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Misplaced Pages copyright
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For image or media copyright questions, see Misplaced Pages:Media copyright questions

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Related Discussions: Copyright Violations on Page Histories, Misplaced Pages:Media copyright questions

See also: Misplaced Pages:Public domain, m:Do fair use images violate the GFDL?, m:copyright, m:fair use, m:GFDL, m:GFDL Workshop.

here's another notice

I know that it's hard to get copyright violations dealt with here, but I'm willing to give it another shot. If someone want's to deal with this persistent person, that's great. Image:Polishlancers garde.jpg is a typical example of this user's uploads. It was uploaded to WP, deleted from WP as a copyright violation, uploaded to the commons, deleted from the commons as a copyright violation, then uploaded back to wikipedia (all by the above user). Despite the fact that this user has repeatedly flaunted the policy, and repeatedly uploaded material that he knows is a copyright violation, no-one has had the balls to ban the user or delete the images.

Hi

My Name is Raj. I am the owner of www.pujyaya.org. This is a public website and what i am including is the brief history of this great person.

Please let me know if you have any questions. This is done in good faith.

Thanks Raj

Maybe copyright problems?

On it wiki thanks a copyright bot we have found some copyright problem on en.wiki i will signal here:

Thanks a lot for the attention Lusum —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.221.100.72 (talk) 18:08, August 28, 2007 (UTC)

User:Roadcrusher3's edits

I'm not exactly sure where to post this, but I think someone should go through User talk:Roadcrusher3's contributions (list here). My issues mainly relate to the pictures the editor has uploaded (log here), however, the editor also created the article Board of Transportation of the City of New York, which looks suspicious (copied). (An aside, the subject may be notable as I believe they used to run the New York City Subway system).

Regarding the images, many of them look professionally done (probably copyrighted). See especially Image:Second Avenue Subway (SAS)station.jpg, probably a computer-generated image. Many (most?) of them have been tagged with Template:PD-USGov (probably definitely wrong) and do not have a source (talk page list of warnings). Also see possible attempts to add sources such as here, maybe referring to the government (albeit copyrighted, I believe) web site of the NY MTA. Jason McHuff 05:56, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

One other thing: I'm not sure who made the map at Image:Second Avenue Subway (SAS).jpg, but the background looks a lot like the official MTA map, the copyright of which has been enforced. Jason McHuff 06:01, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

PubMed Abstracts

Are abstracts featured on PubMed (for example: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=AbstractPlus&list_uids=17535893) public domain as a work of the US government, or are they copyrighted by the author/publisher? If they granted permission for the US Gov to use the abstracts, could we piggyback on that or ask for our own? There are so many pharmacology stubs which could use this abstracts as starting points for expansion. ? Miserlou 02:37, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

Most likely the abstracts are copied from the abstract in the journal article itself, or are supplied by the publisher. In either case, they would not be in the public domain. A copyright holder who supplies some content to the U.S. Government does not relinquish his ownership nor is he obligated to release it into the public domain. —Centrxtalk • 21:18, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
I concur with Centrx. The exception is when the authors of an article (and abstract) are U.S. Government employees, for instance with the NIH. In this case, the abstract and entire article would be in the public domain. Most of these journals require the authors to assign copyright to the journal before they will publish, but provide an exception to the work of US government employees since they do not hold copyright in the first place. Ydorb 19:02, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
It is established that abstracts are copyright in the UK, but I am not aware of any any actual legal case that they are subject to copyright in the US, though publishers have told me that they presume them to be. Does anyone have an actual legal citation?DGG (talk) 02:07, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

Avian Web

OK, here's a copyvio that appears to be the reverse of the normal problem. This site has literally copied the Australian Ringneck article from our site (from a couple of day's ago, since someone's made some recent changes) and put it on their website— but then asserts their own copyright on it here. Shouldn't this be a free-use copyright, since they're using our material? I notice they have now attributed the photo, which they weren't doing before the photographer directly contacted them. This came up because of a conversation here in the GAR arena. MeegsC | Talk 09:38, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Legal basis for combining GFDL text with CC images

Hello. I'm sure this has been discussed before but I can't find a good explanation. What basis do have for combining the GFDL-licensed text in our articles with non-GFDL (e.g., creative commons) pictures? Is it because the combination text + pictures is considered an aggregate and not a derivative work? In how far is this wishful thinking? I did read m:Do fair use images violate the GFDL? but that page is very hard to read (at least for me), it's rather old and I assume we have more copyright expertise now, and it talks mostly about fair use which may be different (there is a section about non-fair-use at the end but I found that rather unconvincing). As I that, I'm sure it has been discussed extensively before, so just a pointer to prior discussion would probably suffice. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 13:27, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

The Creative Commons licenses page lists about six different CC licenses an image can have. I think the Misplaced Pages theory is that the source statements on the image page suffice for the BY (attribution) part of the requirements, and that the composition of a page out of GFDL text and references to CC images doesn't really form a new work with a separate copyright (otherwise, we would be violating at least the ND and SA variants, and probably the NC one too). But I find this field murky, just like you do. --Alvestrand 19:28, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
We don't accept ND and NC. Regarding Jitse's question, because images are not store at the same place of the text, they are not considered "a single thing", but instead, a combination of several sources. Take, for example, the Wikimedia logo. It is not a free logo. We present a page that has article text released under the GFDL, an image released under CC, and a logo that is trademarked and protected by copyright laws. The full presentation is a mixture of licenses clearly delimited, and therefore there is no problem. It is pretty hard to explain for someone who is not a lawyer, so I guess you can get a better answer than mine ;) -- ReyBrujo 02:22, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

Any copyright problems in sending PDFs or other content between editors?

Ok, this is a little weird. There is currently a proposal at Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Council/Proposals#Interlibrary Loan (InterWikipedian Loan?) about maybe trying to create an internal way for editors to be able to send information to each other for the purposes of article development, potentially including transmitting PDF or similar files accessed through a library. Would doing the things described there possibly result in any copyright problems? I personally think responding on that page would probably be best. Thank you for your attention. John Carter 19:57, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Book published by John Wiley copies Misplaced Pages article.

A book published in 2006 by a major US publisher, John Wiley & Sons, contains at least two pages of material lifted from Misplaced Pages. The book is Black Gold: The New Frontier in Oil for Investors (ISBN 0470048034.) The text of this book can be searched using Amazon's Search Inside function, http://www.amazon.com/Black-Gold-New-Frontier-Investors/dp/0471792683. Its author is George Orwel, an experienced reporter for Oil trade magazines.

I have provided a more detailed report at User:Ydorb/khobar-copyvio. This was pointed out to me by Gabi S.

Does anyone know what to do about this? Is there a List of Books that copy Misplaced Pages or something like that or is this a first? Ydorb 22:01, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

It's certainly not a first! One respected 1French publisher, whose name need not be disclosed, joked with Wikimedia France that he was getting tired of receiving humanities manuscripts which were obviously plagiarised from Misplaced Pages. How did he know that they were plagiarised? Because when the prospective authors did the copy-and-paste, Word preserved the Wikilinks in the text! Physchim62 (talk) 17:00, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
IANAL, but this seems to be a violation of the GNU public licence under which wikipedia is published (you can read it from the link at the bottom of every page). If John Wiley & Sons hasn't published the terms of the GNU licence in the book and stated the source of the material, the WikiFoundation could have grounds to sue. Cheers Saganaki- 13:42, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
Apparently. Anyways, with Slashdot picking up the news, it should make enough noise. Maybe we should indeed have such an list :) -- ReyBrujo 14:31, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Definitely looks like plagiarism, but technically there might not be any copyvio, as Ydorb was the only significant contributor and his contributions have been released to the public domain. It could probably be argued that Misplaced Pages's licensing terms were broken, so I believe the Wikimedia Foundation could complain to the publisher, but no individual authors would have standing to complain. Kaldari 01:56, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

Oh, didn't notice that banner. Yes, that would discount his contributions. -- ReyBrujo 02:23, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

Logos on "useful objects"

Discussion copied from Wikipedia_talk:Copyrights#Logos on "useful_objects". No response after 72 hours.

As I understand it, objects whose "useful purpose" outweighs their creativity are automatically considered PD-ineligible. For example, the creative element (e.g. colour and shape) will not affect the nature of a pen or a bus, whereas it will affect the nature of a sculpture or a painting.

There are a lot of "PD-ineligible" images here however, which contain the manufacturer's logo, which by itself IS copyrighted. My question therefore is "If an image of a 'useful object' contains a copyrighted component, should the image remain PD ineligible?". I suspect not, but I'd appreciate some more input here. There are a lot of these images being moved to Commons, when I think they should actually stay here under fair use.

A couple of examples:

Thanks, Papa November 12:16, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Ouch! Seriously, this is one of those areas where fair use law really starts to break down, and it becomes very subjective. At least you have in these examples stripped out the question of image copyright, which is a totally different issue than the one you are presenting here. That would be if you copied a P.R. photo from the Intel website, claiming no copyright due to the image being non-artistic.
This is something that would get a whole bunch of legal opinions and precedent that could be found for both keeping and removing this image, and certainly something that is not clear cut in any way that you can describe here. Keep in mind here that copyright and trademark are two completely different sets of laws that cover different legal problems. In fact, I'm not completely sure if a logo or trademark can be legally copyrighted. Any legal experts know of a legal precedent allowing a logo to be copyrighted as well as trademarked? I'm talking a copyright of the logo itself, not its incorporation into something copyrightable.
Remember that the owner of a trademark does get to control how that trademark can be used, and in fact the normal limitations of copyright don't apply to trademarks. For example, trademarks (such as the Intel logo) don't expire due to age. Trademarks that were created in the 19th Century are still protected logos and trademarks...as long as they are still being used in commerce and trade by the original party. It gets more complicated, but that is the general point here.
Copyright can also be assigned to the shape of an object, such as the physical shape of the Lexus. In this sense, you are dealing with the same issues that apply to photographs of any 3D art. A good argument can be made that the design of a Lexus is a creative expression. As a matter of fact, that is often even a selling point by the manufacturer. And copyright is established as soon as something is put into a tangible medium. You would be very hard pressed to consider something put into steel and plastic to not be something tangible. That the "art" is mass produced is irrelevant here. Obviously the computer chip would be much harder to prove artistic expression... at least in terms of the physical appearance on the level of this photograph.
Fair use doctrine does allow critical review of copyrighted material, and makes explicit allowances for "the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work" (USC 17-107(4)). Misplaced Pages in this sense is the critical/scholarly forum that discusses these objects, and I don't see how a NPOV article about either of them can possibly harm the economic value of the same objects. Indeed, it would seem as though both companies would even desire Misplaced Pages articles about them and encourage photographs of these objects from a promotional viewpoint. This would even include a for-profit organization who reproduces Misplaced Pages articles about the object.
Assuming that there is a company that is protective of their logo to an extreme... to the point that they aggressively go after anybody using their logo in any place. Or for that matter, imagine a Misplaced Pages article that includes information that is substantially negative about the product that the company doesn't want to have widely published. For instance, the Lexus has a manufacturing flaw that has killed 50% of the drivers within 10 minutes after it left the dealership (to use a horrible example I'm making up for the sake of argument here...no automobile is this bad, especially a Lexus). You certainly could include this "fact" in a Misplaced Pages article and maintain NPOV, but it would not be something the manufacturer would desire and might not want their logo used in an article about their product in this way. Is it reasonable in this situation to have the manufacturer demand the removal of this image from a Misplaced Pages article, asserting a copyright violation as the reason to demand its removal? Under what conditions could the WMF (assuming a generous donation to defend its use on Misplaced Pages) and the authors of the article stand up to the manufacturer and insist upon the "right" to "publish" this image, even under such negative circumstances?
In even the most extreme situations where these kind of images would be used, I do believe you could find a position for Misplaced Pages editor/contributors to prevail legally with a hard challenge, but it wouldn't be easy to accomplish. It is a grey area at best. ---- Robert Horning (talk) 17:36, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for your detailed reply. Am I right in summarising that you believe it is safer to assess these images for "fair use" in each context they appear in? It certainly seems difficult to justify them being moved over to commons now, given the legal grey area! -- Papa November (talk) 17:49, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
I do indeed think fair use is a much better rationale for these images than claiming overall public domain justification for them. It is important, however, to make sure that the image rights themselves (which can be separated from the copyright over the object) be explicitly noted. This may be a place where free images ought to remain on Misplaced Pages and not be transferred to Commons. In other words, maintain the Creative Commons image license, but also note that the image contains a logo, and that the logo is being used under fair use principles...including required fair use rationale. --Robert Horning (talk) 18:05, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

Partial copyvio treatment?

The "Plot" section of Peter and the Secret of Rundoon is an obvious copy from the book's blurb (see for instance B&N). In this case I can simply delete it, but suppose that I only thought it were a blurb and didn't have evidence? How would I tag that in a way that's less angry and more specific than {{copyvio}}? Ideally, I want a standard "This article or section may be in violation of copyright." or "This article or section does not appear to be original text." template. Thanks. --Tardis 02:05, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

If you think a section is a copyvio but do not know wherefrom, you probably think it is a copyvio because it appears like advertising or is otherwise not written like an encyclopedia article. So, even if it were not a copyvio and were kept, it would still need to be re-written, so it would be best to re-write it. I don't know if we should make a "This may be a copyvio but at the very least needs to be re-written" template, though. —Centrxtalk • 02:59, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
You can use {{cv-unsure}} in the talk page of the article to mark one as "it seems a copyvio, but I cannot provide a source". If you found a section that is copy/pasted, you can mark it with {{copypaste}}. An administrator will review the matter and decide whether there should be a history purge to remove the copyright violation versions, or just remove the section. If the whole article is copyvio, mark it with {{db-copyvio}} if you can find a source, or {{copyvio}} if the user claims he is the copyright owner, or that the text is available under a free license but you can't find the license in the source. -- ReyBrujo 03:27, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Virtualology

  • Greetings, I am a voluntary editor of Virtualology sites. I have spoken with Mr. Klos recently about utilizing his Appleton's content to add and improve biographies in Misplaced Pages since quite a bit of famousamericans.net text is in Wiki postings but do not cite Virtuaology as the source. Mr. Klos thought it was a good idea to add new information and where needed an entire biography for a missing historic figures in Misplaced Pages. My question simply is, If Mr. Klos agrees can these biographies be utlized to expand Misplaced Pages by adding missing biographies and thereby give your contributors a base to work from? Can this be done with a computer program rather then manually since there are approximately 25,000 biographies to review? Damslerset —Preceding unsigned comment added by Damslerset (talkcontribs) 01:16, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Reply, yes and we started added the quotes/re-writes to improve the articles and where we found that someone used our edited Appleton's Article we just cited the sentence or paragraph. The Appleton's Articles on Virtualology have all been edited. Some in very minor fashion while others completely re-written due to gross inaccuracies or just plain ficition. I and som other voluntary Virtuaology editors have been back and forth with Wiki Editors over the years. Just looking for direction to properly cite our work and improve wiki content which would be a good quid pro quo Virtualology. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Damslerset (talkcontribs) 21:24, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
Well, according to the site, the revised biographies are arranged separately, as explained "If you would like to edit this biography please submit a rewritten biography in text form . If acceptable, the new biography will be published above the 19th Century Appleton's Cyclopedia Biography citing the volunteer editor." from, e.g. However, I see no firm indication that this is in fact the case, and would like to see some examples of this. Ones directly from Appleton's are not copyvios. Ones modified from Appleton's are copyvios, because the Virtualology site is copyrighted. Unfortunately, the original ones are also known not to be reliable or accurate. (It is additionally plagiarism to use them with just the tag at the bottom, without indicating that the entire article was copied and what the exact source is.) I therefore doubt that any material from this site can ever be incorporated in Misplaced Pages. If unmodified, they are not reliable. If modified, they are not public domain. DGG (talk) 00:15, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
See also comments at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Biography and User talk:Damslerset. DGG (talk) 01:11, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
Comment - responding to the notice left at the Biography project talk page, I have to agree that there would be problems as defined above. It might be possible to create, as it were, a third variation which includes the revisions of the errors of the original edition in some form other than that used in Virtuology, but I'm not sure how practical that would be. Alternately, the original content containing the factual errors could be removed at posting the content, provided that the Virtuology article isn't itself a case where that is done. I honestly don't see how to easily resolve this, because we are faced with public domain errors and copyrighted corrections. Maybe the best thing to do would be to create a list of the article names for the Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles, and working with them and the Biography project on trying to develop this content? John Carter 14:13, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

List of Time 100

I know this has been discussed previously, but Time 100: The Most Important People of the Century is now being discussed at ], where it and similar lists are claimed to violate Time's copyright. Now, I may well be totally confused, but it was my understanding of US copyright that while the list itself as published in the magazine is copyright, the information that someone is on it is information, not expression and is not subject to copyright. If the detailed text in the WP article as well as the names was reproduced from the magazine, yes, that would be a copyvio. If the names were found on the list, and the info. from WP, etc., used to identify them, it's not. I thought that we can publish about any list we please, and say who is on it--that is not the same as publishing the list. As this is apparently objected to here, I've mentioned this discussion here.DGG (talk) 02:52, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

Re-examining whether EB1911 really is PD

This thread poses the question is Encyclopaedia Brittanica 1911 really PD? Is the Dictionary of National Biography 1880-1900 PD?

The concern I have arose from copyvio challenge made on the commons to an image taken from a 1920 Punch Magazine .

If the logic being applied to the Punch cartoon is extended to EB & DNB, then we face the need to remove thousands upon thousands of articles. I think we need an informed ruling.

In the [[UK, the term of copyright is 70 years after the death of the author, or of the last surviving author of a jointly authored publication. Even if copyright has been assigned to an employer, unlike in American copyright law, duration of copyright term does not vary regardless of who owns the copyright.

If this is so, then let's do the maths:

30 year old contributes to Punch in 1920 and lives to 70 years. Date of death = 1960. Copyright expires 2030
30 year old contributes to EB1911 in 1911 and lives to 70 years. Date of death = 1951. Copyright expires 2021
30 year old contributes to DNB in 1895 and lives to 75 years. Date of death = 1940. Copyright expires 2010

The US signed up to the Uruguay Round Agreements Act, and as a result a 1920 UK publication in copyright in the UK is in copyright in the US too.

It appears to me inescapable that UK generated content is protected for the 70 years after the death of the author. Unless we know the dates of deaths of the contributors, we do not know for certain the copyright expiry date and we certainly cannot treat EB & DNB as PD as we currently do. Discuss. --Tagishsimon (talk) 23:36, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

I think a 1911 publication published in the USA is PD. 1911 EB is considered the first EB edition which tried to attract a U.S. audience. And my copy is labeled as being published in New York, with "Copyright, in the United States of America, 1910, by the Encyclopædia Britannica Company". SEWilco (talk) 23:45, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
I can go with that. What about Punch & DNB? --Tagishsimon (talk) 23:46, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
As you're insterested in the UK, you might look at which includes a link to a Museums Copyright Group flowchart. SEWilco (talk) 00:02, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
Thanks. Same conclusion; we know the author, copyright is 70 years after author's death. We don;t know date of death. Bad lookout for the copying in from DNB. --Tagishsimon (talk) 00:09, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
Comment: The 1920 Punch cartoon discussion is on Commons; on Commons practice is to go by copyright in country of origin. Here on en:Misplaced Pages past practice has been to go by US copyright law. Thus there are some things which are PD for use here but not on Commons. The copyright for the 1911 Britannica has expired in the USA, so for USA use it is PD-US. The situation in the UK or elsewhere may be different. -- Infrogmation (talk) 01:50, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
But US copyright law - specifically 17 USC 104A - effectively restored in the US copyrights on foreign works. So it is not enough to say "we go by US law so it is PD" as US law - specifically 17 USC 104A, says the US abides by the copyright of the country of origin. See Uruguay Round Agreements Act for further discussion of this. All that said, I;ve calmed down a lot since first posting this. I do think we're in trouble with 1920 Punch cartoons. EB is fine. DNB - all of the authors I've researched so far died before 1938. --Tagishsimon (talk) 03:01, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
Hmm. Edward Irving Carlyle (1871-1952) was assistant editor of the DNB 1895-1901, and contributed several articles to volumes appearing between 1896 and 1901. Dsp13 (talk) 10:41, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
How does copyright work for multi-volume works produced over a number of years? Is each volume treated, for copyright purposes, as a single work? Or are they treated collectively? Dsp13 (talk) 10:41, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

Re-publishing statistics

I recall a debate at one time that creating an article that simply lists the Forbes 500 list (or similar) constitutes a possible copyright violation of Forbes IP. If true, I'm wondering if Web Search Engine Statistics has similar problems, since it simply appears to be duplicating the exact Nielsen//NetRatings source (ie, May's chart: ). --ZimZalaBim 19:56, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

Repeat offenders

I have edited language on the project page to include this unambiguous statement, "Contributors who repeatedly post copyrighted material after appropriate warnings will be blocked from editing to protect the project." A statement of this sort may be required by a provision of the DMCA:

(i) Conditions for Eligibility.—

(1) Accommodation of technology.— The limitations on liability established by this section shall apply to a service provider only if the service provider—

(A) has adopted and reasonably implemented, and informs subscribers and account holders of the service provider’s system or network of, a policy that provides for the termination in appropriate circumstances of subscribers and account holders of the service provider’s system or network who are repeat infringers; and"

We have the policy, but not the statement. Fred Bauder (talk) 15:53, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

how does this page work

I seethe only edits recording in the history is from the archiving by bots and the placement of backlog notices, and --but do not people place items on it manually? There seem to b some such edits on the page, but I do not see them in the page history.DGG (talk) 00:03, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

All the sections on this page are transcluded sub-pages. Edit the page to see. —Centrxtalk • 01:56, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Possible partial copyvio in Swedish settlement in Argentina

A portion of the text in Swedish settlement in Argentina seems to have come directly from http://www.nordicway.com/argentina.htm. The article appears to have been deleted as a copyvio in April 2006 but was recreated soon after. (Details are in the talk page) I haven't deleted any text yet nor checked if there's any salvageable text and was wondering if someone else could take a look at it? –panda 05:11, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Wrong copyright

File:Umjetnicka galerija12.jpg

This picture is mislabelled. It displays: "Liberation of Jajce" (in WWII), made in 1950s, author: Ismet Mujezinović 99.229.96.231 00:13, 5 December 2007 (UTC)