Wikipedia talk:FAQ/Copyright
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[edit] Missing question: what to do if a site or a printed source is violating Wikipedia's copyright?
As per heading, we seem to be concentrating to much on 'what if we err' not it's difficult to find information what to do in case others err.-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk 16:46, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
- What is the appropriate response in such situations? Just email the site admin? I know of a site that has culled content from multiple wikipedia articles without attribution. I have not received a response from the site admin yet. What would be the next step? Myasuda 22:13, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
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- First, make sure the site is listed in the index of Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks.
- You do know that people who copy Wikipedia, as long as they follow the GFDL terms, do *not* violate our copyright?
- Is the "Non-compliance process" at Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks what you are looking for?
- (How can we improve " Wikipedia:Copyright FAQ : Can I reuse Wikipedia's content somewhere else? " to make this clearer? Or do we need a seperate "What should I do if I see some other site copying stuff from Wikipedia?" question?) --68.0.120.35 19:12, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
[edit] program source code
At Talk:Adler-32, I see I'm not the only one wondering about the status of source code in Wikipedia. It would be nice if this document clarified what exactly I should do if I copy-and-paste source code from Wikipedia articles. Say I'm working on a piece of software that is already under LGPL. And I copied the code in, added a comment with username of the one who contributed the code to Wikipedia, and the URL of the article I got it from. And put that username in the "credits" list. Is there anything else I should do? --68.0.120.35 18:19, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Photo of a letter I purchased.
Person A writes a business letter to person B. Person B dies and person C buys a bunch of documents from his estate that includes the letter. I purchase the letter from person C. Can I publish the letter? Do I now own the copyrights to it? Can I take a photo of it and release it under GFDL? SteveBaker 23:27, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
[edit] First mediation congress romania - Press release
The article above has been copied from a press release at [1]. After I marked it with a {{copyvio}} tag, a user pointed out that the source is from a press release. Is that relevant here? Eli Falk 08:31, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Referencing
Is it possible to add a section including "how to reference Wikipedia" for academic purposes? If I am blind/dumb feel free to contact me and remove this :) 121.45.201.5 01:15, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Buildings
I just removed the reference to US copyrights on buildings. While it is certainly accurate, it is not relevant for Wikipedia purposes, as most images of buildings are going to be permitted. So it will likely confuse people. (We just had a question on this at Wikipedia:Media copyright questions [2] that arose from here.) This FAQ is a general guide, and the building issue is rather detailed to be fully treated here. -- But|seriously|folks 22:08, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
- I've reverted - it is important to note buildings can be copyrighted but that the copyright does not extent to pictures thereof. Otherwise, someone is going to come along, find out that buildings can be copyrighted, and claim that huge swaths of pictures are copyvios. Raul654 01:17, 5 October 2007 (UTC) (Both of which are already mentioned in this article; the person who posted at the Media copyright questions page obviously didn't read this page in its entirety)
[edit] Artwork
Madame Tussauds has many photos of the wax sculptures and recently one of the images Image:WxwrkHitler.jpg has been labeled as a copyright violation. The reason is because it is a "derivative work". The wax statues would be copyrighted so can someone take a photo and release it under a free license? In this FAQ it says that photos of public domain statues are not necessarily in the public domain. Does this work in reverse; photos of copyrighted statues are not necessarily copyrighted? James086Talk | Email 23:32, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
- Photos of a copyrighted work are derivative works and thus subject to the original work's copyright. Raul654 14:40, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
[edit] "Can I add something to Wikipedia that I got from somewhere else?"
As worded, the section basically said that an editor couldn't use information that he/she got somewhere else. Since original research is forbidden, that essentially would mean that Wikipedia articles could consist only of things from the public domain and free content licensed sources. That's absurd. So I reworded it to make it clearer (I hope) that it's okay to take facts from a (copyrighted) newspaper article, for example, as is done thousands of times per day - see WP:CITE, which makes no mention that copyrighted material cannot be cited (because, in fact, copyrighted material can and is cited). -- John Broughton (♫♫) 23:53, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Proof of ownership
One thing i could never understand is this: How does Wikipedia trust image contributors that they really created the image themselves or received it under GFDL-compatible terms?
For example, User:Marina T. uploaded a lot of images with questionable source and copyright. For examples, see Image:Robert Doisneau photographed by Bracha L. Ettinger in his studio in Montrouge, 1992.jpg and Image:Ping pong.jpg. The user added very short source information, such as "photo was taken by X, who gave me permission", but no tangible proof. Can i trust this?
On the other hand, i uploaded a few photos, too, and Wikipedia somehow trusted me ... --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 14:13, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
- The answer is WP:AGF. We can't guarantee that it will or won't be actually free to use, so we just have to trust users unless we find the image on another site, or it's watermarked, or we get a DMCA takedown notice. Stifle (talk) 17:56, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
- You can alternatively put the images on WP:PUI but that doesn't answer your question. Stifle (talk) 17:57, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
[edit] External Links to copyright violations
I'm trying to find a statement in a guideline or policy that covers external links to copyrighted material. I constantly see innapropriate links to material on sites like Youtube, but I can't find the best quote that says "don't do that." Or perhaps I'm mistaken and it's perfectly acceptable. To put it a more FAQ-y format, "Can I create external links to sites that are in violation of copyright?" -Verdatum (talk) 22:53, 31 January 2008 (UTC)
- Aha, finally stumbled onto it by mistake: WP:C#Linking to copyrighted works -Verdatum (talk) 00:31, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Using content from other places
I came to this page wondering if content licensed under a Creative Commons attribution-sharealike license could be imported directly into Wikipedia. It would be helpful if this page explained which licenses are compatible with the GFDL to that degree. -- Beland (talk) 01:43, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
