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I cut

The realities of modern copyright law demand that we pay attention to legal issues to ensure that our work can be made available, and to protect

the project from legal liability. since I don't see the purpose of this sentence; the second half-sentence is factually wrong, since the GFDL doesn't include any liability disclaimers, and while we could have added warranty disclaimers, we didn't.

I made clear that only the GFDL text is legally binding; everything else written on this page is just our interpretation.

I changed "articles" to "materials" in the official copyright notice, since the "fair use" exception applies to texts and photos alike; we should avoid the impression that text is always GFDL and photos are never GFDL. I also removed the "special permission" part: if you get permission, it has to be permission to publish under GFDL. The only other option is fair use.

I shortened the example notice, since it is disingenious to suggest a notice that's considerably longer than the one we use ourselves. The attempt at a one-sentence summary of the GFDL in the example notice was also incomplete.

Under "contributor obligations", I deleted the phrase telling people to acknowledge authorship and network location on the Talk page or History page. This seems unfair: we ourselves demand a "conspicuous link", so we should provide the same, and a random addition to an article's Talk page can hardly be called conspicuous; most people would never look there for copyright information.

In the "copyright infringement" paragraph, I removed the unnecessary references to "administrators". AxelBoldt 18:57 May 1, 2003 (UTC)

This sentence " It is not possible to use text in Wikipedia that is incompatible with the GFDL (small sections of clearly quoted, annotated and attributed text can be considered fair use, however). " is, IMO, vital and should be placed back in. Otherwise people will use "fair use" as an excuse to copy large blocks of text from other websites. This is not at all something that should be encouraged (esp given our compulsory licensing under the GNU FDL of all text submitted to Wikipedia - to be "fair" in that context the text needs to be short quotes and clearly not something open to editing). The bit on the "References" section should also be put back in (but I agree that the talk page bit should stay out). --mav
When it comes to fair use, size is not (always) that important. To this end, a fair use disclaimer similar to the statement that you referenced above is the best possible way to put people on notice in re the vagaries of fair use. -- NetEsq 21:23 May 1, 2003 (UTC)

Are we providing permission to use all Wikipedia text under the GFDL, or all Wikipedia content? Previously it was only text - see the bottom of every screen "All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License", and the version of this page prior to AxelBoldt's edits. Now it seems to be suggesting that all content including images are licensed. This is bad! If we grant permission to use all images under the GFDL, then our images must be under the GFDL. However, we include lots of images under "fair use" - if we say that our images are licensed under the GFDL in the formal permission grant in bold, then we're going to have to delete them all.

Now, I realise that people will try and claim "fair use" of images - well that's a very solid defence if we don't grant contributors rights to use all images under the GFDL. After all, Wikipedia is an educational site located in the USA, where all images have explanatory text next to them. However, with the GFDL we're not saying "you can copy this image provide you keep it with the accompanying encyclopedia article". We're saying "you can copy this image in any manner you like". And in the case of fair use images, we can't truthfully say that.

I strongly suggest that unless someone here has taken paid legal advice on the subject that we revert to the previous state of only formally granting permission to use text here. At the very least this change needs to be discussed a helluva lot more widely than just here. In the meantime, I'm reverting till I'm convinced. Martin

See, I told people that saying "text" there would give some people the wrong idea. Look, EVERYTHING SUBMITTED TO WIKIPEDIA MUST BE GFDL-COMPATIBLE, BECAUSE WIKIPEDIA IS LICENSED UNDER THE GFDL. The only possible way to weasel out of that is to claim that excerpts of other works under "fair use" are okay to slip into that GFDL work. That assertion is dubious, but seems to be widely supported, just as many people would support the assertion that it is okay to slip in "fair use" textual quotes. There is no difference between ASCII text and images here. --Brion 19:45 May 1, 2003 (UTC)

Then if that's the case I need to drastically rewrite wikipedia:image use policy and list bunches of images on votes for deletion. I'm going to take this to meta:permission grant extent. Martin 19:56 May 1, 2003 (UTC)

Perhaps "Avoid Copyright Paranoia" should be revised to read "Avoid Fair Use Paranoia." There is no need to drastically rewrite and/or delete anything. Other things being equal, copyrighted content that is used in good faith under the auspices of fair use does not create any special problems of legal liability. As such, our primary concern when it comes to fair use should be quality control. -- NetEsq 21:23 May 1, 2003 (UTC)
Please note: Nothing that I have posted here should be construed as legal advice or as constituting a legal opinion. -- NetEsq 21:23 May 1, 2003 (UTC)
It should be rewritten because if what Brion says is correct it's inaccurate and misleading. The word "drastic" was excessive - my bad.
The pages I'm thinking of listing on VfD are those that I considered listing in the past for quality control purposes, and decided not to because I thought images didn't have to be under the GFDL. Bunches = ten to twenty Martin 22:26 May 1, 2003 (UTC)
I should also point out that when the link to the copyright notice on the bottom of each screen was first added in November -- for the first almost two years the actual notice page was linked to only from the front page, recentchanges, the edit page, and a few other places -- it said:
"This page is available under the <a class=internal href='/wiki/GNU_FDL'>GNU FDL</a>." [1]
Someone else decided "all text" (ie, the whole Wikipedia) sounded better than "this page" (just this page), and it later got changed [2]. --Brion 19:59 May 1, 2003 (UTC)
Well, I can at least feel reassured that I'm not the only sysop who's got a massively incorrect understanding of the nature of the Wikipedia permission grant. Could this be made really clear, once and or all? I guess it'd be something Jimbo would have to say - or a lawyer for the non-profit when/if it ever gets set up. Martin
Don't quote me on this, but I'm pretty sure that Jimbo has consulted with the Free Software Foundation and its lawyers in re copyright issues and that the dialog is ongoing. If you are so inclined, you might bring up the issue on one of the mailing lists, which is where Jimbo makes most of his contributions to Wikipedia. -- NetEsq 21:23 May 1, 2003 (UTC)
After reviewing meta:Wikipedia_and_copyright_issues, it seems that Isis and Lee Daniel Crocker believe that Wikipedia has a partial grant of GFDL over just the text. The Cunctator, like me, seems to believe that Wikipedia is trying to have a partial grant, but that this is a problem, and it should have a global grant.
I feel a poll coming on.

What Wikipedia content do you think Wikipedia currently grants permission to copy under the GFDL? (see meta:permission grant extent)

  • Global grant: All text, all images
  • Partial grant: All text, images not marked otherwise on the image description page
  • Don't know

Seeing how this poll is not at all binding I really don't see the point. We first need to try to reach a consenus. If that fails then we can try to reach a consensus that we should have a poll. But if we don't reach a consensus then the status quo rules the day. This is how things are done around here. --mav

Fair enough - I've restricted the poll to trying to find out what the status quo is. After all, we should probably find out where we currently are before trying to move anywhere. Martin
IMHO, Wikipedia's GFDL covers all text and all images that it purports to cover, provided that a copyright action is brought against a good faith licensee in a federal court in the United States, subject to the claims of a registered copyright holder whose rights have been inadvertently infringed. In any event, it is incumbent upon Wikipedia licensees to conduct an independent investigation into any copyright infringement in Wikipedia's content, good faith or otherwise, before republishing same. -- NetEsq 00:16 May 2, 2003 (UTC)
Ok then - what does Wikipedia's GFDL purport to cover? Martin

<< [W]hat does Wikipedia's GFDL purport to cover? >>

It covers all text and images for which Wikipedia contributors hold copyrights, provided that said contributors are under the jurisdiction of a United States court or another court that would apply United States copyright law or copyright law that is substantially similar to United States copyright law.

What the GFDL *cannot* cover is content that is in the public domain -- nobody owns that -- nor can it cover content that is used under the auspices of fair use. Rather, it is incumbent upon Wikipedia licensees to conduct an independent investigation into any registered copyright claims that may exist in re Wikipedia content before they repurpose and/or publish said content. Accordingly, in the interests of quality control, it is incumbent upon Wikipedians to cite their sources (when appropriate) and/or respond to reasonable claims that their contributions infringe upon the copyrights of others.

Note: The opinion above is my personal opinion and should not be construed as a legal opinion or legal advice. -- NetEsq 02:10 May 4, 2003 (UTC)

Hmm.
Well I think I've had my worries answered, and though I'm still unclear on a few points, the broad thrust of my concerns have been resolved. Accordingly, I've reverted my revert. I guess I might create a Wikipedia:Copyrights/Temp copy of the article and make some edits to try and reflect what people have said on this. Martin

cannot GFDL any audio!

One of those "ouch" problems - the GFDL appears to be incompatible with audio, because MP3/Vorbis/... is not easily editable in a text editor, and is thus "Opaque". I think we need to tell people to grant their audio into the public domain, rather than under the GFDL... Martin 10:10 6 Jun 2003 (UTC)

JPEG and Gimp .xcf images files are also not easily editable in a text editor, but are explicitly mentioned as acceptable transparent formats in the text of the license. (In version 1.2, that is -- see [3].) Vorbis is an open format and easily translated back to uncompressed audio (with some loss, like JPEG) for editing (and additionally you could crop & rearrange to some degree on the raw data...) --Brion 17:42 6 Jun 2003 (UTC)
It's certainly within the spirit of the GFDL, but I wonder if it's within the letter. The GFDL specifies a generic text editor, or a generic paint program, or a generic drawing editor, but says nothing about a generic sound editor. Martin 18:30 6 Jun 2003 (UTC)
Perhaps it's time to write a Gimp plug-in that imports/exports audio as very wide one-pixel-tall grayscale bitmaps. :)
In all seriousness, if you think it might be a problem, please contact the FSF and ask for clarification. The limitation of sound files, of course, is that they're tricky to integrate into a _printed_ document. (Though you can always include a CD with the book...) --Brion 18:52 6 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Hi, have you seen the new proposal of improving the copyright law in America? Have a look at the proposal , would be nice if it would work out. Fantasy 13:30 26 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Thumbnail images

A US-court has allowed to Internet-search-engines to safe and show Thumbnails of webpages, even if they are copyrighted!!! The case is Fotografer Leslie Kelly against Arriba Soft (now Ditto.com). The "inline linking" is still open. I think, this could help Wikipedia. By using Thumbnails of images we would not violate copyright. see the article in german, probably soon translated by Google... Fantasy 13:59 8 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Here is an English version. The 9th circuit does cover the Wikipedia server (which is in San Diego) but the ruling applied to thumbnails created for a search engine. I'm not sure how applicable that is to us (but things like this do tend to favor what we do and may set the stage for another court ruling further strengthening fair use). Of course, to be fair, any use has to mention the source of the images. --mav

You're talking about Kelly v. Arriba Soft Corporation. I don't think this applies to us, actually, since we're not a search engine. We've had the option to include items in a moderate way on wikipedia.org under the fair use doctrine for a while, since we're clearly a scholarship/research organization. -- ESP 17:47 24 Jul 2003 (UTC)

What is the document?

So, for purposes of the GFDL, what is the "Document" for Wikipedia? An individual article? Or the entire set of articles as a whole?

Also, there seems like a lot of crap I have to add to an article when distributing it: a change log, a list of modifications, and the text of the GFDL itself. This seems a little much. Besides ignoring the license requirements, how can I print and distribute a one-page article on just one page? -- ESP 17:38 24 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Also, am I right in assuming that the GFDL won't work together with other open content licenses? For example, I can't take an article from Wikipedia, change it, and publish it under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike license? I kind of prefer the CC ASA license because it's more conducive to printing individual copies of the document and distributing them; the URI of the license can be included, rather than the entire license as required by the GFDL. -- ESP 18:10 24 Jul 2003 (UTC)


What are "other rights"

I took this statement from a photo description page at Wikipedia: Released under the GFDL; all other rights reserved. What other rights might exist to be reserved? - Marshman 02:52, 23 Sep 2003 (UTC)

  • It might mean moral rights but I don't think those apply in the US. In the UK at least, even if you sign over the copyright to someone else, you still retain moral rights, but IANAL so I can't explain exactly what that means. Angela 02:58, Sep 23, 2003 (UTC)
    • Your above statement implies you might mistakenly believe that contributors to Wikipedia "sign over" the copyright to their works. This is not the case. As a trivial example, you remain the copyright holder of everything you submit to Wikipedia. -BuddhaInside
      • No, I didn't mean in relation to Wikipedia. I know you don't sign over copyright here. Angela 04:58, Sep 23, 2003 (UTC)
  • It means you still have the right to, say, draw a mustache on the picture and sell it to the National Enquirer for big bux. You could even sell them the unmodified pic if they were gullible enough and didn't know about the GFDLed copy. :-) The practice is called dual licensing in the open source world, a number of projects do it. Stan 04:14, 23 Sep 2003 (UTC)
    • Well IANAL either, but it seems to me anuyone could now draw that moustache on "my" photo contribution and sell the picture to anyone else. I guess I need to read up more on it; just seems to me "copyrights" are more than a bit limited once the item enters GFDLand. - Marshman
      • As a more useful example: say you write some articles and release them to Wikipedia under the terms of the GFDL license. Other people can distribute and modify the articles under the terms of the GFDL, but they can't do what you can: rework them into a book (a derivitive work) that you sell under more 'traditional' copyright terms not compatible with the GFDL: no copies, no derivitive works, etc allowed without your permission (and perhaps paying you for it). Or, you can release your works also under other similar, but not compatible, licenses such as those promoted by the Creative Commons. As the copyright holder, you retain all the rights given to you by copyright law that you don't give away, and a license only gives away certain specific rights under certain specific conditions. (Note too that if your articles are extended by other people, they have copyright interest in their additions, as you do in yours.) IANAL blah blah. --Brion 07:20, 23 Sep 2003 (UTC)
        • Aren't these other rights already implied in GFDL? Nikola 07:55, 23 Sep 2003 (UTC)
    • Implied? When one says that to lawyers and judges long legal briefs are no dobut then to be produced to argue either way! Just to make clear that the work is not being put in the public domain or that moral rights might be waived in certain jursdictions etc., an author usually reserves all rights. This is more useful and necessary in Universal Copyright Convention copyright notice states (like Russia). Yes in some jurisdictions one will have more or less rights than others (US only recognizes moral rights in visual artwork see, i.e., Visual Artists Rights Act of 1990. Otherwise I would basically agree with Brian above and IAAL though remember: Wikipedia does not give legal advice even at the Village Pump (this is the translation of Brian's "blah blah" above). Alex756 18:57, 23 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Copyrights newsgroup

I suggest create in news:misc.int-property the subgroup mis.int-property.copyleft or public.domain or a category that includes they two all.

A work from 1927 from a corporative author ( Royal Academy of the Spanish Languae) is caducated ( = in the public domain??.

And a work of Jose Alemany from 1941 ( a dictionary)?? How can one know about the dead of an author to calculate the copyright caducation ( or entering in the public domain )??.

Moved from Wikipedia:Village pump

This website has almost unreadable font for Wikipedia license text: http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Environment-of-Evolutionary-Adaptedness --Astudent 12:39, 2003 Oct 18 (UTC)

It is still barely readable. It seems the whole site uses rather small fonts. -- Taku
Is there a standard font-size specified for license and copyright text in general ? Jay 22:32, 19 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Splitting this page in two

Right now, the first half of this article is for people who want to use Wikipedia content somewhere else; the second half is for people who want to use outside content on Wikipedia. These two things are related, but only tenuously, and I think each deserves its own page. It's particularly a problem because our standard copyright infringement notice links to this page. But the part that's relevant to that notice is on the second half of the page. A newbie who doesn't know a lot about Wikipedia or about copyrights in general will become baffled by the top half before they even get to the bottom half.

I'd like to split this page into two - e.g. Wikipedia:Using Wikipedia content and Wikipedia:Copying content to Wikipedia or something along those lines. Wikipedia:Copyright would be kept as a disambiguation page, pointing to the two new pages. The copyright infringement notice would point to the second new page, and GNU FDL (the licensing link at the bottom of each page) would redirect to the first new page.

What do you think? I might be bold and do it myself except, that this page (and GNU FDL) are protected.

Axlrosen 02:38, 22 Oct 2003 (UTC)

It would just need an admin to temporarily unprotect GNU FDL and Wikipedia:Copyrights. Axlrosen 22:51, 24 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Update: I created the two new proposed pages at Wikipedia:Using Wikipedia content and Wikipedia:Copying content to Wikipedia. (Suggestions for better titles are welcome.) The contents have more or less been moved intact, they've just been split up. Does any admin think this sounds like a good idea and feel like being bold with me? Axlrosen 22:51, 24 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I'm not sure it's a good idea. Do you realise that 307 pages link to this page currently? Angela 23:24, Oct 24, 2003 (UTC)
If Axlrosen is willing to do the work, I'm fine with it. I suspect the majority of those links would be for Wikipedia:Copying content to Wikipedia. So, I'd recommend creating ONE new page, Wikipedia:Using Wikipedia content, and after all of the links that relate to using have been moved, we can talk about renaming this page to Wikipedia:Copying content to Wikipedia. Daniel Quinlan 23:32, Oct 24, 2003 (UTC)
I definitely wasn't planning on updating all 307 pages. Wikipedia:Copyrights would remain as a disambiguation page. I thought that would be good enough - it should be pretty easy to figure out which of the two new pages you were interested in. Since copyright violations are supposed to get deleted after 7 days, this would only remain an issue for 7 days. (I assume that almost all of the pages is a suspected copyright violation.) If you thought this was a problem, we could change the standard Copyright Violation Notice to point to the new page for 7 days, and then remove the content from the old page. Axlrosen 00:09, 25 Oct 2003 (UTC)
No, using a disambiguation page that 307 pages would have to traverse is not acceptable in my opinion. I think the number to fix would be much smaller than that if you followed by suggestion, but you would probably need to check them all and change maybe 50-100 (just a wild guess). Also, if you followed my suggestion and created one new page rather than two new pages, then none of the suspected copyright violations would be broken, just redirected. The other reason for my suggestion is that it preserves the history of the page. Since the current page is almost entirely focused on copying content to Wikipedia, creating a new article is definitely non-optimal. Daniel Quinlan 00:30, Oct 25, 2003 (UTC)
The odds of me even checking 307 pages is pretty low, no matter whose suggestion we follow. I thought keeping the disambiguation page was fine, since (1) many of these pages would be deleted after 7 days, (2) most of them are talk pages anyway and the link is probably from a discussion from 6 months ago, and (3) following a disambiguation link just isn't that hard. But if you guys think it would be bad I'll just punt this proposal. (Daniel I think your proposal is fine, but it would still require me to check 307 pages.) Axlrosen 22:01, 25 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Since it seems like we're going to punt on this, can one of you delete the two pages I created? I'll keep local copies on my machine, but I don't see any reason to keep them cluttering up Wikipedia if they're not going to be used. Axlrosen 15:32, 27 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Ok, if you're sure then I will but if you ever want them undeleted, just say so at Votes for undeletion or let a sysop know. Angela 19:49, Oct 27, 2003 (UTC)

Minor working change needed

Occasionally, Wikipedia articles may include images, sounds, or text quotes used under the "fair use" doctrine. In this case, the material will be identified as from an external source...

I think "will" should be changed to "should", since we have no way of enforcing this.

Axlrosen 20:39, 28 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Ok. Done. Angela 21:19, Oct 28, 2003 (UTC)

Using pics from Wikipedia

I am working on a book and would like to use some pics from various Wikipedia articles as illustrations. The book is commercial, for-profit. Am I right in believing that the GNU/GDSL license policy applies to usage of pictures in addition to text? As in, if I put in that boilerplate notice, I'm cool? The various links didn't explicitly mention pictures and were rather confusing, not to mention that there doesn't seem to be any

specific person/thing to email my question to.

Please help!

Image copyrights have lead to some polemics in Wipedia. Some pics are explicitely GFDL but not all. Some are under fair use, some are PD, some are copyright expired, some are free for non-commercial use. You'd better contact the user that uploaded the pic before using it.
Ericd 18:33, 22 Oct 2003 (UTC)


If I do a link to a photo on the internet site www.airliners.net (on which all photos are copyright the photographer) do I have to ask the photographers permission first or say here who took the pic?
Here’s how the link would look on Wikipedia. I declare the picture public domain so no problems if the answer is that I do have to ask.

External Links

Thanks, Adrian Pingstone 09:36, 1 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I'm not sure about the legality of it. There have been a number of legal cases about this in different countries, resulting in quite a mess of different decisions. There's also the ethical angle; is it right to do this, legal or not?
You would do better linking to the page that the image is on on that site, not the image itself. Then, they can't claim you were pretending the image was yours or you were hiding its origin.
Overall, I would prefer asking the photographer if the image can be used here in reduced size form, or something like that.
--Morven 10:23, 1 Nov 2003 (UTC)
"you would do better linking to the page that the image is on on that site". Surely that's exactly what I've done? If you click on the link the page containing the image comes up.
Adrian Pingstone 11:26, 1 Nov 2003 (UTC)
There is no problem with what you intend to do, neither ethically nor legally. The site owner will be happy about the increased traffic yielding more ad revenue. AxelBoldt 12:08, 1 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Sorry, Morven, I worded my question carelessly, I meant to ask if linking to a web page carrying a copyright photo was permissible.
Adrian Pingstone 17:06, 1 Nov 2003 (UTC)
There's no problem, really, unless the site owner has problems with deep linking. --seav 17:08, Nov 1, 2003 (UTC)
I agree, linking to an external webpage is not a problem legally. Howeever, it is never a good idea to link to another site for just the graphics. It creates unwanted traffic (traffic that does not represent people visting the website and is therefore not a benefit), increasing the cost for the site owner without benefit. It has the disinct disadvantage of Wikipedia not having any control over whether the picture appears in the article or not, dependent upon what the external site decides to do and how much traffic it can handle. - Marshman 18:22, 1 Nov 2003 (UTC)
In generally linking to external pages is ok. Some sites don't like be linked to inside a frame, but Wikipedia doesn't use frames so that is not an issue. Ultimately if a site doesn't want to be linked to from external sites there are things they can do to stop that happening. The site in your example has a policy about linking to its pages see [4]. -- Popsracer 21:17, 1 Nov 2003 (UTC)

press image of wikipedia

Hi, how can I get in touch with the appropriate person for image rights and clearance. We're interested in featuring the wikipedia story in a book and international touring exhbition - in the section devoted to info/software. Please advise asap. Thank you! 

Jennifer
416-260-5777 x234
leonard@brucemaudesign.com
Jim Wales is the man in charge, and is reachable directly at jwales@bomis.com. Being an Open Content project, permission tends to be very easy to get. -- Jake 02:01, 2003 Nov 7 (UTC)
Permission to reproduce is easy, living with the ensuing GFDL conditions is harder. Fuzheado
Jimbo doesn't own the articles, the individual contributors do. Either you stay within the license limitations, or you obtain permission from everyone who has contributed to the article in question. -- Tim Starling 05:05, Nov 7, 2003 (UTC)
I'm not a lawyer of course, but I think you will find that the authors don't own the articles. Once they have posted them to Wikipedia then Wikipedia owns them and they are released under GFDL. You may find that even the author (whoever that is in an article more than a few edits old) can't reproduce under another form of copyright. Having said that, unless the questioner wants to reproduce most of Wikipedia they should be able to quote chunks of it without permission under 'fair use' law, just a like a reviewer can quote passages of a book. DJ Clayworth 15:32, 7 Nov 2003 (UTC)
If I were entitled to royalties on everything I've written -- even just professionally -- I wouldn't be renting in Harlem. --Calieber 20:29, Nov 7, 2003 (UTC)
Also NAL, but please note that posters do not assign copyright to Wikipedia (rather, the Wikimedia Foundation), and they may reproduce their own contributions under other licenses if they like (but most articles contain material contributed by several or many different people). Wikimedia owns only the contributions of Jimbo Wales and his employees who have worked on Wikipedia. Fair use of course may apply. --Brion 02:20, 8 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Recording Wikipedia Content

Hi, I was wondering how this works with the license.

I want to make recordings of some of the content on Wikipedia, and I want to do it legally. My intention (if possible) is to make Compact Discs containing some of the text in spoken form, together with other text I have produced personally.

It is not my intention to make money out of Wikipedia content, but I am obviously free to charge for that proportion of the CD that is made from my own personal content.

I am very happy to reference the source of the Wikipedia in the manner outlined on the license (I could obviously not hyperlink), and the proposed cost of the CDs isn't going to be a great deal more that of the raw materials.

Can anyone advise on what I should do. Many thanks.

Not a lawyer so don't know the issues intimately, but my understanding is that you can use the works and even charge for them as long as you attribute correctly and you make available any derivative works from the wikipedia. See the GFDL for more specific information. Dori 16:20, Nov 15, 2003 (UTC)
(Also not a lawyer) Yes I think Dori has it right. Any materials you prepare deriving from Wikipedia content (and I think a spoken word version of articles counts in this respect) and then redistribute, would have to be available under the same licence. It would be brilliant if they could be available on the web and our pages could say "a spoken version of this article is available for download at ...." Pete 22:21, 15 Nov 2003 (UTC)

User's rights and obligations

The prior text was attempting to apply section 4 to verbatim copying, which was incorrect. I've removed this text and replaced it with a link to wikipedia:verbatim copying. I've left the text relating to derived works alone. However, as I believe it to be inaccurate, and I needed to change it to preserve the flow of the para, I have placed a disclaimer above it. If someone who believes it to be true wants to take the responsibility upon their shoulders and remove the disclaimer, that would be fine by me. Martin 13:39, 30 Nov 2003 (UTC)

GFDL vs Fair Use

At Talk:Settlers_of_Catan/copyright_and_fair_use there's a point that no one seems to have noticed, at least on that and related pages:

... As Wikipedia is a free, open content encyclopedia, we encourage commercial companies to help us redistribute our material, possibly for a fee. So although Wikipedia is not-for-profit, and therefore could in theory take full advantage of fair use, we like to steer a slightly more conservative course in order to preserve our freeness... Martin 02:25, 14 Dec 2003 (UTC)

End quote. But hey!

'The purpose of this License is to make a manual, textbook, or other functional and useful document "free" in the sense of freedom: to assure everyone the effective freedom to copy and redistribute it, with or without modifying it, either commercially or noncommercially.' -- from the GFDL itself [5].

Isn't this a problem? If we rely on fair use, and we rely on being non-profit to make it fair use, then we can't "assure everyone the effective freedom to copy and redistribute it", and we can't release it to the world under GFDL. Can we? Dandrake 07:20, Dec 19, 2003 (UTC)

Read recent discussion in wikilegal-l on this very point. Martin 00:33, 20 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Fair-use says 'personal, educational or noncommercial purposes'. Is Wikipedia educational? Dbroadwell 03:21, Dec 22, 2003 (UTC)

I'd say yes, without any real problem in that respect. (IANAL, but then, even a lawyer's advice here wouldn't be binding, as it were, because WIkipedia is not a client paying for legal advice.) The specialist whom I consulted formally and in detail on fair use issues considered the law pretty liberal with respect to what's scholarly and educational. But that leaves the question as to re-use by others who aren't non-profit educational entities; for this we need to see wikilegal [[6]]. Dandrake 08:45, Dec 22, 2003 (UTC)
(OPINION) Depending in interpretation (again wikilegal-l) even commercial education falls under fair use.(/OPINION)

However, to keep this same basic question from continuing to pop up see; copyright, GFDL, fair use and Wikipedia and Copyright Issues to get yourself up to speed on the issue then finally the Contributing Faq and decide for yourself. It doesn't seem like it can hurt to copiously ask permission. Dbroadwell 04:14, 23 Dec 2003 (UTC) - had to update links for Contributing Faq and Copyrights they were broken Dbroadwell 08:40, 23 Dec 2003 (UTC)


Are lists copyright?

Can a list be copyright? The article List of former members of the U.S. House of Representatives has been copied directly from a website called Nationmaster.com ( [7]), but it's only a list of names and I don't know if a list can be copyrighted. If it is, ought it be deleted? Adam 15:26, 27 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Hello. If you were to read the nationmaster site, you'd see that it is copying from us, legally. Thanks, Morwen 15:28, Dec 27, 2003 (UTC)
Hi, also, I think this list will be somewhat useless if and when we have more complete listings of the members of each Congress. I think that someone has already started working on this. Danny 15:31, 27 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I have been looking for a complete list of members of the House back to 1789 by district and party, but I can only find one back to 1824 - any suggestions? Adam 15:35, 27 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I suggest you write to the Library of Congress? :) Morwen 15:38, Dec 27, 2003 (UTC)

Check Wikipedia. We have computer-generated lists for First United States Congress to Thirtieth United States Congress. ;-) Danny 15:44, 27 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Yes but they don't identify Representatives by District. However, I see that if I cross-reference the lists at the Congressional Biography website (which gives party but not District) with the lists at the Political Graveyard website (which gives District but not party), I can compile a complete table of all Reps by party and District 1789-2003. Am I mad enough to embark on such a project? Possibly - I already created a list of all members of the British House of Commons by constituency back to 1800 so I am capable of anything :) Adam 16:10, 27 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Start with the Senators; there are less of those. I am trying my hand at a table of Senators for the First Congress. Danny 16:18, 27 Dec 2003 (UTC)


I already have a complete list of Senators somewhere, which is easy to get from the Congressional Quarterly Guide to US Elections, which I bought for $50 in San Francisco in 1987. I might turn that into a WP article soon. The House is much harder. Adam 16:23, 27 Dec 2003 (UTC)

A plain list can not be copyright. -- Tarquin 17:56, 27 Dec 2003 (UTC)

But a sorted list can be. CGS 18:28, 30 Dec 2003 (UTC).
A merely sorted list? Have you got a citation for that? Dandrake 02:13, Jan 1, 2004 (UTC)
Compliation copyright occurs when the compliation has a sufficient creative element in it to recognize authorship in the list. The US Supreme Court Feist v. Rural case would make it clear that a list that is not otherwise edited (i.e. on some other criterion that demonstrates creative effort to creat such a list) of general information is not copyrightable. See Assesessment Technologies v. WIREdata. So it depends on what you mean by "sorted list" above, a sort of general information (sorted by alphabet) would not be covered, but a special list of people that the list creator had to compile through their effort might well be copyright protected. — Alex756 18:12, 4 Jan 2004 (UTC)

In general, in US law, a list isn't copyrightable unless what is on the list has been creatively selected (a significant subset of all possible entries) or is in some other way either fictional or creative. Organisations which are routine and obvious to those in the field are not copyrightable, nor do even tens of thousands of spelling and comparable corrections and annotations to a public domain work make the result copyrightable. Our article Feist v. Rural covers most of this general ground and the reasoning in the decisions Alex referenced are well worth reasoning to get a better feel for what can be considered to be creative. Work involved in compiling a list is not considered to be creative, however hard and costly that work was. Alphabetic, numeric, date, genus and similar are all sort orders which have effectively no chance of being considered to be creative. Assesessment Technologies v. WIREdata effectively ruled that you can't use a license agreement to stop people from getting at the underlying public domain data and ordered, as one option, the turning over of the possibly copyrighted organization of the public domain data to allow the public domain portion to be extracted. Jamesday 23:26, 4 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Grammar Edit Request

"all if less than five" should read "all if fewer than five."

Thanks. Change made. Angela. 00:55, Jan 5, 2004 (UTC)

Public domain

If something in Wikipedia is stated to be (and is) in the public domain (such as, for example, an unedited dump from the 1911 Britannica or the Household Cyclopedia), can I copy and paste it straight from Wikipedia and use it in a public domain way, or do I have to find it elsewhere and non-GFDL in order to use it as public domain?

Before you all set the GNU hitsquads on me, I'm not trying to use content in this way myself, it's just that I prefer to contribute to Wikipedia on a public domain rather than a copyrighted basis, so the question is whether others will actually be able to take advantage of this, given that they won't be able to "find it elsewhere" in the case of text I've written directly into Wikipedia. Onebyone 23:40, 7 Jan 2004 (UTC)

IANAL By default all contribs to Wikipedia are under the GNU FDL. In addition to that, some users allow their edits to be used under as "public domain" (example user:Axel Boldt) or under the Creative Commons Attribution Share-alike license (example me :). Just put a note on your user page to that effect. However, this does not cover contributions by others and this must be made very clear in your message. BTW, we do not look favorably on mere dumps of PD text into Wikipedia and the great majority of this material has been modified in some way. All those modifications and the resulting derivative work itself, is under the GNU FDL. But any single edit that inputs PD text would still be PD. --mav 23:48, 7 Jan 2004 (UTC)
BTW, we do not look favorably on mere dumps of PD text. What I mean is that all of my contributions (and all of user:Axel Boldt's) are precisely that, dumps of PD text. It just happens to be PD text specially written for the purpose ;-). Hopefully the message on my user page is clear enough... Onebyone 23:22, 8 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Two Questions about the GNUFDL on Wikipedia

Village pump January 2004

Hi!

I love this site/project! And, to help I would like to create two sites using Wikipedia data, and I want to make them RIGHT in the first place (vs. just making them and leaving out anything important). I have been reading as much as possible... but to be 100% honest, the licence isn't all that clear so I thought I would describe the two projects and see if I can get some quick feedback on what I would need to do to be a "good wikipedia content user".

Project 1 BrainyEncyclopedia Use the entire HTML content in a full mirror of Wikipedia from the content at: http://www.tommasoconforti.com/wiki/

This is perfect and easy for me since it's just plain HTML, I am not a programmer. Now, the big question is this data in the format that would be in 100% compliance with the licence as is? It contains a link to the GNUFDL on every page and a link to "Edit this page" on every page (that is hard-coded back to Wikipedia). From looking at the non-compliant sites - these seem to be the major problems that people seem to create when using your content. I don't want to make that mistake (I'd rather make new mistakes!).

I would have a nice little statement about the copyright of the data on the site and how it's GNUFDL (the only things that wouldn't be would be our site name/logo). I would also be adding headers/footers/navigation for the site.

Project 2 BrainyBiography Use only the Biographies on the site and reorganize them to be an easy to navigate biography site. The articles would not change - just the navigation. In addition most links that were not biography-related would be taken out.

This site would keep the link to edit the page and to the GNUFDL licence as well.

So... after all that: are these projects OK? Is this what you intend people to do with the content? Is there anything else that is necessary on my part? It seems so simple... but a good portion of the sites that use this content seem to be screwing up their usage in some way.

Thanks for the help,

Jeff

(Obligatory IANAL, but I slept at a holiday in this morning)
The GNUFDL is a pretty open license. Your obligations are here.
If you create a derivative version by changing or adding content, this entails the following:
  • your materials in turn have to be licensed under GFDL,
  • you must acknowledge the authorship of the article (section 4B), and
  • you must provide access to the "transparent copy" of the material (section 4J). (The "transparent copy" of a Wikipedia article is its wiki text.)
--Raul654 05:43, 2 Jan 2004 (UTC)
I would like to add that you don't actually need the edit link. I don't know how you plan to get the html, but there is a database dump available at [8]. You say that you are not a programmer (which you don't need to be, but it helps to know your way around), but it is not easy to make the dump work. I just wanted you to know just in case. Good luck and let us know how it works out. Dori | Talk 06:56, Jan 2, 2004 (UTC)
(Once again, IANAL]...) So just to clarify - if you don't modify the material, you haven't created a derivative work, and therefore you have no obligations at all. If you do modify the material, then you just have to do those three things I listed above. Happy hunting :) --Raul654 10:08, 2 Jan 2004 (UTC)
Hello, I'm the author of the html dump you are using. The hard-coded "edit" link is there because the archive was meant as an experimental static dump, with links to get back to the main site. I could remove it, or better change it to a "see live article" that links to the live Wikipedia article in non-editing mode. Now that I think about it, the name "wikipedia" is not mentioned anywhere in the page! so it's better if I update that too. It will take time, not because of the script modification (which is trivial), but because I'm quite bandwidth-starved and uploading the gigabyte or so of the English wiki is a long task :) Alfio 14:32, 2 Jan 2004 (UTC)
Jeff, aside from technical questions -- why not start organizing biographies right now here, as User:Jeff/Biographies? Let's do it together! ilya 23:06, 2 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Thanks!

I just wanted to say THANKS to Raul654, Dori, Alfio and ilya for the quick responses to my question titled "Two questions..."

I'm going to get cracking and get the new sites up this month. I'll post again when they are finished before going live. I may be able to work with the database files... if I can import them into FileMaker. I actually manage about 500,000 pages of content right now in custom FileMaker databases that I designed - so don't make fun!

Have a Happy New Year!

Jeff

The database dump comes as a big series of SQL insert statements; FileMaker Pro doesn't speak SQL natively, though perhaps you could rig up something with JDBC or ODBC (or a 3rd-party plugin) that would work. You'd probably have better luck just installing MySQL though, if nothing else as an intermediate stage. --Brion 06:14, 3 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia User allowed to reserve copyright?

I noticed this whilst wandering through the undergrowth: User:Alexandros/copyright and I wondered whether this is possibly valid. Phil 15:35, Jan 9, 2004 (UTC)

I am not a lawyer. As I understand GFDL this is valid, but has almost no effect. If you submit something to Wikipedia then you give permission for it to be distributed under GFDL on normal Wikipedia terms. Additionally, the owner of the copyright is entitled to distribute it in any way he chooses. In this case, Alexandros has chosen to additionally release it under GFDL with the message he specifies attached. But because by submitting it to Wikipedia he has also released it under GFDL without that message, the message becomes optional... Onebyone 18:21, 9 Jan 2004 (UTC)
Alexandros's notice is technically not compatible with the GFDL, but largely summarises terms of the GFDL that Alexandros considers particularly important - but he does need to clarify that his notice is not an invariant section, as Wikipedia does not permit invariant sections. Martin 00:35, 23 Jan 2004 (UTC) (IANAL)
But surely the fact that he has submitted his work to Wikipedia does not prevent him from also releasing it under GFDL with an invariant section? Wikipedia doesn't have any authority to prevent him doing so, since it does not own copyright in the work and is not the source from which he obtained it. Onebyone 01:09, 23 Jan 2004 (UTC)
Yeah, he can release the whole Wikipedia database with invariant sections all over the place. But Wikipedia has a policy that we will not publish invariant sections on this website (he can also release any edits that he owns the copyright to under any license he likes - but the copy on Wikipedia is and will always be under the GFDL with no invariant sections). One could make a strong case that Wikipedia does own compilation copyrights (which are the unique arrangements of edits by various different users that make up individual articles and the entire work itself). -- mav 08:01, 23 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Adaptations of public domain images

I've never heard a clear answer to whether a photograph of a public domain painting or sculpture is copyrighted. The image at Cronus does not have any copyright information on the image page and is the same as google has cached from a page that no longer exists. See the last image on the first row. I don't know if this is a sketch of an ancient, public domain image (though it appears to be) and, if so, whether or not it is protected by copyright. Any ideas? Tuf-Kat 21:31, Jan 9, 2004 (UTC)

The definitive principle is that in the US, you must have engaged in creative work of some sort, at some low threshold, to have created something which can have copyright. Hard work isn't enough - it must be creative. From this one principle flow these general rules:

  • Facts aren't copyrightable - a fact isn't creative.
    • Recipe ingredient lists are facts; you must be creative in your presentation to be able to copyright them.
  • Obvious organizations in lists aren't copyrightable. No creativity in things like alphabetic ordering or ordering according to genus or other standard order.
  • If the underlying work is in the public domain (as facts are), collecting it doesn't give you a copyright to the underlying work, only to your organization - and only then if it is creative.
    • Photographs and scans of public domain materials fit here, unless there is creative lighting or editing involved, which might exceed the low threshold for creativity.
    • Changing image file format fits here - no creativity in converting from GIF to JPG.
  • If your expression is so limited that giving you copyright protection would effectively prevent others from expressing the same thing, you won't have copyright either. Caution and careful judgement is required for this one - that text had better be little more than a list or really generic description! The more ways there are to express something in a comparable number of words, the less likely it is that the text will be generic and uncopyrightable.
    • Standard plot concepts for novels fit here.
    • Individual expressions of plots are copyrightable, its only the generic template which isn't.
    • Standard descriptions of an animal fit here - the description for an animal is very commonplace and generic and unless you choose colorful prose, it won't be able to be judged creative without blocking others from giving an accurate description of the animal.
  • Typo corrections aren't creative. Nor are pagination changes and other trivial and obvious manipulations. Usually - I can conceive of cases where they might be used artistically rather than in ordinary writing.
  • An architectural drawing which is merely accurate isn't creative. A new design or proposed change probably is.
  • An accurate scientific drawing seems likely to be treated like an accurate mechanical reproduction by camera and not be creative but I'm unaware of a decision saying so.

On the Cronus image, the first result in the Google search is [9], which appears to be an old relief carving into a wall. There are also several minor variations on the theme in drawings, with differences in things like background color or texture. The image in our article appears to be basically an accurate drawing of that older work. However, there's a textured background. That looks to me as though it's an artifact of image conversion and/or book scanning rather than deliberate creativity. I'd like to know more about this one before saying it wasn't creative, though - the textured background makes me want to know the source and whether it's an accident of technology or deliberate attempt at creativity. What do others think? Personally, I'm inclined to suggest using the first image instead - that looks to be safely non-creative. So long as it really is an old work, not a new one! I don't know enough about this subject to know whether the drawing or the sculpting came first. Seek more information is my recommendation. I've asked the uploader to provide some. Jamesday 11:21, 10 Jan 2004 (UTC)

US national archives photos - public domain?

I just wrote an article on Ernest King, and I'd like to add a picture to it. The US navy has some great pictures of him that are in the national archives. Are they part of the public domain, and (as such) distributable under the GPL? →Raul654 11:01, Jan 30, 2004 (UTC)

Yep. The U.S. government has no copyright rights and everything they produce (except classified documents and, you know, the maps showing where all the missle silos are) is up for grabs.jengod 11:30, Jan 30, 2004 (UTC)
Maybe not. If the picture was taken by a US govt employee as a part of their job, then yes, it's in the public domain. However if the archives happenes to have photo taken by a non gov employee then no, it's not in the public domain. The same issues come up for Library of Congress photos, too. Some are copyright, some are public domain. Gentgeen 12:04, 30 Jan 2004 (UTC)
On the site's Privacy and Security Notice I read, "All information on this site is in the public domain and may be distributed or copied unless otherwise specified. Use of appropriate byline/photo/image credits is requested." Under the banner of "no copyright paranoia" I would say that we should believe such a statement in the absense of evidence to the contrary. Andre Engels 12:13, 30 Jan 2004 (UTC)
I'm not really being paranoid, and I wouldn't list a pic that said it came from the National Archives as a possible copyright violator. However, it's the "unless otherwise specified" part that you have to be carefull of. I know at the LoC pages, each photo has it's own reproduction rights page where any copyright is specified. Before you upload, go read that page, if there is one. Gentgeen


If this agency is "inter-govermental" how can it claim copyright? Sennheiser 15:32, 1 Feb 2004 (UTC)

The US govt does not claim copyright, but other govts can and regrettably do (crown copyright, etc). As such, the ESA can likewise claim copyright. Martin 15:51, 1 Feb 2004 (UTC)
The crown copyright article states that the crown copyright isn't applicable in other countries, such as United States, that do not recognize moral rights in their copyright laws. Since our servers are in the United States, only United States regulations apply to Wikipedia. Unless the ESA is using something other than the crown copyright, I think we'd be ok. Am I correct, or am I totally misinformed? Sennheiser 19:22, 1 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Also, I just found this image from usmint.gov: [10] which claims copyright. Could someone tell me why this image is copyrighted by the US Mint (or at least why it claims to be copyrighted)? thanks! Sennheiser 21:54, 1 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Apparently the rule about government works being public domain only applies to works made by employees of the government. If the site was made by a contractor, the contractor would originally have owned the copyright, and then they could have tra0AIs this the place to suggest that rocks & minerals should have standard tables like those currently used for, for example, birds and dogs (e.g., Whippet)? I've got a sample of a rock and a mineral on my user page. Elf 20:19, 1 Feb 2004 (UTC) Comments?
Right on government eployees in the course of their work duties. US copyright protects creativity only and an accurate scientific photograph of a rock is unlikely to have any creative input from the photographer, since the whole point is to be accurate, not creative. Jamesday 11:52, 4 Feb 2004 (UTC)
The crown copyright article says that the moral rights will not be recognised in countries which do not recognise moral rights. The copyright itself remains recognised. There is generallly a license to use NASA/ESA images provided an image credit is given. See Solar and Heliospheric Observatory and Image:SOHO solar flare sun 20031026 0119 eit 304.png for an article and image combination which complies with the requirements of one joint project. Jamesday 15:30, 2 Feb 2004 (UTC)
If we can use the ESA images, can we use the ESA text, provided credit is given in the talk page? Sennheiser 19:35, 2 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Check the individual site for any requirements. Much of it is likely to be press release material and readily reusable as simple fair use case but as a practical matter it's usually more convenient for us to rewrite text to ensure that it's GFDL, though that would limit reuse more for some users than simply using the original text. Jamesday 11:52, 4 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Also, wouldn't some GNUFDL abiding applications of the material retrieved from wikipedia be the opposite of "public education efforts and non-commercial purposes"? I was under the impression that wikipedia material released under the GNUFDL is allowed to be used for commercial use (as long as credit is given). Wouldn't this cause some legal problems for Wikipedia? Sennheiser 19:43, 2 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Depends on the user. Note that the license says public education efforts and non-commercial, not non-commercial public education, so it's written not to exclude commercial use so long as it's for public education. All encyclopedias and the vast majority of reusers of Wikipedia material will qualify under one or both conditions. Jamesday 11:52, 4 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Album covers and track listings

The issue of album covers has come up again, on Head Hunters. This is probably the umpteenth time, but this anonymous user also feels that the track listing is copyrighted, which is novel. Since I have joined the Wikipedia:Harmonious editing club, I am limiting myself to reverting only once in debates with non-vandals, at least unless others have specifically supported me. Is anybody else willing to revert the article to include the album cover and track listing? Tuf-Kat 04:52, Feb 4, 2004 (UTC)

Not to mention the list of personnel, which has also been removed. I really don't see how a list of personnel can be copyrightable - As TUF-KAT has stated elsewhere, this is simply a statement of fact. --Bwmodular 08:43, 4 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I've done the reversion. Let the argument roll on. I note from the Page History that User:67.170.31.123 has done this before to the same page; I can't see any more like this on their Contributions list. HTH --Phil 09:16, Feb 4, 2004 (UTC)

I've replied on article talk, left a note to the anon on their talk page and added this to possible copyright infringements. More on the article talk page but for convenience, here is my response:

  • Displaying an entire piece does not make something infringing so long as that is all that's required for the purpose, which here is showing what the cover of the album looks like. See fair use and the reasoning in the full decision in Kelly v. Arriba Soft Corporation for an example of full commercial use of a thumbnail (reduced size) image which was fair use, not infringement. Part of the argument there revolved around the practicality of using the reduced size image as a replacement for the original. It's not practical to use a reduced size image to create a sufficiently high quality image to fool potential customers for the original album work into thinking that the copy is the original, so it's not a possible replacement of the original album. That someone might make infringing use of the work, somehow, does not mean that the use made here is infringing - each use must be considered on its own merits.
  • In the US, there is a mandatory royalty on all blank music CD disks (not computer CD blanks) and such copies are completely lawful, as are copies to tape, for the same reason. Using a reduced quality image on the case for such royalty-paid copies seems very likely to be fair use, since the royalty for the musical work has been paid.
  • It's a long standing principle of US law that simple lists arranged in obvious orders (like track titles in the order in which they appear) are not subject to copyright. See Feist v. Rural and the related cases mentioned in that article. Jamesday 12:40, 4 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Fair use of book covers

(from the village pump via Talk:Fair use)

Tonight, I got motivated and scanned the covers of a bunch of books I have, to use in their respective articles. But before I got to all the effort to upload then and put them into their respective articles, I'd just like to make sure that I won't be causing any copyright violations. →Raul654 01:54, Feb 7, 2004 (UTC)

We already have a couple, I think. Seven Pillars of Wisdom, for example. That's out of copyright, though. CGS 02:06, 7 Feb 2004 (UTC).
From Fair use:

In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include--

  1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
  2. the nature of the copyrighted work;
  3. the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
  4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

In this case, (1) the purpose is education; (3) the amount of use is trivial - the cover page of a book, when all of the books I scanned are 200+ (usually 500-1000) pages; (4) the effect, if anything, would be to give them free advertising and help them sell more books. I cannot speak to 2 as I have no idea what "nature" they are talking about. →Raul654 02:20, Feb 7, 2004 (UTC)

Nature of the original copyrighted work is published commercial creative publicity artwork. Published tends to favor fair use, compared to unpublished, which favors infringement; creative tends to favor possible infringement, while primarily factual material tends to suggest fair use; publicity material tends to favor fair use, while the heart of a limited distribution creative work would tend to favor infringement. This factor tends to favor fair use in this case. Jamesday 12:33, 7 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Not that it matters in this case, but I don't think Raul654's analysis of point (3) is accurate. Book covers are typically copyrighted independently of the book itself. This is firstly because they usually aren't created by the author, and secondly because it's not uncommon for a book to be published with different covers in different places, and for new editions to have new covers. So it's not true that the portion used is negligable, it's actually either all or half of the copyrighted work (depending whether it included the back cover). Onebyone 19:11, 7 Feb 2004 (UTC)

It should be okay if it's in an article about the book. What may not be okay is cutting out the image from the book cover and using it in a different context (e.g. stealing a sparrow off the cover of a book and using it to illustrate sparrow). --Delirium 02:22, Feb 7, 2004 (UTC)

Ok, I'll start uploading them soon then. →Raul654 02:27, Feb 7, 2004 (UTC)
  • would this be the same for album covers then? Exploding Boy 04:29, Feb 7, 2004 (UTC)

You should place the analysis of fair use on the image description page, this will help others who are later trying to determine if they can include that image in their use of the Wikipedia article where it is used.— Alex756 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Alex756 talk] 20:04, 7 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Or on other pages (as in that sparrow example above). Martin 04:26, 8 Feb 2004 (UTC)
I like Martin's idea. Why not create a "book covers" section on Wikipedia talk:Copyrights , and link to it from the image description pages? →Raul654 08:39, Feb 8, 2004 (UTC)

(comment added at Talk:Fair use) As a side note to the above: I'd like some input on how to caption the covers. Just for expediency's sake, I would caption them with the title of the book. (See Lord of the Flies or Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone or examples). Fabiform suggested publisher, date. I'd like to know if anyone else has suggestions. →Raul654 08:06, Feb 8, 2004 (UTC)

Adding publisher & date would be nice, at least on the image page if not in the article. -- Jmabel 18:28, 10 Feb 2004 (UTC)

(from the village pump)

Just wondering whether the German copyright terms (70 years after death, I think) apply to German content (eg. a picture of an expressionist painting) we want to use. Or do the onerous American terms apply because the servers are in the US? - snoyes 15:06, 10 Feb 2004 (UTC)

The Berne Convention has harmonised this, I believe, so that the copyright terms of signatories (including both Germany and the US) are recognised in all other signatories. The equivalent UK law's terms are "70 years from the end of the calendar year in which the last remaining author of the work dies, or, if the work is of unknown authorship: 70 years from end of the calendar year in which the work was created, or if made available to the public in that time, (by publication, authorised performance, broadcast, exhibition, etc.), 70 years from the end of the year that the work was first made available." -- ChrisO 15:29, 10 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Thanks, Chris. - snoyes 15:45, 10 Feb 2004 (UTC)
No, that's wrong. US terms of copyright protection apply to images on the server. The server is physically located in the US, so US copyright terms apply. However, if someone is uploading an image from Germany, then German copyright law applies. However, this can get very complicated. Downloading an image from a Canadian server to a German computer to be cropped and then placed on an American server brings three jurisdictions into play.
What the Berne Convention has done is to give national treatment' to authors. Therefore, if a German publishes a work in the US, that German is entitled to the same copyright protection as an American author in the American courts.
A third wrinkle is the 'rule of shortest term'. That is an optional part of the Berne Convention which states that if a work is published at the same time, or within thirty days, in country A and country B, where both country A and country B are Berne Convention signatories, with A having a shorter copyright term, then the copyright term of A applies in B as well. This has not been incorporated into US law, but it is present in EU law, and was brought in by the same directive that made life+70 copyright come into force.
International copyright is a minefield. The real problem is that many of the questions that pertain to the internet have not been answered yet. They require court cases to write the necessary case law. David Newton 18:33, 20 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Expanding a little on this, it's why a UK person may need a license to upload something not available under fair dealing, but once uploaded, applying fair use analysis to exactly the same image shows that it's fair use. But the UK person couldn't use fair use, because fair use is US law, not UK. Hence, the same image, fair use in one jurisdiction, licensed in another, and we would have both descriptions (and any others required for it) associated with the image, so each of our various language/jurisdiction versions would have local guidance. Jamesday 10:51, 21 Feb 2004 (UTC)

(from the village pump)

I'm writing an estory which I hope to sell. It's about a geek who becomes a religious prophet but still sees the world as a geek. As a computer geek for over 30 years I've come to relish the term.

I suspect you might enjoy Nevil Shute's novel, Round the Bend. Dpbsmith 03:09, 13 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Anyway, talk radio host are flamming trolls, the government is bloatware and stuff like that. I could easily write my own definitions for these terms, in fact I just finished adding to Internet troll, but would like to make the readers aware of Wikipedia, the good work being done here and the revolutionary approach it embodies. The problem is I've read the copyleft stuff several times and am still at a loss. Examples would really help. I just want to quote from Wikipedia articles as you would from any text but I'm just not sure how to do that.

Does the complete article have to be copied rather than the relevant bits. Does the entire GPL have to be included? Does that make the work GPLed?

From reading the docs it's seems that most of the GPL stuff is for large amounts of information rather than citations under fair use. It's clear that a lot of work went into constructing the GPL for legal correctness. But I'm not a lawyer and haven't got a clue. It seems that fair use should cover the few sentences I would like but even if it does I would prefer to abide by your decision.

Thanks

If you just want to use the odd snippet of information, then you can under fair use, regardless of our free licence. A note that you used Wikipedia as a source would be appreciated. Give you readers the URL etc. As for more wholescale copying - well there are lots of examples at Wikipedia:Sites that use Wikipedia for content - neatly categorized according to how good they are at sticking to the licence we release content under :) Basically if you used a substantial amount of Wikipedia content, and then added your own content to it i.e. built on our content then your work would count as a derivative work and would have to be released under the same licence - i.e you work would have to be copyleft too. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 18:02, 12 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Just like Pete says, under fair use you can quote small snippets like from any other encyclopedia. Copyleft is actually less restrictive than Copyright, so anything you are allowed to do under Copyright, you are allowed to do under Copyleft (at least that is my impression). See also: Wikipedia:Citing Wikipedia. Dori | Talk 19:31, Feb 12, 2004 (UTC)

(from the village pump)

To The Permissions Department,

CECIERJ - Science and Distance Learning Foundation of Rio de Janeiro is the support foundation for the consortium CEDERJ, which is a consortium of six public universities (UERJ, UNIRIO, UENF, UFRJ, UFF, UFRRJ) located in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The consortium aims to offer high quality distance public higher education.

By offering undergraduate distance learning courses, the consortium CEDERJ:

  • Contributes to bringing high quality free higher education in the inner cities of the Rio de Janeiro State.
  • Contributes to make higher education possible for those who can not study within the time/schedule of standard universities.

The consortium CEDERJ works by building local centers distributed across the state (eleven at the moment). The course’s quality is ensured by the consortium and in the face-to-face and distance tutoring system.

Our courses are based on printed material and online courses, whose content is enriched by images, videos, audio, links, texts, programs, simulators, etc.

All our courses are given at no charge for the students and the educational material is heavily subsidized so as to minimize the cost to the student. The educational material is only sold to students of the courses in the consortium. They are not sold to the open public.

We would like to request your authorization for using the images found in your site for undetermined time in our courses. We commit ourselves to credit the material and use it only in our educational material.

Thank you for your attention. Please contact us if you need any further information.

===========================
Dinah Kleve
Pesquisa e Produção de Imagens
CEDERJ
(21) 2299-4573
dinah@cederj.rj.gov.br
http://www.cederj.rj.gov.br
===========================

It should be perfectly fine to use all material here for educational purposes. Even other purposes, just as long as all materials remain under the GNU FDL (English) / GNU FDL (Portugûes). Κσυπ Cyp   21:23, 12 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Probably. There are a lot of images on Wikipedia which cannot be used under GFDL because they are used on Wikipedia under "fair usage". It seems likely to me that if Wikipedia is fair usage then so are most or all educational purposes, but I cannot give legal advice. Wikipedia cannot grant permission for anyone to use images which are only on Wikipedia under "fair usage" and are not GFDL licensed. Onebyone 12:50, 13 Feb 2004 (UTC)


images from awesome university website

(from the village pump)

I would like to use the images from this awesome university website. Would I be violating copyright? --Ed Senft! 21:48, 11 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Yes, you would most likely be violating copyright unless you have permission from the creater of the images. Jrincayc 22:40, 11 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Trademark symbols

So, the article on the 76th Academy Awards has a bunch of trademark symbols (the R-circle thing), as well as a disclaimer at the bottom ("Oscar, Academy Awards, etc. are trademarks of..."). I think this is pretty unusual for Wikipedia. There's no legal requirement to add those symbols -- companies do it so they don't lose the trademark, but nobody else is obliged to. Is there a good reason to have these, or could we just get rid of them? Do we have a manual of style entry for trademark? --ESP 01:38, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I got rid of them. They don't belong in an encyclopedia. Perl 01:41, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)
(IANAL) In general, a trademark used in a conversational way that in no way implies endorsement of, or that you are, the owner of the trademark is permissible. "While we drove to the mountains, my daughter played with her Beanie Babies and stuffed Barney toy."
In an article talking about a product in a descriptive way or in any way that might imply endorsement of (or that you are the owner of) the trademark, or imputing trademark of an actually generic product, or where the reader might be uncertain whether you were describing the trademarked product or a similar generic product probably should have the circle-R once. For example:

Stuffed dolls
Stuffed dolls are classified for trademark purposes as soft sculptures. Familiar examples are Beanie Babies® and Barney® dolls.
Beanie Babies are generally small representations of animals stuffed with batting and the kind of pellets familiar in bean bags made by the Ty Company, while Barney dolls are the more usually kind of stuffed doll modeled after Barney character of TV...
As to whether the "Blah blah is a registered trademark of blah blah" should be in an encyclopedia, I have no opinion... Cecropia 19:37, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)
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