episode summaries in general are ripe for copyvios since people either don't know how to write them or don't want to. Wizardman 14:17, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Some draft text. MER-C 06:05, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Works for me! I've done this on an ad hoc basis (usually just using {{plot2}}) especially with television summaries, since this is a rampant problem. The note above doesn't mention the derivative issue, but it contains a link to the MOS, which at least indirectly does. This is far less of a problem I've encountered than the simple copy-paste, and the proposed template is more eye-catching than plot2. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:07, 19 July 2013 (UTC)
  • Moderate support.
  • On the positive side, this is a real problem. I hope and believe much of the problem arises form pure ignorance of the rules. The message is reasonably worded (avoids telling them they are about to get blocked) yet gets the point made clearly and succinctly.
  • On the negative side, it feels terribly ad hoc. It will be delivered to all who edit such an article, so maintenance editor,s copy editors, category adders, and the like will now see a message that isn't intended for them.
  • More importantly, if an article does not have such a heading, and an editor adds it, will that editor get the message, or only subsequent editors? If the latter, then it may miss precisely those editors in the intended audience.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 13:12, 19 July 2013 (UTC)
  • The CCIs show that editors copying plot summaries have edits to fiction articles that do not add plot summaries, so the message should get through (this is one of the weaknesses of the current BLP edit intro -- it does not show when I am creating a BLP). It should always show for the "List of [...] episodes" articles because it is based on the title of a page, not the contents. I agree that this does not completely solve the problem due to the limitations of editintros, but hopefully it will cut down on the number of repeat infringers. "[M]aintenance editor,s copy editors, category adders, and the like" will be seeing this -- I consider this a feature, it might rope them into copyright cleanup. MER-C 07:04, 20 July 2013 (UTC)
  • This can also be done with an edit filter, which can detect addition of the relevant headers and shows the warning when the "Save Page" button is clicked. However, the Edit Filter request page is rather dead. I, personally, would use both approaches. MER-C 03:02, 23 July 2013 (UTC)
Seems reasonable in principle to me, but the details still needed to be worked out.--Ymblanter (talk) 16:06, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

I've gone for an edit filter request for now, see Wikipedia:Edit filter/Requested#Plot summary copyvios. MER-C 12:42, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Australian Images - Copyright

Some users here might be interested in the discussion ive started:

-- Nbound (talk) 07:47, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Bot reports

Since the end of July, we do not get bot reports any more, only manual reports. Anybody knows what the problem is?--Ymblanter (talk) 12:17, 8 August 2013 (UTC)

Unattributed copying from CC-BY-SA sources

I've recently come across a lot of cases where a user is copying from off-wiki, freely licensed sources, but without complying with the attribution requirements. I've tentatively blanked the infringing content with {{copyvio}} but it occurs to me that perhaps I could instead provide the attribution. Do we have a template for this purpose? I'm aware of {{source-attribution}} but that's only for public domain content. —Psychonaut (talk) 08:31, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

I found an article, Marko Mamić, with a similar problem, the article appears to be a Google translation of the German Wikipedia article, de:Marko Mamić, and then copy and pasted into a new article. How should this be handled? GB fan 11:16, 23 August 2013 (UTC)
Yes, @Psychonaut:, we've got a couple of templates, depending on the free license. If it's CC-By-SA or CC-By-SA compatible (like CC-By), we use {{CCBYSASource}}. I apologize. That template sucks. (I made it, based on the one we used to use for GFDL sources, and would have done it differently if I were better versed in templates then. It's needlessly complicated.) If it is dually licensed, we use {{Dual}}.
@GB fan:, copies from other Wikipedias are handled a little differently. They don't get the template on the face, but they get a direct link in an edit summary and a template on the talk page: {{Translated page}}. Wikipedia:Copying_within_Wikipedia#Translating_from_other_language_Wikimedia_Projects explains in a bit more detail. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:57, 23 August 2013 (UTC)
Thanks, Moonriddengirl. Would it be OK if I reverted my own addition of the {{copyvio}} tag on these articles and added the {{CCBYSASource}} instead? Or should I leave it for an administrator/copyright clerk to do? —Psychonaut (talk) 12:02, 23 August 2013 (UTC)
It would be awesome. :) I regard that as an excellent use of WP:IAR. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:13, 23 August 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for the info, I added the talk page template and added an edit summary linking back to the German article. GB fan 12:28, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

Kaljo Raid

It looks like Wikipedia:Copyright problems has become a complete mess, so I report my findings here.

The article Kaljo Raid has been copied almost verbatim from Kaljo Raid's biography at the Canadian Music Centre. Sijtze Reurich (talk) 18:12, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

Incomplete tagging process

Capture of Damascus (1918) has been flagged by an ip as copyvio but they haven't completed the process by listing it. (They probably ought to have flagged a section only.) I personally believe at most it's a case of too large a quote from a source, and the text is attributed. What's the correct process for resolving this? GraemeLeggett (talk) 05:54, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

How to deal with possible copyvio involving a convenience link?

I'm not sure what the procedure is for dealing with convenience links that may involve copyright violations. Is the Copyright Problems page the right place to bring the problem up? The article on Andrés Segovia includes a link to an interview that is hosted on a website which appears to be run by a single person. The interview was conducted by a person (Austin Prichard-Levy) different than the website owner (Ron Payne). There is evidence suggesting that the interview was originally published in a print magazine in the early 1990s; however, I do not know whether the owner of the website has acquired the rights to the interview from the original publication. Although the interview is not an essential source for the Segovia article, it does appear to include valuable information, so it would be preferable to keep the link if possible. Dezastru (talk) 00:40, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

Barbara Keogh

Possibly a copyright violation. --Dandelo (talk) 15:00, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

 Done The article was a blatant copyvio from creation. It is now cleaned -- which, unfortunately, required reducing it to a stub. Thanks for reporting it. — CactusWriter (talk) 15:52, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

At Talk:Vitamin_K#Longstanding_copyright_violations I have written the account of what I discovered and did in response. I'm just trying to make sure everything is done right. The user who added the infringing material ([1]) has no contributions listed Special:Contributions/Hmh.spronk, so I'm not sure what that means. --Atethnekos (Discussion, Contributions) 00:06, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

Yuko Nii

I cannot add an entry for Yuko Nii, it says I don't have permission to edit the page to report it. I've already added the copyvio template to the article, so whenever this problem is fixed you can extract the violation link from there. -- 76.65.129.3 (talk) 01:45, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

Suggestion concerning the transclusion/complexity limit

I suggest that the listings be split up into subpages

  • New problems
    • Problems 0-7 days old
  • Older problems
    • Problems 8-days to 1 month old (30 days)
    • Problems 1 month (31d) to 3 months (100d) old
  • Backlog
    • Problems 101d (3mo) - 375d (1yr) old
    • Old problems

These pages would then be transcluded onto this page. A directly-coded non-transcluded {{main}}-type link would head each section.

Instead of the notice saying that new entries may not appear, the newest pages should appear at the top, with oldest pages at the bottom, so a complexity-overflow would leave new entries visible.

This makes the assumption that backlogged pages have already been inspected by the reviewers who participate on this page, whereas new ones should appear prominently (same as how most XfDs now function, with the new entries at the top and backlog at the bottom) -- 76.65.131.217 (talk) 12:03, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

Template:Copyvio: Manual blanking versus auto-hiding

When using {{copyvio}}, should the page be manually blanked, or should the auto-hiding behavior of the template be used? Please discuss at Template talk:Copyviocore#Manual blanking versus auto-hiding. Flatscan (talk) 04:06, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

Beyond: Two Souls' reception section

is a partial copy of this. Now, I believe Forbes "contributors" are just ordinary people like Wikipedia contributors, so there may not necessarily be infringement here (though I'd argue the tone and the size of verbatim quotes from outside reviews make the section unsuitable for Wiki anyway). Unsure of what the next step is, hopefully someone here can jump in. 173.160.130.14 (talk) 04:10, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

"Ordinary people" and even wikipedia editors, get copyright on their work. In any case, even if the size of attributed quotes was ok, the linking matter and the selection of reviews was directly quoted from the Forbes article. I have removed the copyrighted content. DES (talk) 05:25, 10 October 2013 (UTC)
My point was that the content may have been added here by the Forbes contributor himself (while not terribly likely, it's substantially less unlikely than if something were copied from the New York Times or something). Thank you for addressing the problem; I didn't know if maybe there needed to be some discussion before removing it. 173.160.130.14 (talk) 07:31, 10 October 2013 (UTC)
Since it was published by Forbes, even if the person uploading it wrote it for them, an explicit release from Forbes would be needed, which is possible but not IMO likely (given that it would have to explicitly permit competing commercial use). The Forbes article, since it links to separately published reviews, could be a place to look for sources to cite and quote, but not by just pasting the entire article from Forbes into WP. DES (talk) 19:18, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

Cyclone Phailin

This developing article seems to contain lots of copyright violations, where sentences or partial sentences and phrases appear to be copy-pasted from the various sources; or are very closely paraphrased.

For example (as of now),

"Indian Air Force choppers were kept on standby in West Bengal to move in for help at short notice."

v. India Today

"It has also kept two C130J aircraft, 18 helicopters, 2 AN-32s aircraft on a standby to move at a short notice"

That's just an example; I suspect there's lots and lots.

Edit: I've removed some, see [2] [3] [4] [5] but it seems to be almost throughout the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.104.26.129 (talk) 18:32, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

Backwards copies and difference sampling

I came across a page that on first inspection seemed to be a duplicate of a page that exists on an English Heritage site. The pages are Wikipedia:Henry Rich, 1st Earl of Holland and English Heritage:timeline: Henry Rich, 1st Earl of Holland

However on investigation the creation of the Wikipeida page was 2002 and the copyright on the English Heritage site was 2013. The problem is that the English Heritage site will not have a long history for archiving and the copyright may be updated yearly ... bla bla bla.

I think I have have come up with a technique for case such as this which may cut down the time involved in working out who copied whom and proving it. This is by sampling different versions of the Wikpedia page against the other web page:

Comparing the English Heritage page and various generations of the Wikipedia page using the Duplication Detector returns:

  • At Wikiepdia creation (2002): Total match candidates found: 3116 (before eliminating redundant matches)
  • 28 January 2011 Total match candidates found: 4137 (before eliminating redundant matches)
  • 4 July 2012 Total match candidates found: 4203 (before eliminating redundant matches)
  • 10 December 2012 Total match candidates found: 4465 (before eliminating redundant matches)
  • 4 April 2013 Total match candidates found: 4468 (before eliminating redundant matches)
  • 12 October 2013 (now): Total match candidates found: 4278 (before eliminating redundant matches)

So the matches are highest earlier in 2013 (this edit on 27 April made quite a large change to the Wikipedia page and so decreased the total match) so it looks as if English Heritage copied the Wikipedia article in early 20013.

Of course this does not mean that the page was not created from so other third pary source, but it does show the relationship over copying between these two pages.

I hope this is of some use to others, and if the technique can be of general use perhaps it can be turned into guidance. -- PBS (talk) 13:00, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

-- PBS (talk) 13:00, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

I see a bit of a problem in that the version that existed on the English heritage site has existed there since at least 2010. See Wayback Machine. The machine's earliest crawl of the site was 11 June 2010, but the text may have pre-existed that crawl. Also, if you look at the 2002 WP version, a large block of text added in one go with very polished writing always rings alarm bells. I think the jury is out on the potential copyvio in that article. The original editor (User:KCF) says on their talk page "I have written several articles on historical events, numerous short stories, a radio play for the BBC and a novel", so they may be the original author, but there's a strong possibility it was published elsewhere first. Voceditenore (talk) 13:39, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
Yes I have changed my mind on this I now think that Wikiepdia is a copy. The two crucial difference for me was the change in the format of the dates from "month day, year" to "day month year", and before that the removal of the wording of "colonel leg" see blame. I have now reverted changed my opinion and think that Wikipedia is a very old copy of copyrighted material diff on original. -- PBS (talk) 14:01, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

Madagascar Pochard

Several paragraphs copied straight from the BirdLife International website, a major source for the article, in addition to smaller snippets copied from other sources, were added by an IP editor to one section of the article, and reinstated by 18AA ext2013. I laid out the details on the talk page, and notified the user. This user then added the same text again after my message. I don't think any of 18AA ext2013's edits are copyright violations given how they are written, but I would like it if somebody would check them. Otherwise, I suppose I could revert all this user's additions.

As far as the possible copyright violations in the remaining additions by 18AA ext2013, it doesn't look like any of the options are listed are correct. Also, should I bring this up at an administrator's noticeboard page, after warning the user once and only getting a reinstatement in response? —innotata 00:52, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

Where to ask for revision-deletion after a COPYVIO has been fixed?

This is a general question, but also a specific one as all revisions up to and including this edit of Greene Street Friends School have text lifted from various parts of the school's web page.

Is there a general noticeboard for this kind of thing? I know that generally requests for revision-deletion are kept hush-hush because they generally surround privacy issues, but here is no privacy issue here.

If there is not a general notice board, I would recommend that one be created for privacy-is-not-an-issue revdelete requests. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 18:26, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

Slap a {{copyvio-revdel}} on the page and an admin should find it. MER-C 04:31, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

The Tale of Tsar Saltan (Rimsky-Korsakov)

Lenghty synopsis section appears to be taken verbatim from here. I am pretty sure this is a copyvio because the 'English' of the text is 'Russian English', not 'English English'.--Smerus (talk) 15:53, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

Nope, that site clearly credits Wikipedia as the source of the synopsis. Scroll to the bottom of that page. Best, Voceditenore (talk) 19:26, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

Robert J. Lagomarsino

Robert J. Lagomarsino may have a copyvio in the tagged section. Djembayz (talk) 01:15, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

Reverse copy vio

I have been doing research on several Burger King related articles and came across this book, Fast Food and Junk Food: An Encyclopedia of What We Love to Eat, Volume 1 (2011) By Andrew F. Smith, on Google Books here.

As I read through the contents of the book I noticed that a good portion of the book uses barely disguised copy and paste text from articles on Burger King that were written more than two years before the book's publication. In fact a good portion of the section of the book on BK is almost the exact text I wrote in these articles, just mildly reworded. I am now afraid that I may be accused of copyright infringement based on the text's similarity to my contributions on Wikipedia.

The author also utilizes the same sources that I have used in generating content to these articles as well.

What can be done about this issue? --Jeremy (blah blah • I did it!) 07:54, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

I'd like to get the community's opinion as to whether or not copied episode summaries are considered copyright violations, or whether they are fair use. Looking at Family Guy (season 12), for example, the episode 8 summary is "When Carter cancels the annual Quahog Christmas carnival out of hatred for the holiday, Peter must turn his Scrooge of a father-in-law into a hometown hero to save the event. Meanwhile, Stewie comes up with a plan to get the one thing he wants for Christmas." This google search shows what the sentence is adapted from, with entries that clearly predate the insertion into Wikipedia.

This kind of very close paraphrasing happens all the time, in lots of different series, and no one seems to be going after it. Is it a problem? If so, what do we do. Sven Manguard Wha? 07:21, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

Carlos Finlay

The last paragraph of the 'Professional Career' section of the Carlos Finlay page appears to have been copied verbatim from http://yellowfever.lib.virginia.edu/reed/finlay.html, a website bearing a copyright notice. The subject of this article features in a Google Doodle today, this page may become very popular immediately. Neildorgan (talk) 03:40, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for spotting that. All of the text from that website was inserted into the article yesterday (Dec 2). It has now been removed. — CactusWriter (talk) 17:23, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

Add mention of Template:Cppage

The template for creating new date pages is {{subst:Cppage}}. This should probably be mentioned somewhere on WP:CP. 63.251.123.2 (talk) 01:25, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Makes sense to me. :) I've added it to the instructions. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:32, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Bigg Boss 6

Prior revisions must be deleted for copyvio. there are too many sources though. --George Ho (talk) 04:58, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

Arachnophobia

A delrev request was made at Arachnophobia, see [6], but the case isn't obvious enough and it's been days since the request, so I bring this here for your consideration. Regards, Cenarium (talk) 12:00, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

Eh, if I thought it was worth a rev deletion, I would have rev deleted it when I removed it. I didn't then, and I don't know - it's a small amount of text. If it's been an issue with it being restored, then the tagger should have noted more than one range for removal. If it's not being restored, then it can remain. We do not routinely rev delete for small amounts of text. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:37, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

What's the criteria for asking for a revdel in addition to removing the copyright infringement? Does it have to be as blatant as the 1st link Google Search Pages brings up when you type the title into Google? Or if the whole page is infringing (but that's still CSD G12)? TeleComNasSprVen (talk • contribs) 23:38, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

Medrysone

Material from http://www.drugs.com/pro/hms.html has been repeatedly added to Medrysone (history) by User:128.163.8.192 and User:Ambi223, the latter stating "Undid revision 585416429 by Anypodetos (talk) I am in compliance with Drugs.com 's attribution guidelines. Please do not remove again." I can't see that this is allowed from Drug.com's terms of use page, but I don't want to start an edit war. Could someone have a look at this? Thanks --ἀνυπόδητος (talk) 10:08, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

Bengawan Solo (song)

The revisions of this article still has copyrighted lyrics. Lyrics are unfree under copyright law of Indonesia. The lyricist died in 2010, so the song is still unfree. --George Ho (talk) 04:44, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

Sandbox for drafting new articles to replace copyvio ones

The current sandbox is Talk:article X/temp, but they've just launched a new [[Draft:]] namespace (WP:Drafts), and ae currently discussing its use. As the replacement articles are drafts for replacing a copyvio version, perhaps discussion for using this namespace should be started? -- 65.94.78.9 (talk) 21:04, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

This makes total sense and I have boldly done so. (Revert if broken, etc.) MER-C 04:42, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

Merging causes bot to tag new article with a mirror of the previous one.

I have just merged two articles Sand Point, Somerset and Middle Hope into a new article at Sand Point and Middle Hope. This caused MadmanBot to slap a copyright notice on the new article as it detected (rightly) that some of the content was the same as this article from U.S.S. Post - a mirror of one of the previous wp articles. Is there any way the Bot can take into account the merging process and take into account that wps articles are copied all over the place?— Rod talk 10:19, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

The bot does exclude some Wikipedia mirrors, but it is worthwhile looking at mergers because sometimes they are not correctly attributed. MER-C 05:11, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

Society for Scholarly Publishing

I had reported this article as problematic yesterday, since it had infringing content since creation yet had some non-infringing content added later. I felt that most of the non-infringing content was not worth keeping due to tone/sourcing in any case, but the article was maybe not a clear-cut G12 so I didn't delete it. I wanted to get a new article up for this subject, though, rather than the blanked page with the copyvio notice, so I went ahead and made a new draft and moved it over the old page. The old edits are deleted, as a result. I hope all of this is in order, and my short-circuiting of the process was ok in this case. Please take a look. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 06:59, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

Unsure if copyvio

This edit copied complete paragraphs and part of the table from this site. There is no copyright notice or date on the site. I deleted it as unsourced, but is also a copyvio? 71.234.215.133 (talk) 04:38, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, if there's no explicit license then implicitly copyright is reserved; we generally can't use it. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 07:06, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

Some revisions, like this and that, copied this source. George Ho (talk) 02:04, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

RD1 wording

There is a discussion at WT:Revision deletion#RD1 wording regarding WP:Revision deletion#1, Blatant copyright violations. Flatscan (talk) 05:15, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

The issue should be resolved here - not that I think it a big one, for that matter, but I think the intended effect is to say that while using RD1 when cleaning up is best practice, not doing it isn't a sin either. What we can't have is an instruction set that suddenly. Until the WMF says otherwise, a bad edit buried in a page's history constitutes "removing from public view" and that should be enough. With the massive and mounting backlogs of potentially problematic contributions at WP:CCI, what we certainly don't need is to create a compulsion to RD1 every single bad edit identified since WP:CP became institutionalized. MLauba (Talk) 10:15, 20 January 2014 (UTC)
If RD1 is best practice, every editor that finds a copyvio would have to find an admin to do a revdel, a ridiculous increase in wikiworkload; overall, it's not like there's a surfeit of active admins. Simply reverting a copyvio is a longstanding practice. While list attribution is allowable, individual attribution is better. Best solution would be to simply remove RD1 -- how does it make Wikipedia better? NE Ent 10:51, 20 January 2014 (UTC)
Best practice doesn't preclude "normal practice". In this specific case, "normal practice" is removing the copyvio, "best practice" is removing and revdel. What I don't want to see is if an admin goes the extra mile and revdels a copyvio he removed, he then gets dragged to ANI over it for no good reason. MLauba (Talk) 11:05, 20 January 2014 (UTC)
Personally, I am more inclined to rev-delete when the copyright issue is extensive and/or seems likely to find its way back into the article, or when it is recent and removal harms nothing. I think it's important to balance the value of easily searched history with risk management. :) I don't revdelete every copyright issue I remove, but try to use common sense to determine when removal is (a) trivial or (b) worth it. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 01:48, 21 January 2014 (UTC)
I concur with common practice not precluding best practice, but in this case we have the luxury of doing both concurrently. No harm is going to come to anything by having a copyvio in the edit history; worse case scenario is WMF gets a DMCA takedown notice -- and even in those instances a simple revert suffices: e.g. [7]. If there's a history of, or a significant likelihood of, an editor edit warring to restore copyvio material then revdel would be a reasonable per MRG. NE Ent 02:50, 21 January 2014 (UTC)
No harm is done either way, but the point is, admins who add RD1 to a clean-up action shouldn't be dragged to ANI over it - we happen to have this present discussion for that exact reason. MLauba (Talk) 11:53, 21 January 2014 (UTC)
"No harm is going to come to anything by having a copyvio in the edit history" is unfortunately not true, NE Ent. :/ They come back, as I explained at Wikipedia_talk:Revision_deletion#RD1_wording. Your "worst case scenario" does raise the question, though, of what people think is the reason for removal of copyrighted content. The risk you speak of is an important one, of course - the protection of movement funds. But legally speaking, like YouTube or Facebook or Fickr, WMF is not required to remove copyrighted content at all unless they receive a DMCA takedown notice. The community does it anyway because doing so is responsible and ethical and serves our greater mission of creating educational content that can be used and modified by anyone anywhere. Copyright issues impact copyright holders and reusers, some of whom may not be able to simply edit it out with no (or trivial) expense. Legal protection of WMF and our editors is an important aspect, but other important risk management considerations here are damage to copyright holders (whose content may be widely disseminated in a way that is not easy to address) and to our reusers. This is what i believe needs to be balanced against transparency. I wouldn't want rev-deletion to become required for copyright cleanup. But I also wouldn't want to see any barriers put in its way. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:30, 21 January 2014 (UTC)
I agree with MLauba's edit to WP:Copyright problems/Header#Suspected or complicated infringement. Flatscan (talk) 05:07, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

Could we centralize discussion at Wikipedia_talk:Revision_deletion#RD1_wording? NE Ent 00:28, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

No, because nothing you said or posted there persuades me that the RD1 criterion's wording needs any changes, whereas here we have some room for improvement. If you want to centralize, this is the right place. MLauba (Talk) 10:01, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

Article copied from within Wikipedia

If an article completely comprises of content copied from another article without attribution, what to do in such a case. According to the Copying within Wikipedia guideline it violates Wikipedia's Copyrights policy, so can such an article be considered a CSD#G12 case? And if not how to proceed in such a case? I am talking about Shivani Financial article, I first reduced the content that I found copied from FXCM article but later realized the complete article was copied. -- SMS Talk 19:16, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

CWW violations are rarely deleted as G12 because they can be fixed (WP:Copying within Wikipedia#Repairing insufficient attribution) without admin intervention. I have seen a few deleted by that criterion; the ones I remember involved substantial duplication, either of an existing article (CSD A10 or WP:Content forking) or of a user draft taken without permission. In the draft case, the original author decided to move his or her draft to article space, and the copy was deleted. Regarding Shivani Financial, I see notifications of the 2011 G11 of Shivani Financial Forex Trading Consultancy at User talk:Aftab222000. It seems like a straightforward delete at WP:Articles for deletion. Flatscan (talk) 05:30, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

Category:Copied and pasted articles and sections

Just a reminder that as we don't have a working bot at the moment copy and paste taggings aren't being listed here so this category is slowly filling up. Presumably the close paraphrase category is as well. I will try to spend some time on it but as I've just started a new job I'm not sure how much time I'll have. Dpmuk (talk) 18:32, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

Seeking assistance

I am seeking assistance on House of Dlamini. I stepped in to try and moderate an edit war that stems from a claim of copyvio which seems to have been going on for years. See Talk:House_of_Dlamini#Edit_warring - it is a long thread and I have only just managed to get an answer about where the infringement stems from [8]. Even then it is complicated, but basically much of the information up to the 1980's may trace back to Burke's Peerage, though the formatting and wording suggests it has been copypasted from the website. More recent information has been researched by the webmaster (User:Royalty2012).

The question really is where is the fine line between using information from a website and creating a copyright violation? Is it just the layout and wording, or in this case does the extent of the data (99%) used impact the situation. Does User:Royalty2012 have any better claim to the content of the information he has researched and published, or just the layout of it?

I really would appreciate broader assistance with this issue and a way forward. --Derek Andrews (talk) 14:20, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

CBRE Philippines

Dear Copyright experts: Investigating an old Afc draft led me to this article of the same name which appears to have a large amount of copyvio from:

as well as smaller sections from many other pages on the company's web site. It appears that all of the text was copied from the site and then some parts were edited to be third person, more concise, etc. How much of a web site needs to be in violation of copyright before the whole thing is speedily deeleted? I deleted the Afc draft rather than historymerging it, because it was all copyvio. —Anne Delong (talk) 00:59, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

I just G12'd it, every single bit from the first two revisions was copied from http://www.cbre.com.ph/about-us/ or other pages accessible from the menu in the left. Changes to the article since then were minor and didn't add any new material worth keeping (if any at all). The fact they were edited makes no difference in this instance (and indeed most instances) as it is still a derivative work. Dpmuk (talk) 01:24, 1 February 2014 (UTC)
Thanks; I was pretty sure that it wasn't worth keeping, but I am happy for the second opinion. —Anne Delong (talk) 05:36, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

Aegukka

A user requested to RevDelete the revisions of Aegukka containing the song's lyrics [9]. I realized, however, that a very large number of revisions contain the lyrics, so it might be unfeasible to RevDelete them all. Posting here for review. decltype (talk) 19:41, 6 February 2014 (UTC)

Unrelated matter

A previous editor noted in 2010 that in the article on Durkheim [10]much content is copied from Britannica. After that, some one has edited the page to include a reference to the Britannica article and apparently rephrased some sentences. However, the article seems to contain many complete sentences and paragraphs from the Britannica article. Is this copyvio or not and what should be done? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.214.173.46 (talk) 09:54, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

This article consists entirely of " a list of scholarly, encyclopaedic and other notable definitions of the term pogrom, in chronological order". During a recent AfD (now closed as 'no consensus') I suggested that there might be copyright issues, and accordingly am raising the matter here, where hopefully those familiar with copyright policy and guidelines can give their input. The problem is that it consists to a great extent of direct quotations, largely from sources which are presumably still copyright. It seems to me that this may well exceed what might reasonably be considered 'fair use', in that it isn't extracting part of each definition from each source, but quoting it in full, or substantially so, with no further analysis: effectively just mirroring the source definitions. Are my concerns valid, or am I being over-picky? It certainly isn't normal Wikipedia practice to compile an article or list almost entirely from quotations, and my reading of Wikipedia:FAQ/Copyright suggests that there may be legitimate grounds for disallowing such extensive quote-compiliation. AndyTheGrump (talk) 09:28, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

Three other articles should be considered as part of this debate
To my mind the fair use rationale is:
  • The articles are explicitly comparing and contrasting the various definitions for what are complex words. This is a Transformation (law)
  • We are not presenting these definitions as the views of wikipedia. They are explicitly referenced to their original sources, allowing readers to critique the differences and thereby advancing knowledge
  • That so many definitions are presented side by side diminishes the focus on any one quote
  • Scholarly debate around the definition of these words are common, and it is typical for scholarly works on the subjects to quote a variety of third party definitions when introducing the topic
Oncenawhile (talk) 10:17, 13 February 2014 (UTC)
It could well be argued that the other articles aren't all directly comparable, but I can certainly see the merit in looking at them as well. AndyTheGrump (talk) 11:57, 13 February 2014 (UTC)
I'd say your concerns are quite valid, AndyTheGrump - as it is, there's nothing explicitly transformative here. If there were an essay comparing and contrasting the different definitions, then the use of the content would be more defensible, but right now that's not what this is - it's just a list of quotes. It might be an implicit comparison, Oncenawhile, but to be explicit it would need to be stated by definition. :) I would hazard a guess that the scholarly works you mention actually provide context for the quotes rather than simply reproducing them. Beyond that, several of those quotes are long enough to be potentially problematic in their own right - with the worst at a glance being footnote #17, at 434 words. There is no specific word count at which use becomes substantial, but we seldom use more than a few sentences; for a standard academic work, 434 words is slightly more than a full page.[11] It's important to remember here that we are not judging our use of non-free content against US fair use laws, but against our internal policy and guideline which is deliberately constructed to be more restrictive for a number of reasons, including that we cannot rely on context to establish fair use. Our website is licensed for reuse (including commercially) for any purpose by anyone, and we do not push the boundaries of fair use. To conform with our internal policy and guideline, the longer quotes should be truncated with a combination of spotlighted quotation as needed and paraphrase and context material should be added. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:45, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
Many thanks Moonriddengirl. That makes a lot of sense to me. Andy, would truncation satisfy your concerns? We can add prose context from the secondary sources too. Oncenawhile (talk) 11:50, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
Given that you have now nominated Definitions of pogrom for deletion, in what seems to me to be a clear violation of WP:POINT, I can see no purpose in discussing this with you. I'm not interested in playing silly games. AndyTheGrump (talk) 13:27, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
I have removed the quotes in the footnotes completely. They are not needed as the citation is given and a reader can go and look up the information. I have cut one of the citations down to a couple of sentences. However in general definitions can not be reduced greatly because the content would not then be a definition or it will be misleading. I disagree with Moonriddengirl to a certain extent. If all of this information came from one source then here transformative concerns would be justified. However as I understand it if the individual quotes do not breach Wikipedia:NFC#Text I do not see that the article itself can be said to be in breach of copyright. The lead needs to be expanded but the current article has to be seen in the context of this AfD in March 2013, so an expansion of the lead is going to be complicated due to the concerns raised there. -- PBS (talk) 15:30, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
I don't think the complication of adding neutral commentary excuses from the requirement of having commentary. While there's always a chance that a court would dismiss copyright concerns on any of the individual works as de minimis, there is not a minimum amount of a copyrighted work that is safe for use - there is no "safe" word count. It depends on a number of factors, including the centrality of the content to the source, which is a more complex analysis than can be easily made for somebody who doesn't have access to the source. I stand by my opinion that abbreviating the longer quotes (removing them, as you have done, certainly counts) and adding context material would bring this in line with our approach to non-free text. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:29, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
I see no copyright concerns whatsoever. These are each of them a very brief excerpt, and fall within fair use. They're directly relevant to the article content, and irreplaceable by paraphrase, just as is any exact definition. A list for the reader to compare is a transformative use-the discussion is implicit. As with PBS, if they were all copied together from a single source that was doing the comparisons, there might be a problem, but even such a source would have copyright only over the arrangement, as it would never have earned the copyright on the original texts. . DGG ( talk ) 17:34, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
Clearly, we disagree on the transformative value of "implicit" discussion, which would seem to me could be used for just about anything. :/ In NOLO's summary, they mention several circumstances in which quotations are supported by fair use - all of them involve supportive original content. ("for example, quoting a short passage in a scholarly, scientific, or technical work for illustration or clarification of the author's observations." " for example, quoting or excerpting a work in a review or criticism for purposes of illustration or comment.") You could make the same argument ("a list for the reader to compare is transformative use") to support a list of episode summaries from a television show. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:25, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

LINKVIO querry

Is it a Linking to copyrighted works violation, if Site A let you open Site B inside Site A, apparently without permission from Site B? somewhat like transclusion. I am referring to this site as Site A and this as Site B. -- SMS Talk 18:51, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

The last I saw, copyright law on framing was still largely unsettled. Google won a landmark decision (see) in 2006 that included clarification by the court that framing was not the same as publishing the content being framed. See the appeal, especially 2.a, the two paragraphs beginning "Google does not...." and ending "copyright owner's display rights". By the court decision, framing may not constitute a copyright issue (although it may cause issues in Terms of Service or other areas) because the framer is only posting HTML directions to the content, not publishing it. However, NOLO discusses some nuances of the issue of framing here. I would not myself worry about using Site A where Site B is incidental - that is, we aren't looking for the framed content, but something specifically on Site A. However, I would link to Site B where Site B's content is the point. If nothing else, I think this would probably be best practice under WP:V, and it would bypass the issue altogether. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:52, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

Kathy Castor

Someone (at "143.231.249.137, is registered to Information Systems, U.S. House of Representatives") keep adding data cut and pasted from http://castor.house.gov/biography/. Is the data from this web site PD as US gov? or will they need permission?  Ronhjones  (Talk) 22:14, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

Hi, Ron. :) Unless otherwise noted, it should be PD as US gov. That said, Representative Castor needs to get her website in order - the privacy policy is freaking blank. :/ As long as it's properly labeled per Wikipedia:Plagiarism with an attribution template (Category:United States government attribution templates), it should be okay - but of course that doesn't mean it's how we want her article to read. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:00, 6 March 2014 (UTC)
Thanks. Next time I see it I won't revert, I'll just annotate the talk page.  Ronhjones  (Talk) 20:48, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

List of agglomerations by population

This article appears to take a large amount of data from a single source, and thus I think there may be copyright concerns. See post at article talk page. Eldumpo (talk) 07:43, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Hi, User:Eldumpo. It would depend entirely on the creativity of the source. See Wikipedia:Copyright in lists. Information is not copyrightable, although selective arrangement and subjective opinion are. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:01, 6 March 2014 (UTC)
Blanked and listed at WP:CP - I give my reasons there. Dpmuk (talk) 19:34, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

User:CorneliaHTang

I've just left a {{nothanks}} template on the talk page of CorneliaHTang for her copy-paste copyvio at Sherman Ong. Looking back up her page, I find that it is the sixth time I've left her one of those. She has to date steadfastly ignored all requests to discuss her edits, which are in any case entirely promotional. I'm wondering if it is not time to attract her attention, and perhaps also that of IP 58.185.1.178 or the range 58.185.1.176 - 58.185.1.191, in a more decisive way? Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 13:08, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

I've indeffed the account for now. Having a think of the best way to deal with the IPs. If someone else wants to deal with the rest before I do they should feel free. Dpmuk (talk) 13:50, 10 March 2014 (UTC)
Thank you, Dpmuk! Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 21:12, 10 March 2014 (UTC)
And thanks for the ping - reminded me I never did get round to dealing with the IPs. Looks like a static IP so I blocked the one that has contributed for 3 months. Will can spread the block wider if that turns out to be necessary. Dpmuk (talk) 21:48, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

User:YogaWP

YogaWP (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

YogaWP was blocked briefly in July 2013 for copyright violations. Poking at the SCV backlog, I noticed that Asty Ananta#Career is likely an unattributed translation of id:Asty Ananta. I'm suspicious -- just suspicious, I haven't checked thoroughly -- that this isn't the end of the story, given that the user appears to be under the impression that their talk page is for drafting articles [12][13], not communicating with other editors. (As an aside, this is exactly the editing pattern I ranted about on AN). MER-C 13:15, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

Is there any reason why WP:CP and WP:CCI have two different sets of clerks? Should we combine these into one role, given that they have a significant intersection? MER-C 12:48, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Erp! I hadn't even realised they were distinct. I'll have some more coffee. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 13:18, 27 March 2014 (UTC)
LOL! No significant reason. Justlettersandnumbers, I'm convinced you would do a bang-up job anywhere you want to pitch in. We're lucky to have you helping us in any capacity. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:21, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

ANI discussion concerning IP sock farm copying from Charles Esdaile The Peninsular Wars

This has been quite a problem for some time, see WP:ANI#Europa Universalis vandalism and copyvio from Charles Esdaile - need range block. Dougweller (talk) 18:10, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Parabola Films

Hello, copyright experts. This draft article was recently deleted for copyright problems and NPOV problems while I was working on it. I had just finished removing the promotional content and rewriting the one short paragraph of the draft in my own words. Apparently that wasn't enough, but I would like to have a chance to continue improving the article, and also have someone point out to me what the remaining copyright problems are so that I can fix them. —Anne Delong (talk) 11:08, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

Hi, User:Anne Delong. That must have been frustrating. :/
I've had a look at the history, and I think that what you were left with was a little bit of highly visible close paraphrasing - your lead sentence retained too much of the language and the spirit of the original. This can be a problem with attempting to rewrite copyright issues in a sentence-by-sentence fashion instead of taking the information and recasting it completely. The lead sentence at the source is this:
Parabola Films was founded by Sarah Spring and Selin Murat in order to bring critical filmmaking voices to a broad audience.
At the time of its deletion, the article's lead sentence was this:
Parabola Films is a Montreal-based Canadian cinema production company founded by Sarah Spring and Selin Murat. to bring critical filmmaking voices to a broad audience.
I've added emphasis to the sentence in both versions to clarify the issue - the entire back half of it is copied from the source, with the omission of the words "in order"
When we see this kind of thing, it usually means that the entire body will be peppered with this kind of halfway copying, which to us is just as unusable as complete copying. I think probably the rest of it was okay (although I haven't checked other sources), but I suspect that first sentence colored perception of the rest.
I note, however, that the admin who deleted it did so primarily for WP:CSD#G11 concerns - advertising - with copyright issues secondary.
If you want an opportunity to continue working on it, you have a couple of options. You can ask the admin who deleted it if he will consider restoring it for further development (or because you think the deletion was mistaken - and in that case, if he disagrees, you can pursue deletion review), or you can ask to have it "userfied" in a sandbox for you to develop further at your leisure. (I'd do this for you, but would check more carefully for other lingering copied content.) If you have it userfied, we'd just have to make sure that full attribution is given before it goes into article space - not difficult. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:45, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

There is currently a copyright violation notification in the Gordon Ramsay wiki page. However, it appears to have been resolved as indicated on Wikipedia:Copyright_problems/2014_January_4. I hesitate to remove the template from the Ramsay page (not sure if that is ok or not) so I figured a quick note on this talk page is the least I could do (so that people who know more can handle this appropriately). -- gt24 (talk) 18:13, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

Thank you, User:Gt24. We used to have a bot that would relist these kinds of things (because they happen occasionally), but, alas, we've lost it. :/ I've removed the single sentence in issue along with the template. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 20:34, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

User talk:PUECH P.-F.

A noobie user keeps creating articles, based on word-for-word cut-and-paste from his blog. He seems to think he can do that. Can somebody explain this to the user? Bearian (talk) 16:41, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

Okay. I'll do it. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 20:41, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

Poetry on an Afc submission

Dear editors: This is the first time I have come across this, so I want to check before taking action. As part of this Afc submission Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Hayley Brabant, the editor has included a poem written by the subject. There is no indication that this poem is published elsewhere, but I assume that in order for it to be in Wikipedia it would have to be formally donated. Is this correct? What if the author made it up and typed it in just as others add prose? As well as declining the article as about a non-notable person, I plan to remove the poem as a copyright violation. Is this correct? Is this enough to undo the licensing that happens when text is added to Wikipedia? —Anne Delong (talk) 02:24, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

Well, I don't want to keep this article marked as reviewing any longer, so I guess I'll let someone else deal with it. —Anne Delong (talk) 17:15, 1 April 2014 (UTC)
I've removed the poem. Without verification that this is the author, it may well be a copyvio. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 20:52, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

Mac & Devin Go to High School

Dear copyright experts: Would someone please check the above article? To me it seems that the plot summary is too closely related to the sales pitch text at https://itunes.apple.com/ca/movie/mac-and-devin-go-to-high-school/id617135138 . I have removed it twice some time ago, but it keeps coming back. —Anne Delong (talk) 17:20, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

Hi, User:Anne Delong. :) When there's a dispute over content, as to whether or not it constitutes a copyright problem, {{copyvio}} and listing at WP:CP are the way to go. I've blanked the section and listed it at Wikipedia:Copyright problems/2014 April 2. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 20:39, 2 April 2014 (UTC)
Thanks, Moonriddengirl. I didn't realize that I was posting in the wrong place. WP:CP looks like an information and instruction page until you scroll down near the bottom. I will do better in the future. —Anne Delong (talk) 23:08, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

Lazy/short attention span F seeks plagiarism-hating Wikipedia know-it-all for advice/weekends away. Must love children/pets/original writing

Sorry, the offer of weekends away was just to tease you into reading. Basically I'm too lazy to figure out which form to fill in so I just thought I'd appeal to any passing soft-touch, rule-bending, live-by-the-seat-of-their-pants Wikipedia grandee for advice. I found some plagiarism on Belle (2013 film) (coming hard on the disappointment of discovering I was not the film's inspiration), so I left a note on the article talk page but I don't think that page sees a lot of action. If this is all humdrum run-of-the-mill stuff just pat my virtual head and send me on my way, but I didn't know whether it was a big deal or not, and the 10 or so pages I gave up ploughing my way through on the way here seemed to suggest you (the Wikipedia-mega-entity) got quite cross about this sort of thing. Belle. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bellemora (talk • contribs) 14:25, 14 April 2014 (UTC) OK, I've found how to do a proper signature now. Don't hassle me man 14:29, 14 April 2014 (UTC) Bellemora (talk) 14:30, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

Thank you, User:Bellemora. I've removed it, less through rule-bending and more through strict adherence. :) I appreciate your following up on your concerns. Article talk pages can be graveyards. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 10:38, 15 April 2014 (UTC)
Thank you Moonriddengirl. I've put a plot summary (all my own work!) back in place of your box. Hope this is OK. Bellemora (talk) 11:15, 15 April 2014 (UTC)
Better than okay, it's ideal. :) Thanks, User:Bellamora. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:30, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

Copying from Who Was Who

I wondered if I could get a second opinion before I pursue this further. I've noticed several articles which contain material taken from Who Was Who. The copied material is usually a list of career positions the subject held in chronological order, with little or no attempt at paraphrasing. I put two examples at User:January/Temporary page (so that I can delete it once it has served its purpose, I've had to copy from the source myself to show the problem since access requires a subscription outside the UK), which are representative of the varying degrees of copying I've found; the first is a simple copy, the other has some modifications but is still recognisable. Does WP:NOCREATIVE cover this or are these additions problematic? January (talk) 14:12, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

In general simple factual lists (with no prose) are not copyrightable. Copyright may persist in the selection of items in the list (such as a "best-of" list), though it doesn't look like that's the case here—these are all presumably chronological lists of all major positions held by certain people. I think the bigger issue here is that the formatting of the list is stylistically inappropriate for Wikipedia; unlike the printed Who Was Who we have no space constraints and therefore shouldn't be using all these abbreviations, nor should we be formatting the lists inline rather than as block elements. —Psychonaut (talk) 14:51, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

Swietenia macrophylla (Big-leaf mahogany)

A new user added content in a series of edits. He also uploaded a number of images. His username matches the name at his website. He communicated with me at my talk saying he owns the images and content. I believe him. But, I asked him to OTRS the images anyway. As for the content, it appears verbatim at his website, which has a copyright notice at the bottom. I've asked him to remove/reword the content or add a CC to his website. He's been out of touch. Should I just forget about it? Guidance needed.

Links:

Anna Frodesiak (talk) 00:52, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

Hi, User:Anna Frodesiak. Good to see you. :) Sadly, no. An unverified claim of license is as bad as no license at all. The thing to do at this point is to either blank the article with {{copyvio}} or to remove it until permission is verified and to flag the images on Commons with {{npd}}. The template there is the same. It says permission has not been supplied. Once you notify him, this sets a timer for him to follow through. If he doesn't, the images must be deleted. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:09, 29 March 2014 (UTC)
Hello, User:Moonriddengirl. I just emailed him as a last try. If no reply, I will act soon. Many thanks for the guidance. :) Anna Frodesiak (talk) 22:21, 29 March 2014 (UTC)
He replied saying a couple of weeks. Too long? Anna Frodesiak (talk) 23:34, 29 March 2014 (UTC)
So, (User:Moonriddengirl), is a couple of weeks too long do you think? :) Anna Frodesiak (talk) 00:46, 1 April 2014 (UTC)
I have to say, it depends. I'm not ever going to be comfortable saying, "No, that's fine; leave it up until he gets to it" because if he doesn't own the copyright, then I may be considered a contributory infringer, especially if the actual copyright owner can demonstrate that the material was copied from our website during the time it was published with my consent. That said, I don't own the website so I'm not directly responsible, and the courts may be willing to forgive my naivety. :D Ordinarily, with text, we would blank the article with {{copyvio}} and put a note on the talk page that permission is forthcoming - or temporarily remove the material with such a note. Whether or not I actually do that in practice depends on how extensive the copying is and how dubious the assertion of ownership is. If there's a lot of it, I'd blank it and respond thanking him and asking him to let me know when the licensing statement is published so that the content can be restored. For what it's worth, I find that sometimes people promise to do these things but don't bother without the impetus of removal. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:36, 2 April 2014 (UTC)
(User:Moonriddengirl), I don't think the content is substantial enough for a blanking. It is now buried enough to be a nuissance to remove. What I'll do is wait the four remaining days weeks and email again. Then if no reply or action after 3 days, just nom the images for deletion and surgically extract the copyvio content. Aside, I do believe he is the same person who works at the site, but am somewhat concerned that he copy pasted the content at his site from other sources. He cites books, so I can't check. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 00:21, 8 April 2014 (UTC)
Rereading his email, I see that he said "a few weeks". I'll wait 3, email, then wait a couple more days, then remove the content and nom the images. Pity if it has to go that way. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 06:08, 15 April 2014 (UTC)
Update: Chris has kindly send in the OTRS for the images. Those are now saved and part of the project. I'm very grateful and pleased about that. Chris also said that he will paraphrase the content at the article in May. I will check back in June to see. He assures us that the content at his site is not plagarized from any other source as that would be, in his words, "career ending". I am completely confident and certain that the content now present at the article, remaining for another month, does not present a significant risk to Wikipedia. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 01:34, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

Dear copyright experts: I have several times tried to report copyright problems here, and despite doing my best to follow directions, not once have my entries ended up in the right place. I apologize in advance, since this will likely happen again unless I just don't report any more of these. —Anne Delong (talk) 01:45, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

Hi, User:Anne Delong. :) When you put the {{copyvio}} template on a page, it generates a link for you to follow to put the report in the right place as well as the code for making the report. For example, look at Osman Nuhu Sharubutu, which I flagged today. There's a section labeled "Instructions for filing". It should give you everything you need.
That said, I'm sorry you've found this so difficult. Maybe if you talk a little more about where you are running into issues, we can fix it. :) The WP:CP page is more like WP:AFD or WP:3RR then it is a regular noticeboard, so it's not really set up like a normal discussion page. It's template-driven, generally. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 02:07, 18 May 2014 (UTC)
Well, for example, today at the bottom of the page it said put new article listings in "Wikipedia:Copyright problems/2014 May 18", which was a red link. I clicked on the link, thinking that this would start a new page for that day which would then be transcluded into the main page. However, when I looked later my entry was on the previous day's list. I didn't realize that I was supposed to be tagging the page; I don't think I want to do that when I am not sure there is a violation, so maybe I'll just leave this type of thing for someone bolder. —Anne Delong (talk) 02:25, 18 May 2014 (UTC)
No, you put it on the right day - Wikipedia:Copyright problems/2014 May 18. The problem is that our bots are broken, so the header with the date is not automatically created anymore. :/ I've asked our botmaster to help out, but unfortunately his non-Wikipedia life is consuming his time. :/
Okay, thanks. —Anne Delong (talk) 03:20, 18 May 2014 (UTC)
If you're not sure there's a violation, the better place to ask is here generally. Or you're always welcome to stop by my talk page. :)
I think it would be a shame if you stopped following up on these because of fear that you're not doing something correctly. In terms of WP:IAR, this is definitely one of those things where even if you weren't doing it correctly, it would be better for the encyclopedia for you to keep doing it. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 02:32, 18 May 2014 (UTC)
I've checked out the issue, Anne Delong, and you were right to flag it. :) One thing to keep in mind, though, is that {{copyvio}} is perfectly fine for ambiguous cases. That's partially what it's for. It's okay to blank a section of the article pending resolution of copyright status. But, again, if you're unsure and don't want to tag, please feel free to inquire. :) I greatly appreciate the attention you've been showing to copyright issues, and I certainly wouldn't want you discouraged from that. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 02:39, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

Alfred Dunhill

Hi, although this photograph of the deceased Alfred Dunhill was taken in 1893, I have not been able to prove that it was published before 1944 or whenever the copyright limitations expire. Upload: [14] Tom (talk) 17:47, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

Hello, Tom. If you have questions about the copyright status of media, you should consider asking them at WP:MCQ. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 19:16, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

Uskok War

The 3rd paragraph of this article is copied from the reference cited for it. Consequently I am also concerned about the 2nd and 4th paragraphs, but I don't have access to the cited work to check them. Lavateraguy (talk) 16:34, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

Thank you, User:Lavateraguy. Ordinarily, I'd ask you to flag it and list it in accordance with the directions at Wikipedia:Copyvio101, but I went ahead this time to review it. The third paragraph was added by a different user than the 2nd and 4th, and I've verified the issues and removed it. I've noted on the talk page that there is some concern especially with machine translation. If you'd like to share any additional concerns there, please do! It may help others clean up any remaining issues. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 14:46, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

Crimean status referendum, 2014

I am not sure whether this is the right place to start this discussion, but I was led here by a link at Template:copyvio-revdel.

RevDel of a range spanning hundreds of edits of Crimean status referendum, 2014 unrelated to the copyvio has been requested. I oppose the RevDel as this would break the attribution of these edits. Petr Matas 09:32, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

Hi, Petr Matas. As the English Wikipedia community interprets policy, RevDel doesn't break attribution of edits as long as it leaves the usernames. Everyone who contributes content to Wikimedia project agrees to accept any of the following forms of attribution:

Through hyperlink (where possible) or URL to the article to which you contributed (since each article has a history page that lists all authors and editors);
Through hyperlink (where possible) or URL to an alternative, stable online copy that is freely accessible, which conforms with the license, and which provides credit to the authors in a manner equivalent to the credit given on the Project website; or
Through a list of all authors (but please note that any list of authors may be filtered to exclude very small or irrelevant contributions).

This is from our site's WMF:Terms of Use. As long as the names are accurate and intact in history, the list of all authors is retained and attribution is met. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 10:37, 28 May 2014 (UTC)
I see that my understanding of attribution was wrong. Petr Matas 11:00, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

Still, I think that such RevDel would make to much harm to the article's history, which contains a large amount of information, which would be lost to the public. I think that the removal of the copyvio in a single sourced paragraph reporting on the opinion of the Hungarian ministry is not worth it. Petr Matas 11:00, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

I think that's a valid perspective, Petr Matas, but there are different opinions on that matter. I myself tend to use RevDelete when large amounts of content are involved and when the risk of it returning to publication are high, or when the deletion does not cost us anything substantial. Others believe that deletion should be applied more routinely, which I think is also a valid perspective. (The legal team recently posted meta:Wikilegal/Copyright Status of Wikipedia Page Histories wherein they discuss the status of copyright violations in article histories (on community request).) We haven't yet reached a wide consensus on when and how this should be applied to balance the needs of copyright cleanup with transparency. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:26, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

Soham murders - alleged possible copy-pasting from a book

A newly-registered account alleges that "This article contains copyrighted material from a biography of Ian Huntley, Beyond Evil by Nathan Yates ISBN 1844541428, but without citing the book. I have entered citations and a reference". I don't know if this means entire paragraphs were copy-pasted, but it does appear that even after the new account has entered citations, the copied material is still not enclosed within quotation marks. It looks like the material indicated may have been in the article since at least 2009. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 15:47, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

(Note: MRG is currently following this up on the talk page of the person who originally reported the issue.) --Demiurge1000 (talk) 19:43, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

Should a different presentation of material have a link?

Could someone have a look at Template talk:Weather box#Separate templates and User talk:CambridgeBayWeather#You wrong. Is Subtropical-man correct and the templates require attribution. Thanks. CBWeather, Talk, Seal meat for supper? 16:40, 26 May 2014 (UTC)

Main discussion is here: Template_talk:Weather_box#Separate_templates. Subtropical-man talk
(en-2) 16:59, 26 May 2014 (UTC)
@CambridgeBayWeather:, @Subtropical-man::
Copyright is complicated. As far as Wikipedia is concerned, the law that matters is the US copyright law (individual editors are governed by laws in their jurisdiction, but since US copyright law governs the website it is that to which our content must conform). If the templates are completely uncreative, then their content does not require attribution under US law, as US law does not recognize "sweat of the brow". ("Sweat of the brow" is the right to be recognized for the labor in your work; the U.S. does not recognize labor, but only creativity.) If there is creativity in the contents (and the US government sets the bar for creativity deliberately very low), then the material may be copyrighted, and attribution is required. Since attribution costs nothing and since failure to attribute can create problems for the project and especially for the person who fails to attribute, I myself would lean towards attribution. This isn't a question of "Do we have to delete it?" but "Do we have to name the person who created it?" It's a far different paradigm than copying from external sources.
If Template:Green Bay, Wisconsin weatherbox were listed at CV, I'd say that the only creativity I see there is perhaps the arrangement of the table (including selection of colors) and footnote (a). To check creativity of arrangement, I'd look at other tables representing weather data to see if that's a standard method of display. If it is, it's not creative, and attribution for that is not required. At two sentences, footnote (a) is minimal, but, again, since attribution costs nothing but failure to attribute can cost much, I'd attribute. It's my opinion that failure to attribute those two sentences is not likely to rise to the level of copyright violation, as it's not likely to be substantial.
Wikipedia:Copyright in lists talks a little bit about creativity in content versus creativity of arrangement and how the US has interpreted these things.
Some other countries do recognize "sweat of the brow", and in those countries, attribution might be required for the table data itself. This has nothing to do with Wikipedia, though - while the user who placed the content might be held to that law if he lives in a country where it is practiced, it's not a violation of copyright on English Wikipedia if it doesn't violate US law. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 10:53, 28 May 2014 (UTC)
Thanks. This had slipped my mind and I forgot to check back. CBWeather, Talk, Seal meat for supper? 22:38, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

Stack Exchange attribution

Heartbleed has text copied from Stackexchange, since this revision. As it is CC-BY-SA, the text should be attributed properly. Normal CC-BY-SA Attribution can be done by Template:CCBYSASource, however stackexchange requires that nofollow may not be used [15]. What to do? --Muelleum (talk) 00:33, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

Many of the attribution requirements (not just the "nofollow" one) in that blog post go far beyond those published in Creative Commons's own guidelines and the licence itself:
  • According to the CC-BY-SA human-readable summary, "appropriate credit" is explained as "If supplied, you must provide the name of the creator and attribution parties, a copyright notice, a license notice, a disclaimer notice, and a link to the material. Prior versions of CC licenses have slightly different attribution requirements."
  • According to CC's attribution comparison chart, attribution in adapted works should be "reasonable to medium and means".
  • The CC-BY-SA 3.0 licence itself also indicates that attribution in adpated works should be "reasonable to the medium and means".
The first, third, and fourth requirements in the blog post directly contradict the licence, making it impossible to reuse Stack Exchange material in any non-visual or non-hypertext medium. It is impossible, for example, to use a "text blurb" to "visually indicate" the source in an audio recording, and it is impossible to "hyperlink directly to the original question" and "hyperlink each author name" in print publications. These scenarios are important for us because Wikipedia is regularly reproduced in audio and print media.
The blog post does seem to constitute the latest, official, entire attribution requirements for user content on Stack Exchange, since it's referenced in every page footer: "user contributions licensed under cc by-sa 3.0 with attribution required". So there is apparently a contradiction between the attribution requirements in the blog post and those in the licence they purport to use. Absent any further clarification, we should assume that the attribution requirements are stipulations over and above the ones specified by the licence, meaning that the licence for Stack Exchange content, while arguably still free, is incompatible with the unmodified CC-BY-SA 3.0 licence used by Wikipedia. This means we should remove all Stack Exchange content from Wikipedia, unless we get a statement from the original author(s) that they waive the additional attribution requirements. —Psychonaut (talk) 10:03, 16 April 2014 (UTC)
Wha? That is a ridiculous demand about nofollow. http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Marking/Users doesn't say anything specific about it but doesn't give the slighest indication that anyone is obliged to propagate the link through search engines. I wonder if the Creative Commons folks might have anything to say about the issue. Stack Exchange has also taken to issuing referral codes that its users then spam other forums with, trying to get other people to join SO. So I'm getting rather annoyed with them.

I don't see the SO content in that revision of the heartbleed article. If someone can say where it is, I can probably rewrite it. (Better to use the article talk page for this). 70.36.142.114 (talk) 10:42, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

Oh, I see, the info is in this diff:[16] It's a list of vulnerable programs. I'd be inclined to leave it alone for now, and dig up independent citations for the individual programs involved as opportunity permits. 70.36.142.114 (talk) 10:54, 16 April 2014 (UTC)
Well, this is a problem not just with the Heartbleed article but generally. Many other Wikipedia articles (Steinmetz solid, for example) incorporate material copied from Stack Exchange websites. If the licences are incompatible then all this material needs to be identified and removed (or kept, in the unlikely event that the authors can be contacted and agree to relicence it appropriately—Stack Exchange websites don't make it possible for contributors to be contacted directly). —Psychonaut (talk) 11:14, 16 April 2014 (UTC)
Does Stack Exchange claim copyright on user-contributed content? That's even more obnoxious than everything else mentioned so far. Wikipedia is by far the largest publisher of CC content and it uses nofollow on all pages and noindex on most (500 million noindexed history pages on en.wp alone) plus it gets a stupdendous amount of web traffic and it has millions of contributors in hundreds of languages. Stack Exchange is a pipsqueak by comparison. So I think Wikipedia presents a far more credible standard of CC contributor expectations than Stack Exchange. That page on SE is one guy spouting fringe opinions that most of the SE contributors have probably never noticed. 70.36.142.114 (talk) 12:05, 16 April 2014 (UTC)
Actual terms of service are at [17] -- they seem convoluted to me; in that the claim CC by SA but then appear to impose terms that go beyond CC by SA. NE Ent 12:20, 16 April 2014 (UTC)
Actually, the Terms of Service you linked to are much more reasonably worded than the blog post. While they still contain the "nofollow" provision, they are careful to specify that the hyperlink requirements apply only to "Internet use", and that the attribution to Stack Exchange need not be "visual":
You agree that You will follow the attribution rules of the Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike license as follows:
a. You will ensure that any such use of Subscriber Content visually displays or otherwise indicates the source of the Subscriber Content as coming from the Stack Exchange Network. This requirement is satisfied with a discreet text blurb, or some other unobtrusive but clear visual indication.
b. You will ensure that any such Internet use of Subscriber Content includes a hyperlink directly to the original question on the source site on the Network (e.g., http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12345)
c. You will ensure that any such use of Subscriber Content visually display or otherwise clearly indicate the author names for every question and answer so used.
d. You will ensure that any such Internet use of Subscriber Content Hyperlink each author name directly back to his or her user profile page on the source site on the Network (e.g., http://stackoverflow.com/users/12345/username), directly to the Stack Exchange domain, in standard HTML (i.e. not through a Tinyurl or other such indirect hyperlink, form of obfuscation or redirection), without any “nofollow” command or any other such means of avoiding detection by search engines, and visible even with JavaScript disabled.
Even assuming that these terms of service override the blog post (and, given that it's the blog post rather than the ToS which is linked to in the copyright notice on every page, I'm not sure that they do), the question remains as to whether the technical restrictions in (d) are reasonably covered under the terms of the original CC-BY-SA 3.0 licence. I still strongly suspect that they are not, which would make Stack Exchange user content unusable on Wikipedia and other CC-BY-SA-licensed projects. —Psychonaut (talk) 12:41, 16 April 2014 (UTC)
In the blog post, Jeff Atwood, co-founder of SO, writes "All the content contributed to Stack Overflow or other Stack Exchange sites is cc-wiki (aka cc-by-sa) licensed, intended to be shared and remixed". So there is an intent by SO for content to be shared. Before we start removing SO content, we should ask SO first whether they clarify their attribution terms, and/or make them more permissive. I think the blog post was intended to stop simple copies of SO only made to aggregate traffic and display ads, and not to render SO content incompatible with well intentioned CC-BY-SA projects like WP. So there is a potential to talk.
The SO TOS contains "You agree that all Subscriber Content that You contribute to the Network is perpetually and irrevocably licensed to Stack Exchange under the Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike license.". This gives them a blank CC license by the original contributors. When the attribution terms are breaking CC, the copyright of the original authors can be breached, as they are breaching the 'No additional restrictions'-part of CC. Original authors give SO an additional license called "Content License", which permits SO to display the content. This "Content License" however does not permit SO to re-license the content. So when SO relicenses the content, they must follow CC-BY-SA. Even when original author copyright is breached, WP cannot use the content until the original autors enforce the CC onto SO, or also license it to WP under CC. (AFAIK, when A licenses b to C under a CC license, still one of A or C have to agree when D wants to use b under CC terms).
Because of the blank CC license, I think SO has the right to modify the attribution terms. Therefore I think we should ask SO for assistance, even when the TOS indicate that they think the CC allows the distributor to set "Attribution terms". I wonder, whether those "Attribution terms" propagate on remix, so that wikipedia then would also have to enforce those attribution terms to all people citing WP.
Please also note that I'm no lawyer. --Muelleum (talk) 13:44, 16 April 2014 (UTC)
Assuming those extra attribution conditions are valid and in effect, could Stack Exchange's modification of them now apply retroactively to past contributions? Or would this require the consent of all contributors? —Psychonaut (talk) 15:05, 16 April 2014 (UTC)
Wikipedia should inform Stack Exchange that it is not allowed to republish Wikipedia content through those additional terms. I don't think they are going to loosen up for us. If anything, that nofollow thing was aimed directly at Wikipedia. I don't see how the SE TOS applies to non-SE users who simply republish under CC, since the idea of CC is you don't have to agree to additional terms. The thing about "any other such means of avoiding detection by search engines" would seem to mean it's not ok to put the stuff on a web forum that's accessible only to logged in users. The whole purpose seems to make content re-users assist in SE's SEO operations. That is almost surely uncontemplated under CC-BY which allows commercial re-use through the channels of one's choice (e.g. to humans but not to search engines). I think they are trying to undermine CC principles and we should ask CC itself to intervene. Sue Gardner and Jimmy Wales are both on the CC advisory board.[18] I'm going to leave a message on Jimbo's talk page. 70.36.142.114 (talk) 14:45, 16 April 2014 (UTC)
I think WP should follow WP:GF and not start a war with SE before we've heard SE's opinion on this. Only because they want to make money they are not evil. They try to be open. We should let them decide whether they go the open way or the GeoGebra way. --Muelleum (talk) 15:23, 16 April 2014 (UTC)
Sure, of course WP should make a polite request before escalating, however it should go in with the view that the !nofollow demand is incompatible with the CC license that it claims to use. I notice the SE pages now say at the bottom "cc by-sa 3.0 with attribution required rev 2014.4.16.1551" which suggests something changed yesterday--could that be in response to this discussion? Keep in mind also that SE doesn't publish those user contributions as a copyright holder entitled to put forth terms in the first place. It publishes them as a licensee of the contributors. The blog post tries to argue that forbidding nofollow is a reasonable expectation of users wanting to ensure proper attribution, but 1) as said below, the vast majority of CC-BY-SA content contributors are on Wikipedia rather than SE, and WP contributors observably don't have that expectation; 2) the SE demand is self-servingly bogus since it wants the contributor "credited" with a link back to SE rather than to the contributor's own site. 70.36.142.114 (talk) 19:13, 16 April 2014 (UTC)
Math Overflow operated independently for several years before becoming part of the SE network. I very much doubt that MO had anything like that nofollow prohibition in its explication of CC-BY-SA. MO contributors before the acquisition didn't agree to the SE TOS. SE is attempting to relicense their contributions under more restrictive terms than they contributed under, contravening the Share-alike part of the license. I had a bad feeling when MO joined up with SE, and now I feel sickened. I wonder if MO can withdraw from SE. 70.36.142.114 (talk) 15:05, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

LOL, stackexchange itself serves links with nofollow, including links to wikipedia.[19] And they have a thread about nofollow.[20] 70.36.142.114 (talk) 15:50, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

I left Jimbo a talk message, but his page mentions that he's unavailable for a week or so. I also wonder if that SE TOU purports to require contributors to enforce that nofollow condition on SE's behalf. That would of course be even crazier than the other parts. 70.36.142.114 (talk) 15:49, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

I left a message on Mindspillage's user talk (she does legal stuff for CC now). 70.36.142.114 (talk) 10:04, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

Anyone? Anything? Muelleum (talk) 18:15, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

I just left Jimbo another talk message. He responded and is going to point Jeff Atwood at the discussion. 70.36.142.114 (talk) 21:10, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

Hey, this is Jay from Stack Exchange. Thanks for highlighting this - I'm going to work with our lawyers on how we can clarify our ToS, but here's the gist:

  • Forget the blog post; it's old, and our ToS (and probably CC-SA) have been updated since then. (I know we link to it weirdly in places, and will look at cleaning that up.)
  • We do not claim any copyright on user-created content; it's simply licensed to us under CC-SA, which we relicense to others under CC-SA
  • You're correct that CC-SA does not allow for downstream restrictions
  • CC-SA specifies some specific things that may be required, like the author's name, additional "attribution parities" (like us, in this cade), among other things, but leaves the manner of linking, presentation, etc. to be covered by the phrase, " reasonable to the medium or means You are utilizing"
  • The CC-SA license is what covers what's allowed w/r/t user content. The specifics regarding nofollow are our interpretation of "reasonable to the medium or means You are utilizing"
  • We read that to mean roughly, "in the normal, typical manner for a given medium," which on the internet seems to us like an actual hyperlink (not just the text of the URL) without additional restrictions like nofollow, etc.
  • But the license is CC-SA, and any interpretation we may make of what "reasonable to the medium or means You are utilizing" is superseded by the rules of the license itself.

Put another way, assuming you're sure that you're giving attribution for our content in a manner consistent with CC-SA, you should be fine. We love Wikipedia, and one of the main reasons we use CC-SA is the desire to be two-way compatible with your stuff (mostly so our users can post excerpts when needed). JaydlesSE (talk) 21:09, 22 May 2014 (UTC)JaydlesSE

Its great to hear you are working on the issue, and that the CA license supersedes. Muelleum (talk) 18:08, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

WP:Turnitin

Wondering if everyone here is aware of this effort? The hope is to run new edits over a certain size through Turnitin and flag those which may have likely copyright issues for human follow-up. The plan was initially to launch it for medical articles. Would this tool be useful to this group as well? We have some support from the Wiki Education Foundation as well as a number of other Wikipedians. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 02:46, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

Where this will really shine would be copyvios from paywalled sources. I might use this at CCI. That said, I'd like to see how it performs against copied plot summaries and the usual "pass off an about us page as an encyclopedia article" bullshit. MER-C 12:48, 8 June 2014 (UTC)
I'm really interested in your trial, User:Jmh649. :) In terms of its usefulness to us, though, that depends on how it would be used, I'd think. Use it to scan existing articles? It could be enormously helpful at CCI if it can somehow exclude known mirror sites. Use it to scan all new articles? That could be interesting. For all substantial edits? Before I'd want to adopt it for that, I'd like to see its ratio of positive/negative hits. As it is, WP:SCV is not horrendously backlogged only because it's been breaking. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:23, 8 June 2014 (UTC)
The plan is to run it on new edits over a certain size immediately after they occur. This would include the creation of new pages. The software can be calibrated to change the rates of false positives and false negatives. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 22:28, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

Copyvio in a protected article

An editor and I had a dispute over a sentence that led to the Charlene, Princess of Monaco article being protected. The administrator who protected it did not bother to check the object of dispute before protecting the article, so now we have blatant copyright violation locked into the article. There is a clear consensus that the sentence should be removed, but requests to edit the still-protected (protected against what, I wonder) article have been ignored. Can someone take a look at the article? The copyvio is the last sentence in the Charlene, Princess of Monaco#Princess of Monaco section. Surtsicna (talk) 20:22, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

Footer on project page

What's up with the footer? Templates are not transcluding, and showing up in red. I tried to fix it; in the edit preview pane, they transcluded properly and there were no red links. However, the saved page once again refused to transclude. — Gorthian (talk) 15:57, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

I don't have a clue - maybe I made it worse, User:Gorthian. I noticed that Wikipedia:Copyright problems/NewListings was not transcluding - for a long time, we had a backlog, and I assumed that it was not transcluding because we had too many templates. When I looked at it, the only thing that had changed was that an open hidden comment had been cleaned up. ([21]). I knew this had been put in deliberately by User:Rich Farmbrough when he fixed the system so we were no longer reliant on our creaky bots (hooray), so I put it back. It did not cause the page to transclude. I just tried putting in a close comment here in case the unclosed comment was breaking things. But evidently that's not it, because the page is not transcluding still so the close comment is uselessly hanging out alone. I'm clueless and would be tremendously happy if somebody technical could figure it out. :/ Like, oh, I don't know, User:Amalthea? Random ping, but who knows, maybe it'll be obvious to you. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:08, 19 June 2014 (UTC)
I had a peek, it looks like this is when the footer broke. Opening up the edit box and hitting preview gives a warning: "Warning: Template include size is too large. Some templates will not be included." So presumably it broke because of the addition of two new transclusions. —Noiratsi (talk) 15:31, 19 June 2014 (UTC)
It's the "last straw" phenomenon. I have removed the unclosed comment and the closure on this page: Since the bots have given up they are no longer needed. I am looking at the templates to see if we can simplify them: if not a sticking plaster fix can be done. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 15:59, 19 June 2014 (UTC).
@Moonriddengirl: Yes, the page expansion size is over the limit. The omitted templates begin nearly at the bottom of the page (look at the HTML source of the page). Solutions would be to reduce the number of transclusions and/or their sizes. (See WP:TLIMIT.) — Gorthian (talk) 16:06, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

On the new listings page the size is 1,602,719/2,048,000 bytes:
On this page (without the new listings) it is 1,247,531/2,048,000.

Total 2,850,250 - way over the limit.

Template {{Laq}} reduces the size of each transclusion compared with {{La}} by about 60% which may be just enough, though I have already used it somewhat for the figures above. I wonder if we should jettison the "Views" field, it was something I introduced in RfD, but I don't see the same value here. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 16:46, 19 June 2014 (UTC).

 Fixed - for now.
  • Using {{Laq}} has reduced the total size to 1,799,656 bytes.
  • Substing the "new" page on this page, means that future degradation will be "graceful" I.E. the engine will render as many whole days as it can.

Medium term one of the following must happen to prevent recurrence (or of course any other fix):

  1. CorenSearchBot changes to using {{Laq}} instead of {{La}}
  2. {{La}} is slimmed down either as much as {{Laq}}, or almost as much.

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 17:09, 19 June 2014 (UTC).

\o/ Yay! We have footers! Thank you. :) I'll ask Coren if he can switch to {{Laq}} so we can keep our footers. I'm very grateful. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:49, 20 June 2014 (UTC)

http://hausmieten.potiori.com/ is a mirror of Wikipedia

Could someone add http://hausmieten.potiori.com/ to the list of partial mirrors of Wikipedia, so that Wikipedia articles that match ones in http://hausmieten.potiori.com/ are not flagged as copyvios? Multiregional TransitTelecom was deleted because a Duplication Detector report showed that it was similar to http://hausmieten.potiori.com/Interregional_TransitTelekom.html I created a new stub version of Multiregional TransitTelecom, and then discovered that http://hausmieten.potiori.com/Interregional_TransitTelekom.html had been updated to reflect my new version. Eastmain (talk • contribs) 05:28, 21 June 2014 (UTC)

Duplication Detector reports are not automated; they're placed by Corensearchbot (which is run by Coren) or by templates added by human beings. If you're wanting it put on an exclusion list for Corensearchbot, you need to ask User:Coren, who may or may not see your request here. But it seems like there shouldn't be too much issue with humans deleting this material on review; the bottom of the page says "Copyright: Dieser Artikel basiert auf dem Artikel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interregional_TransitTelekom aus der freien Enzyklopaedie http://en.wikipedia.org bzw. http://www.wikipedia.org und steht unter der Doppellizenz GNU-Lizenz fuer freie Dokumentation und Creative Commons CC-BY-SA 3.0 Unported. In der Wikipedia ist eine Liste der Autoren unter http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Interregional_TransitTelekom&action=history verfuegbar. Alle Angaben ohne Gewähr." Maybe they've just added that? That said, I'm not sure if this is the kind of m:live mirror that needs reporting. Hmm. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:39, 21 June 2014 (UTC)

User:Krokuss

I've just left a {{nothanks}} notice on the talk page of editor Krokuss, the third such in a few days. That page is festooned with various kinds of copyright warning, not all of them from me. Is it perhaps time to show this editor that we actually mean it when we say that "persistent violators are liable to be blocked from editing"? Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 23:15, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

Block requested for Bwmoll3

I've just listed Desperate Journey as a copyvio here. The infringing content was added by Bwmoll3, a user who has a huge open CCI, and has another (sandbox) copyvio still listed at Wikipedia:Copyright problems/2014 June 19. With regret, I request a block until we can determine with absolute certainty whether the behaviour that led to the CCI is continuing or not. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 23:36, 10 July 2014 (UTC)

This problem would be better suited for ANI. MER-C 02:11, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

Copyvios in hidden text

I think I may have stepped in something. I want to get my facts straight. Is a copyvio permissible here if it is in hidden text? I'm talking about something like this. Any answer welcomed, but pinging Moonriddengirl, MER-C and Diannaa for their take. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 14:53, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

No. MER-C 20:51, 29 June 2014 (UTC)
I don't think it's acceptable either. -- Diannaa (talk) 21:02, 29 June 2014 (UTC)
Thanks to both Diannaa and MER-C for replies. Based on your advice I've made a CCI request for Trident13, who has a quite remarkable miscellany in his userspace, a good deal of it commented out, and for good reason. As I've noted there, apart from Soughton Hall I've not found any other examples of copyvio in mainspace, so I'm not certain the CCI is needed. But I'd most definitely like more eyes on this. There's a COI aspect to it too (better to discuss that here, or at WP:COIN?). Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 23:36, 29 June 2014 (UTC)
We don't need the entire contribution survey listing, just do an API query and a find and replace (would do this, but I'm travelling). MER-C 21:27, 30 June 2014 (UTC)
It probably isn't acceptable under WP rules, but we have to be careful of over-reacting. Cut and pasting source material while working on a document is perfectly normal practice, and it would be incredibly difficult to prove any loss from this sort of thing, especially where the source material is from an (unidentified) forum, (even if none of the posts are by the WP editor). The individual chunks of text are short enough that quoting them verbatim would probably be OK (with attribution). In summary, this is something no-one would be bothered about, if they were, they wouldn't prosecute, and if they did they would loose. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 18:57, 3 July 2014 (UTC).

I've now posted at WP:COIN about the COI aspect I mentioned above. The thread is Wikipedia:Conflict of interest/Noticeboard#LA Models. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 14:11, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

Another bunch of copy and paste violations

Mentioned here [22]. Am trying to drum up support for a solution. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 01:46, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

Possible copyvios from User:J.H.McDonnell

I have been watching User:J.H.McDonnell for some time, and I suspect that he is copy/pasting from The Treatise in Invertebrate Paleontology for the pages as most of his writing is not nearly as sophisticated as the technical description sections added to pages, and the edits usually so relictual formatting from other site. However I do not have access to the volumes of the Treatise that he is using so I am unable to verify for sure.--Kevmin § 00:13, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

Technical limit for transclusion has been exceeded by this page

This page has landed in Category:Pages where template include size is exceeded because it is transcluding too much content. I don't know how often this happens, and how long it has been a problem. Someone more familiar with this part of project administration may have better ideas about a solution, but my first inclination is to convert some older transclusions to links, as needed to take the page back under the technical limit for transcluded text. Wbm1058 (talk) 17:42, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

I tried substituting Wikipedia:Copyright problems/Header, but that was not enough. the post-expand include size of that sub-page is: 75467/2048000 bytes, of which 42659/2048000 bytes are in turn transcluded by templates on that subpage. In other words, that sub-page transcludes only 3.7% of the transclusion limit. Seems best to leave that page component be. Wbm1058 (talk) 18:14, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

Hmmm... <!--{{Wikipedia:Copyright problems/NewListings}} temp subst: we can see progess-->

So, clearly there is not room for both old and new listings: 94% + 35% = 129% and we can't go over 100%.

I see: "This is a known problem that can only be solved by clearing the backlog." MER-C 12:39, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

Well, it could also be solved by reconfiguring the way this system works! Wbm1058 (talk) 18:42, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

VWBot stopped editing Wikipedia:Copyright problems/NewListings for "automatic addition of new listings and archiving of listings older than 7 days" after 30 May 2011‎. Is that the root of the problem? Wbm1058 (talk) 19:01, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

Wbm1058, I wish I knew. Rich temporarily fixed the issue at one point but told me I needed User:Coren to change something for a more permanent fix. I've asked Coren twice, but had no response (here). --Moonriddengirl (talk) 01:00, 28 July 2014 (UTC)
Comparing Rich's template with the template Coren's bot uses:
It seems at first glance that Rich's "stripped down" version actually has two extra links, "protect" and "delete". Wbm1058 (talk) 02:14, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

Use Template:La/x instead. I wrote that comment last year when MadmanBot was using that template (something that was never propagated back to the CSB codebase). MER-C 03:24, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

OK, Rich probably didn't know about that. Wikid77's template is even more stripped down, and, if you can live without the "watch", "logs" and "views" links, seems the best option. I added the transclusion amounts above.
And it appears that MadmanBot's last copyright-oversight-related contribution was Wikipedia:Suspected copyright violations/2014-05-12, and that bot hasn't contributed to copyright-oversight since May 12. Wbm1058 (talk) 13:51, 28 July 2014 (UTC)
I see that User:MadmanBot says "Mirror of CorenSearchBot, which has been offline since 31 December 2011. CorenSearchBot has become invaluable to WikiProject Copyright Cleanup and the Suspected Copyright Violations patrollers; unfortunately, no one's been able to contact Coren recently (regarding the bot or even ArbCom matters)." So can I assume that when Coren's bot came back online, Madman's was shut down as redundant? Why is it so hard to contact Coren? Doesn't this guy work for the Foundation? Wbm1058 (talk) 14:10, 28 July 2014 (UTC)
It's not hard to contact me, but this is a poor venue to do so (I only occasionally check). If you guys are kind enough to tell me exactly which template you want me to use and its parameters, I'll do the switch minutes later.  :-) — Coren (talk) 14:49, 28 July 2014 (UTC)
@Coren: Your talk page is archived every 3 days. If you don't check it at least that often, maybe you should change the configuration to archive it less frequently. MadmanBot was using Template:La/x, and nothing else has created any new transclusions of that template since that bot stopped operating on May 12. So {{La/x}} seems to be consensus at the moment. I'll see if I can use AWB to change the existing {{La}}s to {{La/x}}s and if that gets the page back within the limits. We should be able to tweak {{La/x}} if necessary. Thanks, Wbm1058 (talk) 16:52, 28 July 2014 (UTC)
It looks like somebody else already cleaned up enough that now it's back inside the limits, for now. Wbm1058 (talk) 17:11, 28 July 2014 (UTC)
CSBot now uses {{La/x}}. — Coren (talk) 19:22, 28 July 2014 (UTC)
Good I'm glad that's resolved! Thanks Wbm and Coren! All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 20:39, 29 July 2014 (UTC).

User:Swatpig

This user page User:Swatpig appears to be a verbatim copy and paste of this website copyrighted by a Charles Cazabon. According to the user page's revision history, it was created in 2007 and has not been edited a single time since. There is also no citation provided for to the Cazabon site at all. Since the Cazabon site says "All content copyrighted from 1998–2009 by Charles Cazabon", it's seem unlikely that he would claim a copyright over material that he got off of Wikipedia and his site just mirrors the "Swatpig" page. WP:DCV says that a {{copypaste}} should be added to the relevant talk page is such cases, but since this is a user page I am not sure if it is appropriate to add such a template. Furthermore, although both WP:G12 and WP:U5 as well as WP:FAKEARTICLE and WP:UP#Copyright violations also seem to apply, I am not sure if it is appropriate to tag the page for speedy deletion. I've searched through this talk page's archives for information regarding the "Swatpig" page, but had no luck finding any; Therefore, I am very interested in hearing what others think should be done in this particular case. Thanks in advance. - Marchjuly (talk) 01:24, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

Most of the same content from the Cazabon site also appears on this IP user's talk page. It was also added in February 2007, which the same time period the "Swatpig" page was created. 72.235.14.99 was blocked by an admin named "Swatjester" so it appears "Swatpig" was created in response to that block. - Marchjuly (talk) 03:04, 13 August 2014 (UTC)
Deleted. Even if it's not a complete copyvio it's not worth trying to overdig given the user had just a few edits. Wizardman 03:17, 13 August 2014 (UTC)
Thank you Wizardman. However, the same copyrighted content still exists on User talk:Swatpig. Does that page need to be deleted as well or is simply blanking that information sufficient? - Marchjuly (talk) 04:43, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

Judgepedia

The Judgepedia article is up for an AfD (Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Judgepedia

The use of Judepedia as a reliable source is being discussed at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard#Judgepedia

The Judgepedia website says

Wikipedia on Judgepedia

Wikipedia content should not be added directly to Judgepedia, and Judgepedia content should not be added directly to Wikipedia. The two websites are licensed under different copyright agreements, and have different editorial focuses and different writing and visual style standards. Judgepedia is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License, while Wikipedia is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 3.0 Unported License (Judgepedia:How to contribute to Judgepedia#Wikipedia on Judgepedia).

The list of articles that mention to the Judgepedia page is not large (158 articles -- when I did the search)

I looked down the list and picked one at random Zoran Popovich it has in it a disclaimer (from 2 June 2009) that text in the article was copied from Judgepedia.

Has it ever been OK to import text from Judgepeida and is it still OK to do so? If it was and no longer is when did the change take place? -- PBS (talk) 12:26, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

PBS, it was formerly okay to import text from GFDL-only sites, which would include Judgepedia. We were originally a GFDL-only site ourself. That changed with our licensing migration of June 15th, 2009. Now we accept content that is co-licensed GFDL & CC-By-SA compatible or CC-By-SA compatible only, but not GFDL only. Content copied from Judgepedia prior to June 15, 2009, should be okay; content copied after, not. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:43, 13 August 2014 (UTC)
Thank you. Now all someone has to do is go through the 156 articles and see when any text from Judgepedia was added. Any volunteers? -- PBS (talk) 12:49, 13 August 2014 (UTC)
It looks like a convincing majority of those are "External links" and aren't for citations of article material. Use as an clearly marked external link is probably fine, as it doesn't require the link be to a reliable source. It's the same deal as as IMDB or WorldCat. Most of the remaining non-reliable citations of content will have to go, but that doesn't seem like very many pages.__ E L A Q U E A T E 18:37, 13 August 2014 (UTC)
I did a Wikipedia search on Judgepedia:Copyright It only threw up a handful of articles and apart from the previously mentioned Zoran Popovich only one other has been copied and has an attribution. It is Andrew Mead and the content was copied before June 15th, 2009. So neither of those pages need to be deleted for copyleft reasons. As to the non-reliable citation and content issue that is not a topic for this page. -- PBS (talk) 21:23, 13 August 2014 (UTC)


Copy and paste detection pilot

The tool is up and running in beta form for only medical articles. The results are here Wikipedia:MED/Copyright. Will likely need a bit of adjusting. I will look at things in detail in a week or two when I make it home. If you are interested please take a look and provide feedback on the talk page / fix copyright issues found. It is still in a rough stage so I imagine there will be a lot of false positive. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 16:26, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

Public domain question

I have a general question regarding an image which has been uploaded to Wikipedia using {{PD-because}}. The reason given is "official item legally exempt from copyright in its country of origin". The uploaded image is a jpg file and there is no link to any website, etc. given to show from where the image originated. WP:PD#International aspects says "In other words: a work that is not copyrightable in one country (even if that country is its country of origin) can still be copyrighted in other countries, if the work is copyrightable there." So, my question is: Are things such as symbols of national institutions, etc. exempt from copyright in the country of origin considered to be public domain by other countries? WP:DCV says that a {{copypaste}} can be added to the article's talk page in there are questions regarding copyright, but not sure if that just applies to text. Please advise whether it's appropriate for me to post the specific file link here or whether I should discuss this on the article's talk page first. Thanks in advance. - Marchjuly (talk) 01:47, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

Believe I found the answer I was looking for at WP:CP#Instructions for handling image copyright concerns. Didn't realize I was posting on the wrong board. Not sure if deleting my question is appropriate, but please do if it is. Thanks. - Marchjuly (talk) 01:07, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 licence and attribution

Some months ago I copied an article from another Wiki under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 licence for an article called 1814 campaign in France, and gave it the appropriate attribution (see see edit February 2014‎ ).

On 27 August Nikkimaria zapped most of it intending to rewrite it. In doing this Nikkimaria removed the attribution. I have left a message on Nikkimaria's talk page raising a concern that I do not think that the attribution template can be removed unless the article history is zapped and a new article is written from scratch because the article remains a derived work under the terms CC-3.0. This of course is a copyleft licensing issue and is different from removing PD source and PD attribution when no text the original PD source exists in a Wikiepdia article. Nikkimaria reverted my re-attribution edit, so we need more input on whether the attribution template is needed so that a consensus can be reached.

I have suggested to Nikkimaria that if Nikkimaria rewrites the article in a sand box, then we can delete the history, but unless that is done I think that the attribution template should remain on the article because it remains a derived work. What do others think? -- PBS (talk) 09:46, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

As I told PBS, he's free to delete the history if he feels it appropriate, but the version in question is not derived from the site being attributed and so the attribution template is not only unnecessary but misplaced. Nikkimaria (talk) 14:25, 28 August 2014 (UTC)
I'm very keen that we comply with legal attribution etc., but... if there is actually no Wikia material in the "zapped" version of the article, I don't believe we need to add a label saying "This article incorporates material from the "1814 Campaign in France" article..." in the main article text. It isn't true and appears legally unnecessary. The attribution to the Wikia is present in both the older versions where was such material, and in the edit history, which seems sufficient.
(NB: For a comparative example, if I was writing an article on Napoleon on my home PC, and cut and pasted a paragraph from our own Wikipedia into my trusty Word document, I would have to credit it as coming from the Wiki. If I then changed my mind, deleted the paragraph, and resaved the Word document, I would not have to retain the attribution forever afterwards in my draft - the Wikipedia material would not be present, nor would the new Word document be a derivative work). Hchc2009 (talk) 14:34, 28 August 2014 (UTC)
Your comparison is not quite the same thing if you were to publish your document (distribute it), and then someone else comes along and creates a derived work from that initial post assuming that you are using the CC licence, as a distribute derived work this issue is different from what you do in your parlour. In such a case see "Restrictions" section of the licence specifically 4.c. (so that it is clear Wikia is using the same licence see http://www.wikia.com/Licensing ) Their explanation of what is acceptable as attrition is not as clear as that in Wikiepdia, but Wikipedia places a similar minimum statement at the bottom of a page "agree to release your contribution under the CC BY-SA 3.0 License and the GFDL with with the understanding that a hyperlink or URL is sufficient for CC BY-SA 3.0 attribution". -- PBS (talk) 15:23, 28 August 2014 (UTC)
If someone was to produce a derivative work from a licensed source, then yes they would need to give attribution; in the case in question, with the Wikia material entirely removed, I can't see that it is in fact derivative. Hchc2009 (talk) 15:50, 28 August 2014 (UTC)
The version in question is not derived from the Wikia site, according to the terms used in the license. The only material remaining from the previous iteration of the article was added post-import, not taken from Wikia; the other content was correctly attributed to other Wikipedia articles or cited to external sources (though more citations are needed). Since no material from Wikia was retained, and since the structure is the standard chronology of historical text rather than anything unique to Wikia, attributing Wikia in this way is not appropriate. Nikkimaria (talk) 16:00, 28 August 2014 (UTC)
I think that we need the input of more than three editors to decide it the attribution should be removed. In the meantime the page needs to be a either reverted to a version with the attribution or it needs to be set to a version before the addition of the attributed text (a redirect). -- PBS (talk) 16:19, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Old photographs

Can a photograph taken in the USA at some indefinite point between 1900 and 1911 still be within copyright. I'm keen to use this image (Cadet Corp in Woodburn Circle) which clearly shows a building completely lacking a wing which was completed in 1911 - Allowing for building and construction time, I put the photo at about 1905. However, the site owner claims this image is copyright. What's the ruling on this? Giano (talk) 17:35, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

If I recall correctly, all images published (not created) before 1 January 1923 are in the public domain in the United States; WP:PD has more information. I think this would be better for media copyright questions. Anon126 (notify me of responses! / talk / contribs) 10:43, 27 September 2014 (UTC)
Thanks [[User :Anon126, that's actually what I thought too. I'll follow your advice and take it there to be sure. Giano (talk) 10:48, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

Noting permission for deleted text confirmed through OTRS

I've recently received permission from the copyright owner for text on an article that was speedily deleted. How should I note this? Anon126 (notify me of responses! / talk / contribs) 09:11, 22 September 2014 (UTC)

  • If an email has been sent to OTRS, then on the talk page of the article, place {{OTRS pending}}, and an OTRS agent will put the final tag on the page. CrowCaw 19:02, 22 September 2014 (UTC)
I am an OTRS agent. I meant that I received permission through OTRS, and the article was already speedily deleted. I'm not an admin, so I can't restore the page myself. I think any note on the talk page would be G8'ed pretty quickly. Anon126 (notify me of responses! / talk / contribs) 10:35, 27 September 2014 (UTC)
@Anon126: I gotcha now. It looks like the interestingly-acronymed WP:REFUND is the place to go. CrowCaw 18:10, 27 September 2014 (UTC)
To editor Crow:
Thank you. Ah, yes, why didn't I think of that? Request has been filed. Anon126 (notify me of responses! / talk / contribs) 19:30, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

Is close paraphrasing acceptable?

Opinions are needed on the following matter: Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 116#Is close paraphrasing acceptable?. A WP:Permalink to that discussion is here. Rationalobserver (talk) 20:06, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Updating information about our institution

I have tried at add information about our school to supplement what is already on file and recognize the changes within the management. Every time I do it I get a bot deleting my revisions - yet All that I post is true and not violating copytright as it is my copy!! I am an employee of the school.

Please help - I want to enhance in info about the school. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.218.149.245 (talk) 10:50, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

Hi 83.218.149.245. If you are indeed an employee of the school whose Wikipedia page you are trying to edit, then, in addition to the copyright issues you may be experiencing, you might be considered to have a conflict of interest. Although Wikipedia does allow conflict of interest editing in certain specific situations, it is for the most part something that is highly discouraged. I recommend that you carefully read through the essay "Plain and simple common interest guide" as well as Wikipedia's guideline on "Conflict of interest editing". There's lots of information and advice contained in both of those articles which you may find helpful. - Marchjuly (talk) 12:54, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

Linking songs to MetroLyrics website

There are currently more than 20,000 pages linked to the lyrics website MetroLyrics, which were added by User:LyricsBot[23]. In researching some song articles for GANs, I noticed a number of problems, which were first brought to the attention of the bot operator, User:Dcoetzee in June 2014 (User talk:Dcoetzee#MetroLyrics concern). Despite additional comments in July and September, the problems have not been adequately addressed. On September 27, 2014, Dcoetzee announced his semi-retirement.[24] The problems regard copyrighted song lyrics – specifically, a high percentage of the MetroLyrics links list the wrong songwriter (see above talk link for details). Since this is a potential WP:LINKVIO concern, please let me know where I should raise this if not here. —Ojorojo (talk) 18:53, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

Hi, Ojorojo. Concerns have been raised in the past (see User_talk:Dcoetzee#Metrolyrics_legality_question, User talk:Dcoetzee#Just checking on Lyricsbot). I'm not entirely sure the next best forum - possibly one of the village pumps? If there is not community consensus to continue it, the bot should probably be raised at Wikipedia:Bot Approvals Group. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:16, 2 October 2014 (UTC)
Thanks, Moonriddengirl, for the reply. From your linked past discussions, it doesn't appear that MetroLyrics was vetted very carefully from the beginning. It just doesn't make sense that a lyrics provider that claims "lyrics copyright holders accrue royalty revenue when their work is displayed on MetroLyrics.com. Royalties are paid on all displayed lyrics" (from MetroLyrics article) actually pays the right individual if the lyricist is often not properly identified. Misidentification of the copyright holder is one of the most basic copyright problems. Since this is a potential contributory copyright infringement problem for WP, perhaps a legal review is appropriate. —Ojorojo (talk) 15:40, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

Potential copyvio

Hi. Not really sure how to handle copyvio issues, but this page: Larry Kusche, may be a copyright violation from this external site: American Skeptics; where the section on Kusche is verbatim as to what is on WP. I did a check using Earwig's Copyvio Detector, and got a 97% certainty report. However, it turned up digplanet.com, which I know copies from WP, not vice versa. Not sure what to do, but thought I should bring it to someone's attention.Onel5969 (talk) 22:10, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

  • Thanks for keeping an eye out for this sort of thing! In this case, it looks like that site copied the Wikipedia article. If you click the "Read On" link at the end of the paragraph, it opens a very Wikipedia-like article, with all the same categories and warning tags as we use here. Furthermore, the Quazoo page says that content was added 242 days ago, while our article goes back to 2007 in this from, and back further than that. So I think all is right here. Thank you again for watching out, CrowCaw 22:39, 4 October 2014 (UTC)
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