This is an archive of past discussions on Wikipedia:Public domain. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
The article says: "The U.S. Copyright Law is Title 17 of the United States Code (17 USC), chapters 1 through 8 and 10 through 12. Chapters 9 and 13 contain design protection laws on semiconductor chips and ship hulls that are of no interest or relevance for Wikipedia."
This is not correct. We have a wide variety of images of semiconductor chips in the various WMF projects, most notably Commons:Category:Integrated circuits. If the chips are copyrighted, then the images infringe and cannot be kept on Commons. Similarly, we have a wide variety of images of ship hulls.
Those chapters don't cover images of chips and boat hulls. Chapter 9 covers mask works, a particular form of work used in the manufacture of chips under certain technologies. Chapter 13 provides a design patent-like right to prevent the making and selling of ships with protected hulls.
Neither Chapter 9 or 13 are copyright law. They happen to sit in the same volume of the US Code where the copyright law sits as a matter of convenience. TJRC (talk) 00:05, 19 January 2016 (UTC)
If copyrighted materials are used for nonprofit educational purposes such as content generation in Wikipedia does it violate copyvio.
If the material used are only factual descriptions does it violate copyvio.
Usage of material consisting information that is commonly available and contains no originality. e.g. History. Does it violate copyvio.
Is it a good practice to use materials that hasn't registered for any copyrights or does it violate copyvio.
If material used is available through multiple sites for public use, is it copyvio violation.
Using content straight from textbooks or articles with changes, is it a copyvio violation.
Does sound-clip usage of a publicly performed song which doesn't require the copyright permission of the literary work used, come under copyvio violation.
If a media clip used is his or her own production and the work is not registered and is uploaded to wikipedia will it be a copyvio violation.
@JohnCD: How to avoid these issues in submission and while seeking sources for content expansion. Say if i want to add content to an article and the source would be an article or textbook. The image will also be from the article. Is there wikipedia tool where one can create charts and diagrams that will reflect the same details as in the source image.59.88.211.226 (talk) 10:21, 18 April 2016 (UTC)
It's difficult. For text, the basic advice is, write in your own words, summarising what is said in the source, and being careful to avoid WP:Close paraphrasing. You can use shortWP:quotations, enclosed in quotes and properly attributed. For images, there are (very restricted) circumstances where a non-free image can be used, but it must satisfy all ten of the conditions at WP:NFCC. Company logos and book or album covers can be used in this way. It's hard to be more general - I suggest asking at WP:Media copyright questions about a specific example that you have in mind. JohnCD (talk) 11:59, 18 April 2016 (UTC)
Thank you
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Status of non-US, UK government publications?
I note that the page here only refers to documents issued by the US and UK governments. Does anyone know whether other national governments tend to copyright their own publications, and/or which governments do and do not copyright their publications? I think a lot of foreign government publications are really useful for material on some ethnic groups in their countries, for instance, and it might be very useful to know how we can use such material. John Carter (talk) 18:07, 9 May 2016 (UTC)
Varies from country to country. Many governments put some documents in the public domain, although some governments make all of their documents unfree. If you are wondering about some specific country, try c:Special:PrefixIndex/Template:PD-country name, and if that doesn't work, replace the country name with the two-letter country code, then check any templates which contain the words "gov", "government" or "exempt". --Stefan2 (talk) 19:28, 9 May 2016 (UTC)
