User:Ritchie333/Plain and simple guide to copyvios

Copyright violations are one of the most misunderstood concepts on Wikipedia. They are particularly bitey as they are one of the few ways an administrator can instantly and unilaterally delete a page created in good faith, and be within their rights to refuse to restore it.

Background

All work on Wikipedia is licensed by the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License and the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL). These licenses have their roots in older computer hacking circles, particularly as advocated by celebrated programmers such as Linus Torvalds who created Linux, which uses the GNU Public Licence (GPL). The GPL allows any programmer access to the source code, so they can build on and improve a software product without having to ask permission.

A lot of people, particularly non-programmers, think the GPL means "cheap and cheerful software you get off the internet". This is completely wrong for three important reasons:

1. Some GPL software, such as gcc, Linux, Audacity and GIMP is pretty good and usable for a lot of people.
2. The "free" has nothing to do with price or cost, but rather it means that anyone can ask for the source code for these programs and make changes or fixes to them. People who think GPL means "do what you want" have got into terrible trouble when they've put GPL libraries in their projects and then been sued to release their source code. (Yes, this happens).
3. There's nothing wrong with selling GPL software. I could start burning DVDs with Audacity and GIMP and start flogging them for £20 each down the local market - computer savvy people would be unimpressed I was making money off somebody else's work, but provided anyone could get the original source code (which they can), it's not illegal.

What's that got to do with Wikipedia articles?

This book is actually a leather-bound copy of The Biggest Bunfights at the Administrators' Incident Noticeboard and costs £499.99 plus P&P. Crazy stuff, but it's all properly attributed, so it's legal (if somewhat insane).

Since the GPL works well for a lot of computer programs, people wondered if you could apply the same concept to documents. It turns out you can, which is where the GFDL comes in. Again, the three basic rules apply:

1. While the document may be useful or important, there are no guarantees of its quality
2. Anyone can grab a copy of the document and start making changes to it
3. It's okay for anyone to sell the document to other people, even for a ridiculous profit margin, provided they can also make changes to it

There's one more important rule for Wikipedia articles, covered by the ShareAlike licence

• If you share the document around, you have to say where you got it from and who contributed to it (or attribution if you like fancy words)

On Wikipedia, the attribution is achieved through the history, which shows who has contributed what, when and where. This is why user accounts are never deleted - their names need to be attached to the history to comply with the license

What's that got to do with deleting my article?

As you're probably aware, Wikipedia isn't the only website in the world - there are millions of others. However, most of those don't publish their text via a GFDL-compatible license. In particular, most websites don't explicitly say you can take the text on the page, copy it, and start selling it to others. Consequently, articles copied from any website not marked with this sort of licence are considered copyright violations.

The bottom line is if you copy and paste text from a website, even if you wrote the original web page, if you haven't identified it with a Wikipedia-compatible licence (or something compatible like putting the text entirely in the public domain), it's a copyright violation. Unfortunately, copyright violations are against the terms of use, and have to be deleted as soon as they are spotted. The specific criteria can be found here.

Note that pages can violate copyright in offline sources (such as books) just like websites - they're just harder to spot.

Image copyrights are a particularly common trap for new editors to fall into, and the same principle applies. Even if you've seen the image shared all over the internet, it doesn't mean it's got an acceptable licence to use here.

Common pitfalls

Having learned the above, there are some things that are not copyright violations, but rookie maintenance editors sometimes mistake as being one:

• An article copied from a US Federal Government website - these are generally public domain, and there will be an indication of this somewhere on the page
• An article copied from a website that copied Wikipedia in the first place. These are known as reverse copyvios and can normally be spotted by checking the page history carefully. (As for what you can do about the reverse copyvios, well you can ask the Wikimedia Foundation to come down on them like a ton of bricks, but I personally wouldn't hold your breath).

So what can I do?

The important lesson about copyright violations is simple - always write things in your own words. Even if you are certain that the original source is public domain or otherwise compatible, it's still a good idea to reword everything anyway so it fits Wikipedia's "house style", and rewriting the source in your own words forces you to understand what it says and helps you avoid silly factual errors. If you write an article that's later deleted as a copyright violation, you'll be warned about it in the first instance. If you write several, particularly in quick succession, you're likely to be blocked from editing. So don't do it!

If you've copypasted an article from a website onto Wikipedia, the deleting administrator will normally provide a link to the web page it was copied from. In which case, you can easily find the text again.