User:Banaticus/Adoption/Copyright

Wikipedia is (as the slogan says), "The Free Encyclopedia". Unfortunately, this causes some problems when we use other materials that aren't so free, and other problems when we'd like to do something but really can't.

Failure to adhere exactly according to policy can and will result in a block. Pay attention.

The GFDL

The GNU logo

Wikipedia was originally licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License, or GFDL. This is a copyleft license that allows for the free distribution of content under certain conditions. However, the GFDL was designed for manuals, textbooks, other reference and instructional materials, and documentation which often accompanies GNU software. The intent was to ensure that, even if a company was bought or, or went bankrupt, or something else happened, the instruction manual or textbook would still continue to be "free".

Attribution problems

The GFDL requires that licensees, when printing a document covered by the license, must also include "this License, the copyright notices, and the license notice saying this License applies to the Document". This means that if a licensee prints out a copy of an article whose text is covered under the GFDL, he or she must also include a copyright notice and a physical printout of the GFDL, which is a significantly large document in itself. Worse, the same is required for the standalone use of just one (for example, Wikipedia) image.

As the internet exploded and more media came to be considered "standard" (Adobe Flash, video, etc.) the problem of attribution became larger and larger. If a TV newscaster was to reference a Wikipedia document, would they then have to recite the entire GFDL or would the credits for the show have to display the full GFDL license?

Transparent format burdens

Drawings, for example, were required to be in a format that allowed them to be revised straightforwardly with "some widely available drawing editor." The definition of "widely available" may be difficult to interpret, and may change over time, since an editor that was once widely available may no longer be available (VHS tapes, for instance). This section of the GFDL, which was rewritten somewhat between versions 1.1 and 1.2 of the license, used the terms "widely available" and "proprietary" inconsistently and without defining them. According to a strict interpretation of the license, the references to "generic text editors" could be interpreted as ruling out any non-human-readable format even if used by an open-source word-processor.

Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License

You are free: to share – to copy, distribute and transmit the work to remix – to adapt the work Under the following conditions: attribution – You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). share alike – If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one.

Because of some of the problems inherent in using the GFDL to license Wikipedia content, in response to the Wikimedia Foundation's request in November 2008, the Free Software Foundation (FSF) released a new version of the GFDL designed specifically to allow Wikipedia to relicense its content to CC-BY-SA by 1 August 2009. Wikipedia and its sister projects held a community-wide referendum to decide whether or not to make the license switch. The referendum took place from 9 April 30 April 2009. The results were 75.8% "Yes," 10.5% "No," and 13.7% "No opinion."

In consequence of the referendum, the Wikimedia Board of Trustees voted to change to the Creative Commons license, effective June 15, 2009.

The handling of media files (e.g., image files) varies across language editions. Some language editions, such as the English Wikipedia, include non-free image files under fair use doctrine, while the others have opted not to. This is in part because of the difference in copyright laws between countries; for example, the notion of fair use does not exist in Japanese copyright law. Media files covered by free content licenses (e.g., Creative Commons' CC-BY-SA) are shared across language editions via Wikimedia Commons repository, a project operated by the Wikimedia Foundation.

Wikipedia displays a copy of the license, which is fully protected under the authority of the Wikimedia office. Whenever we make an edit, that edit is logged in the page's edit history, as well as your contributions. When a page is deleted, contributions to that page are hidden, but are still visible to administrators (admins) or "sysops". Certain page revisions may also be completely deleted even from admin view to remove defamatory material, to protect privacy, or sometimes to remove serious copyright violation.

Violating someone else's copyright

Copyright symbol

Problems arise when people upload images that are not their own. Most images are under some form of copyright, even if it's not explicitly stated anywhere. This is usually the case with anything found on the internet. When these images are uploaded, Wikipedia must adhere to a very strict policy known as "fair use". What this basically is doing is giving us a reason to use an otherwise non-free image, on the basis that it is for educational purposes, that using it has no measurable effect on the copyright holder's rights, and that we have no other alternative. The establishment of this reason is called the fair use rationale, part of a set of criteria that MUST accompany any fair use/copyright tag on Wikipedia. These criteria are:

• A specific fair use tag (see link above) that describes what the image is.
• The source of the image (this is usually a website, but could also be a book or magazine that you scanned the picture out of)
• The image itself must be of low resolution. If it is high resolution, that version must be deleted and replaced with another (essentially, worse) version.
• A fair use rationale explaining:

• Where the image is to be used (This page MUST be in the main (article) namespace. Fair use images MUST NOT be used anywhere else)
• That the image cannot be used to replace any marketing role or otherwise infringe upon the owner's commercial rights to the image
• How the image is being used, in a way that fits within the fair use policy (i.e., identification purposes, etc.)
• That there is no way the image can possibly be replaced with a free version

• The image must have been previously published elsewhere

Only when an image meets all of these criteria may it be used. Fair use images must be used in at least one article (not "orphaned"), and articles using fair use images must use as few of them as possible. Any image that does not meet these criteria to the letter will be deleted. Any user that repeatedly uploads images not meeting these criteria to the letter will be blocked.

As a further note, fair use images must not be able to be replaced by a free alternative. What this basically means is, there is no way you, me, or anyone else could go out and take a picture of this same thing and release it under a free license. For example:

• I could upload a picture of the current President of the United States from the White House. Normally government works are automatically public domain, but let's say for the purpose of this discussion that the White House holds the copyright to that particular picture of the President. I can claim fair use, but the claim would be invalid because you could just as easily go to a speech Bush is giving and take a picture of him yourself. (That's what happened here) This is considered replaceable fair use and so would be deleted.
• Person X could upload a picture of the Empire State Building from a marketing kit they distributed. This image would likely be copyrighted, and so they claim fair use. But I happen to have been to New York and have a picture of the Empire State Building. I upload that instead and release it into the public domain. The first, copyrighted picture, is now also replaceable.
• For the article on the Monterey Bay Aquarium, I want to upload an image of their logo (visible in no great detail here). I go to their website and upload their version. This fair use is allowable, because no matter where or how they display their logo, it'll be under the same copyright. Since the simple art of scanning or taking a picture of a "work of art" is not enough to justify my ownership of the rights to the image, there is no way to obtain a free version of the logo.

For a full description of the policies and guidelines concerning fair use, you should read the page at WP:FU.

Note: Sometimes the licensing requirements for new images are updated. For instance, I uploaded the non-free image File:Ermabombeck.jpg for the Erma Bombeck article. A long while went by and licensing requirements were updated. In 2010, another person uploaded the non-free image File:Erma Bombeck.jpg with newer licensing information and put that image in the article instead of my image. The other user than posted on my talk page that since my image didn't have meet the licensing requirements and wasn't used in any articles it would be deleted in seven days. I was somewhat peeved -- if I'd known there was a problem, then I would have updated my image. I did not, however, contest the deletion or rush to "fix" my image, I just let the deletion go through. I did this because the other user had been correct -- my image did need more licensing information and, since I hadn't edited Wikipedia in a while there was no way to tell whether I was still active. The other user was bold and fixed the problem, although I was somewhat peeved as to the method taken to resolve the problem.

The assignment

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• Tell me what you know
• Tell me what you don't know
• Then tell me what you think
• Always distinguish which from which

-- Colin Powell from It Worked for Me

Post your answers to the following on my talk page, just like you did when responding to the question about the five pillars:

• What is the Wikipedia slogan?
• What licence is the content on Wikipedia released under?
• If a user was to infringe copyright, what could happen to their account on Wikipedia?

• The Non-free content review page is a place where Wikipedians discuss whether media without free content licenses are in compliance with Wikipedia's non-free content criteria. Go to Non-free content review and post your opinion in 5 of the discussions (not just a Keep or Delete, give a reason why you think the content should be kept/deleted). Warning, some of the media may be graphic. Which discussions did you post in? Here are two examples:
  • Keep This image is of a dead guy -- obviously we can't go take a picture of him (well, we could, but we'd have to get permission from relatives to exhume his corpse and there's probably been some decay by now). He's a very notable person and we should have a picture to show people what he looked like. Before it was posted to Wikipedia, the image was resized down to only 200px width, so as to be low-resolution (to not compete with the non-free original version of the picture). Banaticus (talk) 00:20, 15 February 2011 (UTC)
  • Delete The exact same image was already posted in [[this other place]]. We don't need a duplicate version of this non-free image. Banaticus (talk) 00:20, 15 February 2011 (UTC)