User talk:E.Goldstein

pinkfloydfan.net copyright issues

For the last four years, in just about every edit you have been adding links to articles hosted by pinkfloydfan.net, such as this trade in which you replace a link from a competing fansite, neptunepinkfloyd.co.uk, with one from pinkfloydfan.net:

The Neptune site link was templated as a dead link in the David Gilmour bio, so it was helpful for you to find a live link, but the Neptune people are still hosting the file:

http://www.neptunepinkfloyd.co.uk/read-david-gilmour-summer-2008-interview-for-mojo-great-read

That means you could have replaced the dead link with one from the NPF website. Instead, you pushed forward pinkfloydfan.net yet again. The Neptune site says that "Mark Blake has kindly given NPF permission to re-produce his interview... for MOJO magazine", while the pinkfloydfan.net link does not. Can you tell me how the pinkfloydfan.net deals with copyright issues? I see no reason to believe that MOJO magazine gave permission to to host this article, especially a PDF scan which copies every aspect rather than just the text. MOJO magazine is still in business; one can obtain past issues, including the October 2008 issue which was scanned by pinkfloydfan.net. I am concerned that pinkfloydfan.net is violating copyright. Binksternet (talk) 15:12, 30 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the input. Interestingly, there are two topics that I consider myself to be an expert in: Pink Floyd and (coincidentally) Intellectual Property, particularly Copyright Law, as I hold an LL.M. degree in this particular field. First of all, let me say that unless you're MOJO magazine's representative, I don't quite understand your particular concern that a third-party website would be violating copyright - unless that is a poor excuse for user harassment, but I am sure it is not, even though you seem to have a bit of a history of that kind of behaviour. Even if you were, you should contact pinkfloydfan.net directly, as the PDF file I linked to, which contains a scanned version of the MOJO magazine interview, is not stored at Wikipedia's servers (nor on Wikimedia), but on pinkfloydfan.net's and, thus, is clearly not a copyright violation by Wikipedia itself. I highly doubt it would be considered a copyright violation of pinkfloydfan.net, either, under the fair use provisions. Nonetheless, even if you considered it to be a copyright violation, you should have brought up the issue on the article's discussion page, as per Wikipedia's guidelines, regarding the original contribution by 90.196.45.182, and not only regarding my last edit of a pre-existing quote.

I believed (and still do) it would be helpful (and advisable) to fix a dead link with a replacement source. No, I did not look for a text-only replacement, which was indeed available at Neptune's website - mea culpa. Instead, I updated the broken link to the full article scanned, which I thought was far more genuine than a transcript of the interview.

However, since you seem to be so concerned about Copyright, let me assure you that a simple mention of a supposed permission by the author of the article is really not enough. Therefore, you should consider raising similar Copyright questions to Neptune's website and to all Wikipedia users who contributed references to it as well, as the so-called distribution rights are usually granted by the author to the publisher, that is, MOJO Magazine - so even if Neptune's claim of author's authorization are true, I highly doubt the author holds the right to authorize publication and distribution in other sources (that is, in disregard to MOJO Magazine's rights), and, ignoring the beforementioned fair use provisions, that too would be a copyright violation, wouldn't it?

Finally, I have to say that all of my contributions have been legitimate and honest and the fact that I have been using pinkfloydfan.net's sources do not make them otherwise. As soon as I exhaust pinkfloydfan.net's sources (as there are plenty of articles and interviews there which have legitimate and interesting information), I will then use another website as a source - if you have any suggestions for sources, then I fully appreciate it.

As an act of good faith, I am reverting my last edits to the David Gilmour article. Kindly fix the broken link yourself with what you think is best. Maybe it would be advisable to discuss these changes beforehand, so as to prevent any similar bickering and waste of time. Meanwhile, maybe I should start considering contributing only to Intellectual Property topics, as there are much less heated debates over a simple and legitimate link repair attempt. I consider this matter closed. E.Goldstein (talk) 08:26, 31 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

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