Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Copyright Cleanup/Archive 4

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Archive 1 Archive 2 Archive 3 Archive 4 Archive 5

Article by quoatation

One editor has been writing articles "by quotation" eg http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Royal_Dutch_Shell_safety_concerns&oldid=230394012 , note the italiced text is all copied from copyrighted sources. What I need is a guildline or essay for the editor to read that explains or states why this sort of thing is not a good idea. Do we have such a thing? Sf5xeplus (talk) 15:52, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

Doesn't matter, found it at Wikipedia:Copy-paste#What_about_quotes? Sf5xeplus (talk) 17:11, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

Timeline of the Kashmir conflict

I have just reverted two years of edits from the Timeline of the Kashmir conflict because I found too many copyright violations to cleanup by hand. I believe the old revision is relatively clean. Please see Talk:Timeline of the Kashmir conflict#Copyright violations for a few more details. Is there a need to remove the copyright violations from the history? Is there a process for recovering the non-copyright violating edits that have been reverted (a few were cited and were probably correctly paraphrased)? -84user (talk) 18:36, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

Yes, with a two year history there probably is need to remove the copyvio from the history. The chance of inadvertent restoration to an earlier version is too great. :/
There are basically two ways to salvage non-infringing material while still eliminating extensive copvios from the history. First, you can go through the last version of the article and manually remove all copyrighted content. This can be hard if there are many sources involved. Second, you can go through the history, edit by edit, and add to the last clean version of the article content added by trusted editors or that is plainly not a copyright infringement. You should note in the edit summary who added it; I usually say, "creative content contributed by User:Soandso" or "content contributed by User:Soandso". --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:55, 24 July 2010 (UTC)
If you revdelete by blanking the revision text and leaving the contrib names visible, all that is needed is to recover the useable content, no? We don't actually need to keep the detailed information on who added what, only that someone did contribute. MLauba (Talk) 21:08, 24 July 2010 (UTC)
That would be one way to achieve my "first", but we're not supposed to do revdelete en masse, still (at least according to the revdelete screen). I use revdeletion when there are a couple of edits to remove, but doing them one at a time when there are many is pretty onerous. In those cases, I've been splitting the article, deleting the copyright problems and creating an attribution subpage such as this one, which I then transclude to the talk page. In case that transclusion is removed, I also make a null edit to the article and link to it directly in edit summary, as here. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:10, 25 July 2010 (UTC)
I think we're between a rock and a hard place, because selective undeletion for anything but history merges is no longer policy either. Further, the tool is simply the prefect solution to solve both attribution and copyvio cleanup requirements, to continue using undeletion is like crippling oneself on purpose. Time to bring it up on WT:REVDEL, I suppose. MLauba (Talk) 12:17, 27 July 2010 (UTC)
WP:REVDEL says "occasional other cases where it is needed", and under copyright it says, "Best practices for copyrighted text removal can be found at Wikipedia:Copyright problems and should take precedence over this criterion." WP:CP incorporates by reference Wikipedia:Copyright problems/Advice for admins, and that advises selective deletion. I think what may need to be cleared up is the header to Wikipedia:Selective deletion. That said, revision deletion would surely be tons easier, and I plan to abandon selective delete with extreme prejudice once mass revdeletes are approved. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:22, 27 July 2010 (UTC)
Technically, advice for admins isn't policy, though, aside from the fact that that specific portion predates your own venture into the wonderful world of copyright cleanup :) MLauba (Talk) 12:52, 27 July 2010 (UTC)
True, but it does say that Wikipedia:Copyright problems takes precedence and the only information for administrators there is at Wikipedia:Copyright problems/Advice for admins. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:31, 27 July 2010 (UTC)
Which means that in the fine tradition of REVDELETE I could just rewrite advice for admins to allow revdeleting multiple entries all by myself and hence establish and enshrine practice :D Discussion opened at WT:REVDEL, I'm sick of circumventing policy by IAR (which I've been doing). I also want to promote the good old CV101 page I've written to WP space, and there's little sense to do so with split + undeletion when we can revdelete. MLauba (Talk) 13:49, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

True enough, but I do have the benefit of long-time practice on my side. :) I'll watch to see what response you get; when mass revdel is no longer an issue, it will be much easier. I've done it once or twice myself, but have a great fear of breaking the wiki. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:54, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

Jumping off topic (but inspired by this), how do we feel about having a project newsletter like others do, if only for the benefit of linking various ongoing discussions from one single place? MLauba (Talk) 14:05, 27 July 2010 (UTC)
I'd be fine iwth that myself. For some reason, I am utterly incapable of keeping a good eye on this talk page. It routinely gets lost in my watchlist. :/ --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:37, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

Copyright of lists: question

Those of us who work copyright know that under the U.S. law that governs Wikipedia (and precedence of all other copyright investigations), lists are copyrightable to the extent that they are creative. Sometimes, determining creativity of lists is complex. There is currently a case open at WP:CP of two lists. 1976 Lady Wigram Trophy is opened on 8/8; 1976 Rhodesian Grand Prix is opened on 8/9. The copyright owner vigorously objects to our use of the content. The matter has been through OTRS (Ticket:2010080810004046), where two different agents have declined to delete the material on the basis of Feist v. Rural, but he asserts that there is creativity involved. Please see Talk:1976 Lady Wigram Trophy and help clarify there the creativity of these two lists, if you can. The copyright holder has been advised via OTRS and through Wikipedia that he should write to our designated agent to request take-down if he disagrees with the OTRS outcome, but he would prefer to resolve it through community consensus. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:36, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

A request for adminship.

Here is an RFA you might be interested in, as the editor states that he or she intends to concentrate on copyright matters. Bwrs (talk) 00:16, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center

I think I need some help on this article. A relatively new user has made a pile of contributions, and also racked up a bunch of deletions (see User talk:Zooaction). I can't find any source for the text he has added in this article (several paragraphs of "ad" material have already been deleted), and it is not cited (p.articularly the B.E.A.R.S. section). I put a "more citations" tag up, which he deleted (without citing anything). Most of the photos have already been tagged for copyvio on "technicalities" (i.e., he didn't fill out the forms correctly), which were caught by bots. Most of the photos are also on the organization's Web site. However, the rest look suspicious to me as well. For instance, File:Bears plansawcc.jpg) technically has all the information. However, the copyright holder is not an editor, just a name. That name matches the head of this organization ("Miller", which indeed this user may be). And, File:Bisondlpublicistawcc.jpg is on theNational Geographic Web site here: http://blogs.nationalgeographic.com/blogs/news/chiefeditor/2010/08/wood-bison-return-to-alaska-range.html. The user is obviously not paying attention to his own talk page. Sorry, I don't really know what I should do next, though I will at least go and put citation request tags in the article again. Donlammers (talk) 12:14, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

I have deleted and tagged various images and left a note for the user. (I see Acather96 has also done some work there; welcome back, Acather!) There seems to be extensive COI in all of the articles he or she has edited. I've opened a listing at COIN which may or may not bring assistance from uninvolved editors. Never know. :) If copyright problem persists, I'll take further action. If you see something I miss, please feel free to drop by my talk page. He may actually be in position to verify permission, but he must do so if he wishes to continue contributing this content. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 14:29, 29 August 2010 (UTC)
Thanks for the help. I deleted the image references for images that are no longer on Commons to at least keep the article looking clean for the public. I'll keep an eye out at least on this article. I had not spotted the pattern in the other articles, but then I'm mostly interested in the zoo side of things. Donlammers (talk) 15:56, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Cockerill-Sambre

diff cf http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/Cockerill-Sambre-Group-Company-History.html

Can someone confirm that the copying is from fundinguniverse to wikipedia, and that it has to be cleaned. I will/would rewrite the article, but am hoping that I won't have to, if only because I can't write as well as it currently is :(

Sf5xeplus (talk) 19:31, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Since the fundinguniverse site has been pretty much the same since 2006, I'd call that pretty much a confirmed copyvio. VernoWhitney (talk) 19:39, 29 August 2010 (UTC)
oh well, I'll just blank that bit and start rewriting..Sf5xeplus (talk)

Old history purge deprecated?

Just a heads-up, I nominated the {{copyvio-histpurge}} template for deletion - I believe WP:REVDEL offers everything the old way of doing things had and plenty more, but see no sense in unilaterally deleting it. I opened up a Tfd here.


As a tangent, it begs the question of whether we should have a corresponding mean to template-request a revision deletion. MLauba (Talk) 12:40, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

You're quite right, there. And I think that a revision deletion request might be a good idea. I think we probably need a conversation to clarify when that should be used at VPP or some such anyway. Even though we have long selectively deleted copyvios, our current policy still says that copyvios remain in history unless removal is requested by the copyright owners. I've considered for some time altering that to reflect current practice, but the new process makes it a grand opportunity to nail consensus for when it should be used. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:48, 21 September 2010 (UTC)


My point of view is that now that we actually do have a practical means to remove revision text while keeping contributor history intact (and thus not risk penalizing good faith contributors who added to an unauthorized derivative without realizing the status of parts of the article), we should evolve the policy to indeed make "best effort basis" to revdel copyvios in article history we are aware of. MLauba (Talk) 13:06, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
Would you have time to launch that somewhere? I'd be happy to weigh in, but I'm trying to complete an article listing for the Darius Dhlomo copyright cleanup. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:09, 21 September 2010 (UTC)


Evolution of CP policy discussed at WP:VPP

Under it's own subheading. Have a look at WP:VPP#Evolution of Copyright policy to account for introduction of WP:REVDEL and voice your opinion. Thanks. MLauba (Talk) 13:52, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Rollback bot

I have filed Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/VWBot 9 to have something ready to go in case there is support for rolling back all articles edited-but-not-created by a CCI subject (I know it has been mentioned repeatedly DD's page, but the actual execution of this bot would obviously wait for consensus on a case-by-case basis). VernoWhitney (talk) 20:40, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Verybluesky image issues

I think we're dealing with this one ok, but was brought up on ANI and CUed to see if it was one of our serial abusers (isn't). Verybluesky (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) uploaded a large number of (probably all or mostly) copyvio images related to one airline. I have laid out the situation on User talk:Verybluesky and asked for his cooperation identifying the sources. I am posting the note here as I don't spend that much time on copyright cleanup tasks, so if there turn out to be issues hopefully one of the regulars here can spend a little bandwidth helping.

Thanks. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 07:23, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

I'll see what I can do. :) (That said, I am swamped between real life work and Wikipedia work at the moment and would appreciate other eyes!) Thanks much for pursuing it. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:46, 29 September 2010 (UTC)
Some evidence of deliberate deception in his apparent efforts to obscure the source of this image: [1], [2]. (He was right the first time; I found it on page 2.) I think File:Airbus A319 Adria Airways S5-AAP.JPG, File:Adria Airways CRJ200 S5-AAI.JPG, File:Adria Airways CRJ.JPG, File:Airbus A319 Adria Airways S5-AAP 2.JPG, File:Adria Airways CRJ200 S5-AAG.JPG and File:Airbus A320 Adria Airways S5-AAB.JPG are probably his, given their size and consistent metadata. I don't know about File:Adria Tehnika.JPG. It's large enough to make it less likely he just yanked it from some random website, but it's a different camera. I have serious doubts about File:Brnik.jpg and File:S5-DAA.jpg (low res, no metadata). I think File:Adria MD82 2.JPG is also iffy. The other images he acknowledged came from elsewhere, and all of them are currently tagged NPD. If he doesn't cooperate within a few days, I'd recommend we list the dubious ones at PuF on the strength of his apparent efforts to disguise the origin of the first image. But I'd like feedback. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:17, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:FAQ/Copyright

A couple of conversations about changing this FAQ are open at its talk page. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:44, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Article needing attention

Just spotted the article Marsia, which seems to be problematic. The style it is written in, and the apparent attribution at the bottom of the article, just before the foreign script are strong clues. But because WP has so many mirror sites, I don't know what to make of it. --Ohconfucius ¡digame! 02:39, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Well, the foreign script is definitely copied and the article has had copyvio problems before, so I blanked the whole thing and listed it at Wikipedia:Copyright problems/2010 October 15 for further review by an admin. Thanks for bringing this to our attention. VernoWhitney (talk) 03:19, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Does the US copyright exclusion on legal documents extend to the EU?

Okay, here's one on which I need feedback. Please contribute it to the question at the Copyrights policy talk page. Directive 2001/116/EC is tagged as a copyright violation of [3]. The originating body claims copyright here. U.S. law doesn't recognize copyright in legal code: "Edicts of government, such as judicial opinions, administrative rulings, legislative enactments, public ordinances, and similar official legal documents are not copyrightable for reasons of public policy. This applies to such works whether they are Federal, State, or local as well as to those of foreign governments."(206.01, "Edicts of Government") Does this apply to legislation of the European Union? I was thinking so, but I am seriously second-guessing myself. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 20:37, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

How to deal with a complicated Copyvio?

After reading up about this project I decided to clean up some old cases. Right now I am wroking on the Ivanmanskin CCI case and it is going quite well, but I have run into copy vio which has been integrated into a larger section. I am unsure how to solve this. Should I presumptive delete the section? Delete any sentences originating from the original copy vio? Try to rewrite the whole section? The original edit is [4], which seems partially copy pasted from [5]. The relevant section in the current article is Anthony_Blunt#Suspicion_and_secret_confession. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Yoenit (talk) 23:38, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Hi! Welcome aboard. You are solely needed. :) There are a couple of different approaches that might work there. If there's nothing to good to replace it with, excising can work. If there is, you could restore the content that he replaced, if it still makes sense in context. I would just put a note in edit summary saying something like: "Restoring content from 2 December 2008 to replace copyright problem". Alterantively, you certainly can rewrite the whole section, if you'd prefer. First priority is wiping out the copyvio, though. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 00:17, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Using Revision deletion

Were any instructions to use WP:Revision deletion added as a result of WT:WikiProject Copyright Cleanup/Archive 4#Old history purge deprecated? and WP:Village pump (policy)/Archive 79#Evolution of Copyright policy to account for introduction of WP:REVDEL? I didn't find anything when looking at the main copyright pages.

There's a question at WP:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents/Plagiarism and copyright concerns on the main page#RevDelete for fixed copyvios?. Flatscan (talk) 05:19, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

In extension to this, how should revdel be applied to CCI cases? Should I start making a list of revisions which are copy vios? I can see an awful amount of administrator work in this. Yoenit (talk) 08:50, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
Whether or not I do rev delete usually depends on what I believe to be the risk of inadvertent restoration. If text is extensive, I'm especially likely to rev delete. We really don't have a good process yet for marking articles which need specific edits deleted. With CCI, I'd say that if you see something that looks dangerous, you can always come by my talk page with it. I'm very willing to mop up (I'm better with the mop than the hammer :D). We really need to sit down and figure out a good process for this. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 14:00, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
That being said, I just revdeleted about 2800 revisions after reverting to the last known good version on Pi Kappa Alpha, and that had to be done in several goes per history pages as there is a hard limit on the amount of revisions you can submit for revdeletion at one time. Not fun at all. Nor entirely practical. MLauba (Talk) 14:11, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
I share that pain. I was there yesterday, though I don't think it was quite that extensive. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 14:15, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
How does revdel work in relation to attribution history? Can you revdel ~3 years of history because a single section was a copyvio? or does that destroy the attribution history? Specific example I am thinking of is J. R. R. Tolkien, although I couldn't find a source for that one. Yoenit (talk) 19:38, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
Revdel is the perfect tool for that. It can hide revision text while leaving contributor names intact. Fully satisfies the attribution requirement while removing copyvios from view. As far as I'm concerned, one of the best new features in ages. MLauba (Talk) 21:41, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
Might this be a good revdel candidate? Sebastian Faulks Yoenit (talk) 20:02, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
 Done Yes, it was a perfect example. MLauba (Talk) 22:11, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Text Copyvio dashboard

I have boldly added the little dashboard I wrote a couple of weeks ago to this talk page, and it's of course free to re-use or tweak (for instance if someone knows how to change the colour of the two header lines to match the WP:COPYCLEAN colour scheme, go ahead and change it). History purges will disappear shortly. Biggest drawback from my perspective is that I don't see how to count SCV entries smartly.

The dashboard is at {{User:MLauba/Cp dashboard}}.

There's also the matter of CCIs - it would be trivial to add a cat to every open CCI page and count those but I've decided I'm not involved enough there to be bold with that. Feedback but also direct improvements more than welcome, as always. MLauba (Talk) 11:26, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

New copyright article series for Signpost?

MRG and me have on several occasions floated the idea to write something fresh for the Signpost about copyright cleanup or other intellectual property matters. With the latest brouhaha, one thing that is abundantly clear to me is that way too many people aren't even able to distinguish between the notions of plagiarism and of copyright infringement - and it is quite clear that this distinction is lost on many people regardless of whether they're anons, editors with 100k mainspace contributions, or arbitrators. I think we need not one but a series of Signpost articles - here's my idea:

  1. Definition of terms. Short, simple, to the point. What is plagiarism, what is a copyvio, what is a close paraphrase. Nothing technical, just definitions and an explanation of why they are problematic for Wikipedia
  2. Home in on copyvios - how to identify, how to remedy
  3. WP:CCI and WP:COPYCLEAN - this is our recruitment drive.

Beyond that, and my idea isn't yet fully formed on that, but I'm sort of toying with the notion of finding a way to have a weekly status report on CCIs, the same way we have arbitration reports.

Thoughts? Anyone wants to work on drafts? Feedback? Cookies? MLauba (Talk) 22:07, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Definition of terms is good as is a short explanation of copyvio tells, and how to deal with them. One thing you should beware of is that this does not become yet another explanation page, as we already have 3, making dealing with copyright violations appear much more complex then it really is. WP:Cv101 does the best job of explaining what actions to take, but if I didn't spot MRG linking it in some discussion I would not known it existed. Another problem is the implementation of revdel. Until you admin types decide clear guidelines what to revdel and what not to revdel and a place is created where non-admins like me can request it, the project is not ready for an influx of new editors trying to help out.
I am unsure about a status report on CCI cases. On the one hand it might greatly improve the amount of people working on those cases, but it might also spark some bad press about copyvios on wikipedia. Do we want the Darius Dhlomo case to reach the newspapers for example? Yoenit (talk) 10:23, 3 November 2010 (UTC)
To be fair, WP:Cv101 has languished in my userspace forever and I think only MRG, Verno and myself were aware of it's existence before this week :)
That being said, I have started a draft for a definitions article here: User:MLauba/Signpost definitions and would welcome input on that. MLauba (Talk) 17:38, 4 November 2010 (UTC)
If you want anything from User:Moonriddengirl/Copyright, feel free. I had started that on a similar notion, with recommendation from User:SandyGeorgia, but I've had precious little time to develop it. I'm scrambling to catch up CP! --Moonriddengirl (talk) 17:40, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Does this article meet a copyright law?

ja:ボナヴェンチャー (軽巡洋艦) is translation from HMS Bonaventure (31) 10:17, 24 October 2007. A Japanese Wikipedian insists that the article HMS Bonaventure (31) 10:17, 24 October 2007 section History, 1st paragraph is almost duplicate from M.J.Whitley, Cruisers of World War Two An International Encyclopedia, ISBN 1-55750-141-6, p.114. Can you judge his opinion is correct or not? And is this copyvio or not? --Freetrashbox (talk) 11:37, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

I know some people who work on warships, will ask if any of them can check if the text was copied from that source. I have no idea what translation does to copyright, so I will leave that for somebody else to answer. Yoenit (talk) 11:46, 3 November 2010 (UTC)
Kudos to our Japanese comrades, they are correct! Give them our thanks :) Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 14:31, 3 November 2010 (UTC)
The copyvio is foundational and introduced by MiniEntente (talk · contribs), who seems to be responsible for the creation of a lot english cruiser articles from 2005 - 2008. I will ask at wt:OMT to check a few others for copyvios, but I have a bad feeling about it. Yoenit (talk) 14:45, 3 November 2010 (UTC)
Thank you very much. The information that you gave is very useful. I'm going to correct the copyvio state in Japanese Wikipedia. (But, I'm inexperienced in English Wikipedia and English composition, I'm not going to submit a deletion request in English Wikipedia.) For your kindness, Japanese Wikipedia will improve. Thank you again!--Freetrashbox (talk) 12:16, 5 November 2010 (UTC)
A deletion request would be pointless anyway, the article has been cleaned up by Yoenit after your tip-off. Thanks again. MLauba (Talk) 12:44, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Revdel request page

Hey, I have started my personal revdel request page at User:Yoenit/revdelrequests. Right now I plan on requesting revdel in all cases of the Ivankinsman CCI where the copyright violation was confirmed. I am tempted just to dump template:adminhelp on the page, but I thought I should discuss it here first. Is the format alright? Should I include additional information? Should I link the source and the diff were the copyvio was introduced? Please provide feedback. Yoenit (talk) 10:28, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Ack, that's duplicate work. I had started on User:MLauba/Copyvio-revdel and intended to run this as a successor to Wikipedia:WikiProject Copyright Cleanup/History purge, but never got around to finish it. Will start on that immediately. MLauba (Talk) 10:32, 3 November 2010 (UTC)
Template now at {{Copyvio-revdel}}. MLauba (Talk) 10:34, 3 November 2010 (UTC)
OK, I got off my lazy bottom and completed the transition from histpurges to revdels. Observant members will notice that the tabs here have changed as well. {{Copyvio-histpurge}} is now history itself, long live {{copyvio-revdel}}. Or stuff. MLauba (Talk) 11:17, 3 November 2010 (UTC)
Is it an idea to ask for the diffs where the material was introduced and removed in the template? Might save a trip to the talkpage for both editors involved. Yoenit (talk) 11:20, 3 November 2010 (UTC)


I've considered that at length (the predecessor template had it for instance) but decided against it - there are many cases that may be much more complex to describe than what can be conveniently added to a template. The old format was easy - you had a cut-off date and anything before that was removed. But with Revdelete we get the option to remove ranges of revisions from view. Much more flexible but also easier to confuse the poor admin meant to handle it. MLauba (Talk) 11:29, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Using the recently fixed Sebastian Faulks as an example, would it be useful to get from the diff (provided by the tagger) to the relevant history? This would reduce time spent manually browsing the page history. If that's useful, I can try scripting it this weekend. Flatscan (talk) 05:08, 4 November 2010 (UTC)
I think it would be very useful. MLauba (Talk) 17:42, 4 November 2010 (UTC)
I wrote User:Flatscan/historyJump.js, which works with diff pages – try it with the Sebastian Faulks diff above. Flatscan (talk) 04:55, 5 November 2010 (UTC)
I've polished it a little. Instructions at User:Flatscan/historyJump. Flatscan (talk) 05:29, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Copyright and translations

It strikes me that a lot of material on the en.wiki is translated into foreign languages and published on foreign-language wikipedias. What happens if the material on en.wiki is subsequently found to be a copyvio? Is the foreign-language Wikipedia notified and asked to remove the offending material?—S Marshall T/C 18:14, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

WikiProject Copyright Cleanup in the Signpost

"WikiProject Report" would like to focus on WikiProject WikiProject Copyright Cleanup for a Signpost article. This is an excellent opportunity to draw attention to your efforts and attract new members to the project. Would you be willing to participate in an interview? If so, here are the questions for the interview. Just add your response below each question and feel free to skip any questions that you don't feel comfortable answering. Have a great day! ǝɥʇM0N0 03:42, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

  • Hey COPYCLEAN people, don't let this go stale. The attention of the community is notoriously shifting on fickle grounds. This is a great opportunity to again gain more people to join the copyright cleanup efforts. Whether you're Moonriddengirl and drove this project's start, or you just found the project yesterday, whether copyright cleanup is a passion, a calling, a duty or just a passing interest, express yourselves. MLauba (Talk) 22:49, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Is this a copyvio case?

I modified the translation, thinking it was done by Wikipedians, but reverted by user: Howdoesitflee. Then an IP corrected typo, but it was reverted again by the same user with a summary that "it's a freakin' quote!". I checked the source and found out the translation was Donald Keene's translation. Strangely the typo was found in Nobuyuki Yuasa's version. Keene is still alive and the translation was done in 1996. I checked the revision history and found out it was added by an IP user and then edited by user Howdoessitflee. The user added an EL. You can see Keene's and Yuasa's translation there. The linked page has nine translations of the opening paragraph of Oku no Hosomichi and it seems to be a copyvio page, the top page says "NO COPYRIGHT" though. There was a similar EL, but it was removed in 2008. Is it OK to use the translation of that length as a quote? Or is it a copyvio case? And should the EL be removed? Oda Mari (talk) 18:45, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

No, not a copyvio case, but improper use of a quote. If the original text is quoted a translation should be given and due to original research concerns quoting a published translation seems best. However, it is not obvious from the article that the translation is a quote. Also, the Japanese quote seems to be in the article purely for decorative purposes, which is a violation of wp:quote. I am curious why these sentences are quoted the most and a section explaining that could make this quote relevant and fall within the boundaries of fair use as I understand it (possible ref [6]). With regards to the external link, I don't have a problem with it and don't consider it a "copyvio site". Yoenit (talk) 19:51, 23 November 2010 (UTC)
Thank you for the clarification and the edit. The sentences are one of the most beautiful prose in Japanese. I cannot explain well, but it's beautiful, like a poem, in rhythm and sound when you read aloud. And of course the content itself touches people's heartstrings. Oda Mari (talk) 16:37, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

The Great Backlog Drive

PanydThe muffin is not subtle 22:46, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Discussion regarding the copyright status of links to website archival sites

A discussion which may be of interest to and can use the input from you, concerning the copyright vs. fair use status of a number of external sites, is unfolding at Wikipedia:External links/Noticeboard#Webcite.org. Fram (talk) 14:45, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

Invitation to participate!

Hello! As you may be aware, the Wikimedia Foundation is gearing up for our annual fundraiser. We want to hit our goal, and hit it as soon as possible, so that we can focus on Wikipedia's tenth anniversary (January 15) and on our new project, the Contribution Team.


I'm posting across WikiProjects to engage you, the community, in working to build Wikipedia not only through financial donations, but also through collaboration in building content. You can find more information in Philippe Beaudette's memo to the communities here.


Please visit the Contribution Team page and the Fundraising page to find out how you can help us support and spread free knowledge. --THE FOUNDERS INTENT PRAISE 13:29, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

It's hard not to be aware, what with the banners. :) Just from my curiosity: aren't most Wikiprojects supporting and spreading free knowledge already? I would presume that most (maybe all?) of them are designed around building the project. Certainly, supporting and spreading free knowledge is what we're here for. :D --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:48, 30 November 2010 (UTC)
I have to second Moonriddengirl here. Plastering this invitation to contribute through collaboration in building content on talk pages of wikiprojects which organize people to collaborate looks like preaching to the choir at best. MLauba (Talk) 14:36, 30 November 2010 (UTC)
Realize that you are shooting the messenger. Take it up with the staff.--THE FOUNDERS INTENT PRAISE 15:28, 30 November 2010 (UTC)
The staff of what? --Moonriddengirl (talk) 15:30, 30 November 2010 (UTC)
Didn't realize providing surprised feedback counts as "shooting" now but point taken. MLauba (Talk) 15:43, 30 November 2010 (UTC)
I didn't realize posting a "form" message would bring forth such grave concern. If it doesn't apply to you personally, then obviously it applies to some others. --THE FOUNDERS INTENT PRAISE 16:11, 30 November 2010 (UTC)
I believe that you may be making this more serious than certainly my comment was intended. That said, whenever you post a message, you are responsible for its content and should be open to discuss it...especially if you are going to place it elsewhere. We aren't gearing up for the fundraiser; it's been under way for two weeks. And personally I think the text is a bit offputting. It seems to suggest that the people you are addressing aren't already supporting and spreading free knowledge. There isn't an "us" vs. a "not us" here. We are all Wikipedians, all engaged in "supporting and spreading free knowledge", and I'm not sure why your message divides out an "us" who needs to be helped achieve that goal, as though somehow some of "us" are more a part of the project than others. I'm afraid it's a bit divisive. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 16:29, 30 November 2010 (UTC)
Taken up with the staff. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 15:46, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

--THE FOUNDERS INTENT PRAISE has extended an olive branch of peace.

Category:Requested RD1 redactions

There's a discussion involving two declined Category:Requested RD1 redactions at WP:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive220#Revision deletion needed archived Flatscan (talk) 05:33, 20 December 2010 (UTC). I think they should be reviewed by a WP:Copyright problems regular.

I considered placing this at WT:WikiProject Copyright Cleanup/RD1 Requests, but I assume that page isn't well-watched. Flatscan (talk) 04:59, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

As Moonriddengirl pointed out at AN, WP:Copyright problems, WP:Copyright problems/Advice for admins, and any other instructional pages need to be updated with references to WP:Revision deletion. I don't know whether WP:Cv101 has instructions relevant to fulfilling RD1 requests. Flatscan (talk) 05:33, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Request for help on computer security and IT risk management articles

I removed blatant copyright violation from Asset (computing) and Factor Analysis of Information Risk and just found more from the same editor in Risk factor (computing).

I'm concerned that there's more problematic articles than I can identify on my own, and also that there's more within the articles I'm looking at. It's discouraging, and I'm overwhelmed. I'd really appreciate some help. --Pnm (talk) 07:10, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Just removed another passage from IT risk management. --Pnm (talk) 07:54, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Help

I have made a bizarre discovery and the circumstances of the discovery have me concerned.

I'm watching an episode of bones, but I seemed familiar to me so I went looking for the episode page, which I figured would be at List of Bones episodes. While at the list page though I spotted a copyright violation template about 2/3rds of the way down the page. I thought it had been added recently since the template states that the list should be added to the January 6, 2011, page for investigation, but the article history says the article has not been edited since last year. I think the page may have been tagged as an attempt to call attention to one particular section, but it seems that either no one cared about this or that others saw the template and decided to continue to build the rest of the article around the template.

I'm understandably concerned about this, but since the template looks to have been on the page for a while I'm wondering if its possible this was done in error, or that someone simply forget to remove the template, but at either rate this is an issue that needs to be addressed, and I figure posting this here should get the ball rolling on that. TomStar81 (Talk) 00:41, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

Addendum: Bones (season 5) has also been tagged by Moonriddengirl (talk · contribs) for the same reason; so perhaps the two are related. TomStar81 (Talk) 00:46, 6 January 2011 (UTC)
The List of Bones episodes article is an odd one, it just transcludes the individual season articles, so that's why you see the copyvio blanking which was just recently added by Moonriddengirl even though the overall list article hasn't been edited in a long while. Don't worry, it is already in the queue and the issue should be resolved in about a week. VernoWhitney (talk) 01:58, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

OTRS pending

Not sure if this is the right place but I am making another effort to remove articles from the OTRS pending category, while a lot of them have been easy, wrongly placed templates or in the wrong place. But as the list gets shorter the problems are appearing. Some of the earlier otrs confirmation templates dont have ticket numbers so still appear in the pending. Did this early ones actually have ticket numbers or has that been a recent thing, if theyn dont have number then perhaps we need to tweak the template to allow for old ones without ticket numbers. I have seen a number of copyright violations have been reverted and an otrs pending added that have been opened for a couple of years. Sometimes it is not clear that an OTRS volunteer has added the confirmation and is not allways clear from the users page that they are otrs volunteers. If we added a date to the otrs pending so older ones can be picked up easily. Particularly concerned we have some copyvios hidden with old otrs pending tags. Not sure if this is the right place but any pointers would help. MilborneOne (talk) 22:08, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

New case

Attention of those familiar with copyvio at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Copyvio by Kittybrewster, please. Fences&Windows 01:34, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Creativity of anatomical description

I started handling a couple of revdel requests on butterflies... and then I had second thoughts. Compare this with the source. I think there's only so many ways to describe a species precisely and accurately. Does the source pass the originality threshold? MLauba (Talk) 22:08, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

I see your point and I'll hold off for now on tagging these (there are some more hanging out at WP:SCV); I'll be interested to see the outcome. If they are deemed to be a problem, I have a feeling it's going to be a big problem to clean up. --BelovedFreak 22:25, 8 February 2011 (UTC)
I think it does. Looking for example at the last sentence "Hindwing upperside generally blackish with a diffuse and poorly defined pinkish-orange median band". I can think of several ways to paraprase this and still convey that the upperside of its hindwing is has a dispersed amd ill-defined pink-orange median band on a dark, usually blackish, background. Yoenit (talk) 22:31, 8 February 2011 (UTC)
I see your point and what you did there, and the result in the above would remain a close paraphrase if the source passes the originality threshold. Hence my second thought :) MLauba (Talk) 22:52, 8 February 2011 (UTC)
Something similar to this came up in March. I've gave my opinion there, last statement, but in brief I'm inclined to think that protection does apply. I cannot compare the sources, though, as I'm not on my desktop and my laptop is refusing to load that page. :P --Moonriddengirl (talk) 01:11, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
Nah, that's two reasonable doubts in favour of creativity, and in case of doubt, always err on the side of caution in these matters. Carry on, Beloved, sorry for the procrastination. But at least I managed to put the word procrastination in a English sentence. That's got to count for something. MLauba (Talk) 01:18, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
Sorry for putting them on wikipedia, I thought it was a compatible licence. Although I think it might still be okay to use the texts, because I suspect these are the original texts that were published when the species were described, meaning that they would be PD-Old for a lot of species. I will try to find out. Ruigeroeland (talk) 07:15, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
Don't worry MLauba, procrastination's my middle name! :) --BelovedFreak 12:19, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
No need to apologize, it was obviously done in good faith, and if you manage to track the descriptions back to PD sources, that would be terrific. MLauba (Talk) 10:07, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
Thanks and I will try, but I had no luck yet. Could you have a look at this one: Eupanacra cadioui and tell me if you think I have rewritten it enough? I am aware of the fact I am still using some of the words found on the source page, but it seems impossible not too, since these body parts are known by that name. Furthermore, a colour is a colour, you can not say something is red in another way. Ruigeroeland (talk) 10:18, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
I think that looks ok, but I would like to see what others think. You're right, sometimes there are only so many ways you can convey a piece of information. By the way, if possible, it would be helpful to have a list of all the articles you've written this way, so we can rewrite and revdel them as necessary. --BelovedFreak 12:19, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
Could you hold off on the revdel? If the way I rewrote them is ok, I will retrace my steps to make all articles acceptable. It is easier if the text I need to rewrite is allready present. I used CATE text mainly if I couldnt find other sources, so I think I can fix it rather quickly if I get an OK here. Ruigeroeland (talk) 13:17, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
Anyone else got any thoughts on Eupanacra cadioui? I think it looks ok... --BelovedFreak 13:54, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Too close paraphrasing in Jestofunk?

An article I created, Jestofunk was tagged as a "close parahrase" of a source. I disagree that it's too closely paraphrased and have not got very far with discussion the issue with the editor that added the tag. I believe the issue as that editor sees it is the sentence "The album sold 50,000 copies in Italy" (the source says "...Love in a Black Dimension sold more than 50,000 copies in Italy...") Now, obviously this is closely paraphrased, but I think this is one of those situations where there is no way to convey that information without closely paraphrasing. I could swap copies for units, or say "50,000 copies of the album were sold...", but that would still be a close paraphrase. A few disinterested opinions would be appreciated. What do others think?--BelovedFreak 14:42, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

I don't see any issues there at all. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 21:11, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
Thanks, I was worried I was missing something because I'd written it in the first place! --BelovedFreak 22:18, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

Fair use questions: List of highest-grossing Bollywood films

During a recent AfD (in which I was not a participant), it was pointed out to me that the sources behind List of highest-grossing Bollywood films are copyrighted. It is not a raw compilation of data, but rather a subjective analysis included a variety of factors (akin to CCC Information Services v. Maclean Hunter Market Reports and CDN Inc. v Kapes). I've currently got a conversation started (well, I'm attempting to start one) about how we can safely include in a list of these elements at Talk:List of highest-grossing Bollywood films#Copyright concerns. Input would be welcome! (But some admin will need to stay uninvolved to close the conversation :)). I am seriously wondering if this is the time for me to see if I can introduce myself to our new attorney. :/ Please give feedback there, so as to keep conversation in one place. I am also raising this at WT:C and WT:CP. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 23:06, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Help - List of Shameless episodes

I was hoping for some opinions on what to do with List of Shameless episodes. Some of the episode summaries used are without doubt a blatant copyvio from the Channel 4 website. Some are not, but appear to be copied from elsewhere, in that they are identical to those at The British Comedy Guide. They also appear at a number of Fairfax Media newspapers: [7], [8], [9]. All of these sources claim copyright. It's unclear who has copied from whom. I can't find an archived version of any of the other sources, so I don't know how long they've been there. So, it's theoretically possible that Wikipedia is the original source for some of the summaries, and there's reverse infringement. Does anyone know if any of these sources have a history of that?

In the meantime, the article gets a couple of thousand hits a day and the copyvio template keeps getting removed by different IPs and named editors. (Understandably - it doesn't look that good at the moment). I've started a new version which is just the tables with no episode summaries at the moment. Should the infringing version just be deleted so we can start over, risking losing possible original contributions, or should it be left for now to allow a proper investigation? --BelovedFreak 18:16, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

When some of the edit summaries are copied, it is reasonable to assume that others are as well rather than assuming that these alone were reverse copyvio. I will generally look for signs of natural evolution in a few of these just to be sure. I have done so here. There has never been a clean version of this article. Copyrighted content was pasted into it from its first edit. I have gone ahead and implemented your temporary version, since there's little chance of permission here. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 18:46, 16 February 2011 (UTC)
Wow... faster than a speeding bullet..! :) My gut feeling is that those summaries that are not from Channel 4 were also copied at some point, so it's probably best to start with a clean slate. Thanks so much! --BelovedFreak 18:51, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Ireland cricket flag copyright?

Is the Ireland cricket flag copyrighted? Please see the discussion here. Axl ¤ [Talk] 09:27, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Photo published in Ireland a long time after creation

Hi guys. I'm interested in this photo of some experimental lighthouses. The background is a bit vague, but this is the best I can do :

  • The lighthouses were built for experiments in 1884-5, and the photo is dated to 1885 in the article. I don't know for certain when they were demolished, but probably fairly soon afterwards.
  • The photo is described as "courtesy of Billy Wigham", who is presumably a descendant of John Richardson Wigham, who was working as a consultant for Trinity House at the time and was responsible for some of the kit being trialled (although he was banned from the lighthouses themselves, it's a long story). So the photo was probably taken by Wigham senior, or an associate - is there a UK crown copyright angle via Trinity House? I know they have a bit of a special status in UK law.
  • Wigham senior died in 1906.
  • I'm guessing that the photo may well have come from a Wigham scrapbook and not have been published until this article, published in the journal of the Commissioners of Irish Lights in 2006 to commemorate the centenary of Wigham's death - so we're into Irish government copyright?

It's all a bit shoulda-woulda-coulda. It feels like something that was probably taken in 1885 should be OK, but I'd appreciate any firm thoughts. Le Deluge (talk) 17:48, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

I think it reasonable to assume that John Richardson Wigham was the copyright holder of that image and it has thus passed into the public domain. Yoenit (talk) 19:09, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Image contribution survey tool

Enjoy. MER-C 03:43, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Possible copyvios by an user

Hello, I have found two copyvios in articles created by User:Pmronchi in range 2008-2011 (and I have deleted those copyvios from those two articles). I suspect, that there can be some other copyvios made by this user in other articles There is need to check it out. Thanks. --Snek01 (talk) 03:10, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/Pmronchi. MER-C 04:16, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Multiple copyvios by Jonathangluck and possibly his sockpuppet and IP address

User:Jonathangluck is currently blocked for sockpuppeting as User:Babasalichai. He also sometimes uses the IP address 65.112.21.194. The user has a tendency to copy and paste entire sentences or paragraphs from online news reports, without quoting them (although he does reference them.)

[10] "Certain leaders felt his outreach to non-Jews was getting excessive — and might, therefore, encourage intermarriage. Boteach says he was ordered to annul the membership of some non-Jewish students; he refused, and a major falling-out ensued."

From http://www.jewishjournal.com/cover_story/page2/shmuley_boteachs_18-hour_day_20100615/ - "Certain leaders felt his outreach to non-Jews was getting excessive — and might, therefore, encourage intermarriage. .... Boteach says he was ordered to annul the membership of some non-Jewish students; he refused, and a major falling-out ensued."

(this copyvio is now fixed)

[11] "According to a Fox News columnist, a fundraising event was hosted by Jackson and Boteach at Carnegie Hall on Feb. 14, 2001. That event was supposed to be raising money for the Jackson/Boteach charity, but the subsequent tax filing shows no money was given to children or any charitable causes at all. What it does show is a total of $203,185 collected from direct public support. At the same time, the charity's expenses totaled $259,432. All but $20,000 of that was spent on staff salaries and office expenses."

From http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,49808,00.html - "... money raised by Jackson and Boteach at an event at Carnegie Hall on Feb. 14, 2001. That event, a panel on child welfare that included TV talk show host Chuck Woolery and lawyer to the stars Johnnie Cochran, was supposed to be raising money for the Jackson/Boteach charity. But the subsequent tax filing shows no money was given to children or any charitable causes at all. What it does show is a total of $203,185 collected from direct public support. At the same time, the charity's expenses totaled $259,432. All but $20,000 of that was spent on staff salaries and office expenses."

(this copyvio is now fixed)

I left him a warning about the Carnegie Hall copyvio; [12]. He replied that he would avoid doing it again.

However, only a few hours later, on a different article, [13] "The $6.5 million Manhattan townhouse where Pinto lives, which is owned by Mosdot Shuva Israel, faces foreclosure ... Mosdot Shuva Israel has not responded to or paid a $48,000 judgment against it for failure to obtain workers’ compensation insurance ..."

From http://forward.com/articles/136250/ - "The $6.5 million Manhattan townhouse where Pinto lives, which is owned by Mosdot Shuva Israel, faces foreclosure" and the next bullet point in their article is "Mosdot Shuva Israel has not responded to or paid a $48,000 judgment against it for failure to obtain workers’ compensation insurance".

(this copyvio is now fixed)

I raised this Manhattan copyvio on his talk page and said: "This is a copyright infringement. Do you understand why?" He replied: "No. I dont ? How do you make it clear but not give fact facts ?"

These edits may be a genuine good faith misunderstanding of copyright policy, but the situation is exacerbated by this user's tendency when criticised, to agree with the criticism but not actually change his editing behaviour. In any case, it may well be necessary for all the contributions of both the accounts and the IP address, to be checked for more copyright problems of this nature. Comments welcome. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 05:37, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

I should've added - User:Jonathanglick13 is also indef blocked as a sockpuppet of Jonathangluck, so that user's contribs probably need checking as well. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 16:52, 19 March 2011 (UTC)
I'm filing a CCI case for this instead, so further discussion here probably not required. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 08:12, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

400 free Credo Reference accounts available

Another 400 free Credo Reference accounts have been made available for Wikipedians, kindly donated by the company and arranged by Erik Möller of the Wikimedia Foundation. We've drawn up some eligibility criteria to direct the accounts to content contributors, and after that it's first-come, first-served. The list will open on Wednesday, March 23 at 22:00 UTC, and will remain open for seven days. See Wikipedia:Credo accounts.

Feel free to add your name even if you're lower on the list than the 400th, in case people ahead of you aren't eligible, and good luck! SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 04:49, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

User:Maromaro9

Hi, I came across this editor due to this tagging, and cleaned that article. Upon further investigation, I found that all Maromaro9's contributions were additions of copyrighted text from this site. I have now cleaned all these articles (though I welcome review in case I have missed anything), and warned this editor on their talkpage however is any further action needed (revdel/block)? For completeness the list of articles affected is as follows:

regards, ascidian | talk-to-me 16:30, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for bringing this to our attention. I've deleted the two articles you tagged G12. Revdel's generally not necessary unless the material is likely to be restored, but I certainly can if you'd like. Since they were only active for the two days last year, I don't think a block is likely to be useful. VernoWhitney (talk) 16:43, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for the speedy reply/action. I agree about the block, just wasn't sure. I'll keep the articles on my watchlist, so don't worry about revdel either (don't want to create additional work!). regards ascidian | talk-to-me 16:52, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

Announcing: Duplication Detector

The fabulous new copyright tool of my dreams: [14]. It compares an article with another page and will work with PDFs. It has little bells and whistles, such as permitting you to omit quotations or eliminate numbers. And it lists its output by priority. Very handy in helping to locate the point of duplication when somebody has tagged a source and you aren't sure where the issue is. It's also helpful in looking at rewrites to see if they're sufficient. Mind you, it can't catch some close paraphrasing, since it relies on strings of duplicated text. There is also a template that goes with it, {{dupdet}}. For an example of this in action on a real issue, {{dupdet|Andrei Silard|http://arh.pub.ro/mcristea/Silardcv.htm}} produces {{dupdet|Andrei Silard|http://arh.pub.ro/mcristea/Silardcv.htm}}. In addition to copyright work, this might be useful for checking DYK, GA or FA listings. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 21:43, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Oh, Wow! This is fantastic. This would have saved me several gazillion hours of cross-checking during the past two years. Not to mention all those long comparison discussions on talk pages. Just point and click now. Is Dcoetzee the one responsible for this? It's a brilliant tool. — CactusWriter (talk) 22:32, 31 March 2011 (UTC)
He is. :) He rocks! --Moonriddengirl (talk) 22:44, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Battle of Stow-on-the-Wold and others?

I need someone else to look at the edits by this user. I came across what may be a copyright problem with the article Battle of Stow-on-the-Wold the details are here Talk:Battle of Stow-on-the-Wold#Copyright violation but which way? I noticed that the previous posting to the user's talk page was User talk:name#Plagiarism, so that is two independent findings that bring some of the contributions by this editor into question. -- PBS (talk) 14:33, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Copyright headache: Desiderata

Max Ehrmann's poem Desiderata has a very confused history, and from what I can tell at a glance it is not actually clear whether it has been (accidentally) placed in the public domain or not. A federal court has ruled that it is in the public domain but I am under the impression that the copyright "owner" has been able to claims his rights elsewhere. I have been unable to determine exact information on this. The potential problem is that the entire text of the poem is included in the article. Mangoe (talk) 11:57, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Claiming copyright when a federal court ruled otherwise? Reminds me of the company claiming copyright on a tree. We don't preemptively remove stuff based on bogus claims (altough the WMF will comply with DMCA takedown notices, regardless of validity). That being said, that poem is just long enough that it might fit better on wikisource rather than in the article. Yoenit (talk) 12:21, 16 May 2011 (UTC)
Indeed. If the copyright situation is ambiguous, such as an arguably PD-text logo, then we err on the side of caution, but when a circuit court has ruled that there was a forfeiture of copyright protection and cert was denied then the only ambiguity could be if a different circuit court upholds a copyright claim. If they file a takedown notice then we deal with it at that time, until then there's no credible copyright issue with the text. VernoWhitney (talk) 13:51, 16 May 2011 (UTC)
OK, I can live with that. Mangoe (talk) 19:32, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Clerks for WP:CP

I have proposed creating clerks for WP:CP; see Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#WP:CP clerks and please weigh in if you have input or ideas. Thanks. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:30, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

Congressional Record?

I've asked this question at WT:C and am reprinting it here. I was asked at my talk page about the copyright status of this note from Ester Jusuf in the Congressional Record. I'm unsure, but a bit concerned about it. Congressional Record About says, "With the exception of copyrighted articles, there are no restrictions on the republication of material from the Congressional Record." Ester Jusuf is evidently an Indonesian human rights attorney, so she is not a US federal employee, and this is published in the "Extension of Remarks" section and thus was not presented before Congress. If you have feedback, please provide it there and thank you. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 23:53, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

Proposed: replacing header of WP:CP

Hi. I have for a long time been wanting to clarify the header of this page based on feedback I have received over the years. The purpose is to make the processes clearer for taggers and responders. Since it has to be revised anyway to note the inclusion of clerks, I figured I'd go ahead and do it now. Please review Wikipedia:Copyright problems/Header redo and let me know at the CP talk page if I've introduced any problems. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 23:53, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

Montages of copyrighted material

There's a question at Wikipedia:External links/Noticeboard#Goldie_Hawn_and_video_copyright_violation about linking to a compilation of copyrighted material on YouTube. Views from editors who know more about this than I do (that's probably all of you) would be very welcome. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:25, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

Pending OTRSes and blanking?, copyvio template alteration

Hi, I thought I'd bring this one up here: should be articles with an {{OTRS pending}} added to the talk page be on display or blanked? I'm personally of the latter school of thought but I've been out of touch for quite a while. What's your view? MLauba (Talk) 12:53, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

I think there can be ways around the enormous copyvio tag, such as stubbing if possible. The text can be restored later. I don't know how requests are handled at OTRS but if it wasn't picked up at SCV maybe it could be noted on CP so the article doesn't slip below the radar.--NortyNort (Holla) 13:24, 1 June 2011 (UTC)
I like blanking because (a) sometimes they don't come through and (b) if we stub them and editors edit the stub, they may not like it much when we overwrite their text with the newly permitted. I've been thinking about overhaulting {{copyviocore}}, by the way, to make it far less accusatory--including changing it from "Possible copyright infringement" to "Article copyright investigation". --Moonriddengirl (talk) 18:21, 1 June 2011 (UTC)
Great idea, I actually went ahead and started playing around a bit here: User:MLauba/Copyviocore. Thoughts? And feel free to tinker on that one without asking for my input. MLauba (Talk) 10:47, 3 June 2011 (UTC)
I have tinkered boldly. :) Please, people, provide input. You can compare User:MLauba/Copyviocore and Template:Copyviocore, and my reasons for what I did are at User talk:MLauba/Copyviocore. Our main purpose here is to put up the necessary information so that we can address copyright problems without unnecessarily biting or driving away good faith contributors. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:11, 3 June 2011 (UTC)
I like the changes. If taggers don't follow the instructions, it should be collapsed up top. Commons has collapsed instructions on their copyvio CSD tags which is user friendly. The copypaste essay is a big plus and is very helpful to new editors. One comment, the current one and I believe this one have the duplication detector in the tag. If the content is blanked when tagged, the effectiveness of this tool is pretty much moot.--NortyNort (Holla) 13:00, 3 June 2011 (UTC)
Funnily enough, I just tinkered with a version where part of the instructions are collapsed. MLauba (Talk) 13:02, 3 June 2011 (UTC)
I found out yesterday that collapsed material doesn't work on Internet Explorer. I still think it is useful though.--NortyNort (Holla) 13:17, 3 June 2011 (UTC)
Seems to work fine on IE9, but I guess too many people use any version between 6 and 9 which may not work... MLauba (Talk) 13:23, 3 June 2011 (UTC)
Good point, my work computer has an older version.--NortyNort (Holla) 13:34, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

Table from a source

Rather than boldly contributing to the copyright clean up, I thought I'd get advice in advance:

I'm working on an article and want to include data from a small table in a book. The table can be seen online here (search for "Chen", and choose pg 97). It's five rows and five double columns. I'd like to split it into two tables (five rows and five single columns) (thus making it more like the original source) and place it in the article. The labels and formatting would be different, but the main substance (the numbers) would obviously be the same. Would this be a copyright violation? WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:44, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

The numbers should not copyrightable, assuming that they're just facts. If you switch up the labels and formatting, you should be okay, I think. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 19:50, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

Larry Poons

I am troubled by the chronology in this article - Larry Poons. It looks like a copyright violation issue - originally added to the article by someone claiming to be the author. Several months ago [15] I suggested to that editor that he review the copyright policies here, I suspect that he didn't...Modernist (talk) 13:51, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

It appears he wrote the bibliography and chronology for the book. I can't see an electronic copy of the book but removed the text under the presumtion that it was copied w/o permission.--NortyNort (Holla) 04:03, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

Changes to Template:cv-unsure

Changes to this template are being discussed at Template talk:cv-unsure. These include removing the person who placed it from the template and adding dated categories - both something I'm unsure about. More input from people working in copyright would be appreciated. Dpmuk (talk) 11:52, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

CP bot problems

It would appear we have quite a serious problem with bots no longer listing things at WP:CP, please see Wikipedia talk:Copyright problems#Bot problems for more. Dpmuk (talk) 10:50, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

Kamal Abbas paraphrasing

Hi

The article, Kamal Abbas, was recently reviewed and shortly afterwards removed from the DYK queue for multiple "close paraphrasing" problems. User talk:The Egyptian Liberal has requested a GOCE copyedit, but I suggested they ask here to see if anyone can help them address the paraphrasing/plagiarism/copyvio issues first.

Is there anyone from the project who might be able to spare some time and volunteer to go through the article and help them remove the bad stuff?

Thanks Chaosdruid (talk) 19:34, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

I will put it on my list and do my best to at least identify the problems. Alas, my list sometimes has stuff left undone these days! --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:56, 20 August 2011 (UTC)
First glance: the quote is much to extensive to pass WP:NFC. It needs to be boiled down to essentials, with other elements properly paraphrased.--Moonriddengirl (talk) 14:03, 20 August 2011 (UTC)
I'm putting my thoughts at the talk page of the article. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 14:40, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

Template:CWW etc

I created that template a few years ago with the intent of alerting about WP:CWW issues (I think before WP:CWW existed, and certainly before the CC era). I am updating the template set etc, but wanted to alert this wikiproject etc so that we can give it use and improve it.--Cerejota (talk) 02:01, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

Requesting Admin guidance on cut and paste situation.

I stumbled across a cut and paste move situation when participating at the Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The Yellow Tape discussion. The article Barenaked Ladies demo tapes has been crated by cutting and pasting the articles The Yellow Tape, Buck Naked, and Barenaked Lunch. Buck Naked has been redirected, but the other two have open AFDs. Should the AFDs be closed? There is no way that a deletion would be valid with the move of material requiring attribution. Some guidance or assistance would be appreciated. -- Whpq (talk) 14:25, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Copyvio and Lists of 100 top somethings

A set of 'Top 100...' articles is up for deletion, see for example Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/100 Greatest TV Moments. The possibility of copyvio has been brought up in that discussion - could some editors from here weigh in - not wrt to notability, but wrt to how many, if any, can be listed in such articles? Novickas (talk) 16:59, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

Request for check

Would someone be so kind as to look at Lean manufacturing#Steps_to_achieve_lean_systems? It looks very copyvioish. Stifle (talk) 13:29, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

It's a copyvio. Have a look at Production Operations Level Transition-To-Lean Description Manual from the Lean Advancement Initiative at MIT. It is not an absolute exact copy but it's very close. The copied material starts at page 6 of the PDF.-- Whpq (talk) 13:43, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

Complex copyvio Doctor of Environmental Science and Engineering

Doctor of Environmental Science and Engineering

All appearing to come in one form or another from http://www.ph.ucla.edu/ese/faq/faq.html and its surrounding pages. This is a complex one - not at-first-glance totally unambiguous, but some (at least) of it has been lifted straight from the UCLA site. Can someone more knowledgable (and less tired!)than me deal with it? Pesky (talk …stalk!) 08:03, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Great news guys!

Hey, user Δ (Betacommand) has just finished writing a tool called "Copyvio Detection Candidates" that lists all un-wikified articles over 3000 bytes so we can better purge the copyvios and obliterate that massive backlog. Essentially, the tools lists all articles that fall under Category:Articles that need to be wikified and are 3000 kb or higher, which is considered to be a point where most articles have been copied and pasted from other sources. To use the tool please add importScript('User:Δ/Copyvio Detection Candidates.js'); [16] to your individual script page, which will present a tab at the top of any cat title that has "Category:Articles that need to be wikified", or go to tools:~betacommand/cgi-bin/wikify. All hail for Beta! Sp33dyphil "Ad astra" 02:13, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

actually that javascript will work on any category. ΔT The only constant 02:24, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

small problem, long time

I've found a copyvio that has been in an article for many years. See Talk:Sydney_Spirit#Copied_off_Razorbacks_Website. What is the expected method of dealing with this now? I'd be happy to contact the club requesting copyright permission. John Vandenberg (chat) 12:09, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

That would be great, John. :) The thing to do is blank the article (if taking is extensive and the content can't be temporarily and easily excised) with {{copyvio}} and list it at CP, so that if they don't come through, we can do what need must. If it can be excised, you should probably just pull the text and derivatives until the permission is provided. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:13, 17 October 2011 (UTC)
Most of it has been excised due to three years of editing, and what little is left can be quickly revised or removed. What do we do with the edits over those years? I have occasionally used revdel to hide the revisions if they are a small set. I got cold feet this time and didnt want to revdel years worth of edits without someone like yourself telling me its SOP! ;-) John Vandenberg (chat) 13:50, 17 October 2011 (UTC) Even after its been excised, we'll contact the copyright holder as it is a good excuse to talk to them.
LOL! Practice there varies. :) It's SOP for me to remove copyright problems from an article history if I think there's a chance that somebody will inadvertently restore them later. I've seen this happen more than once. Once I even did it myself--I found a copyright problem that had been introduced on say 1/1/2011 and reverted to 12/31/2010, not realizing that on 3/1/2011 somebody had excised a vio from 10/1/2010. :/ If the content is substantial, I'd revdelete it. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:55, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Red alert! Copyvio problems massive

Hey guys, I've only recently started doing New Page Patrol, and I work from the back of the queue - which means that the majority of the articles I'm looking at are about a month old. I open new pages in batches of four, and I noticed the other day that it seemed like almost every batch of four contained a blatant copyvio :o(

So I did a brief numbers analysis. I've patrolled about 1500 new pages since the end of August, giving me an average of about (very roughly) 200 - 300 pages per week. I only started keeping a CSD log on 23rd September. It's here. At a very quick skim-through this morning, I counted about 35 pages which I'd CSD'd as unambiguous copyright violation - straight copy-paste from somewhere else. And I found quite a few which had maybe just one section like that, or way, waaaay-too-close paraphrasing, which didn't quite cross the threshold for a CSD.

The stats are appalling. It really does look as though one in every five or six new pages which have made it through to a month old are clear copyright violations. I'm not sure how to address this, but it desperately needs to be addressed - and there's a limit to the number of new pages that I personally, can patrol! I think maybe this Wikiproject needs to work very much hand-in-glove with new page patrol to clear the backlog, keeping an extremely watchful eye out for copyvios. I know everyone keeps saying we need more new page patrollers - but when it comes to so many copyvios coming in, we really, really do need more people on this.

The t hings which ring my alarm bells, on new pages, are loads of text with no (or few) citations; history showing thousands of bytes put in as the page creation (or within the first few edits); newbie suddenly creating a thousands-of-bytes article in pretty educated, scholarly prose, and all the other usual dead give-aways. I can't organise a massive collaborative new-pages clear up myself - but can anyone in this project take this on (teamwork, maybe?) or get a serious red alert out to new page patrollers to check vigilantly for copyvios as part of the patrolling process? It desperately, desperately needs to be done, and done very soon. Meanwhile, I will carry on doing as much as I reasonably can. Cheers, guys. Pesky (talk …stalk!) 04:51, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

CSB will live again, I hope. →Στc. 04:58, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
It has occurred to me that, if we can't get a CSB style bot working again due to the change in search engine conditions, it may be possible to have a machine learning bot, similar in nature to User:ClueBot NG detect and list possible copyright violations. Although I'm capable of writing a bot (and am slowly doing so for housekeeping tasks at WP:CP), the machine learning side of things is something I have no knowledge of. Dpmuk (talk) 07:35, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
Machine learning is not well suited to detecting copyright violations. A bot that would detect copyright violations would need a massive, massive database of all copyrighted material and a way to efficiently do fuzzy matching on it. Google and other search engines have both of these things, which is why they are ideal. Machine learning works by showing the bot hundreds of thousands of examples of "good" and "bad", and the bot tries to find patterns in the input that indicate whether or not it is good or not. This will not work well with machine learning at all. -- Cobi(t|c|b) 11:18, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
I think you may have missed what I was getting at. There are many signs that something may have been copy and pasted without having to resort to a text search. I wasn't expecting the latter! As you rightly say that would require a huge database and be duplicating google etc. Instead I was thinking of using signs like:
  • The introduction of large amounts on unwikified text.
  • Introducing text with many line breaks in but not followed by a blank line (I know there have examples of this with the IEP).
  • Certain patterns in the language used
and I'm sure there's more common sign that I can't think of / aren't aware of. Whether this would allow useful discrimination I'm less sure of, hence the reason for asking. I realise this wouldn't be foolproof and would still need human checking but it would be better than what we've got now (which is nothing). Dpmuk (talk) 11:25, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
I believe that a text search would be the most effective, which is what CSB did when it operated. I was simply saying that the way CSB worked was a better way than to use machine learning. -- Cobi(t|c|b) 12:20, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
Oh, I couldn't agree more. Text search is definitely the best way to go but at the moment there appears to be no way we can do it, hence the reason of trying to think of viable alternatives so we at least have something. Dpmuk (talk) 12:24, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

10c violations

Could someone please lend a helping hand at [17]? Toshio Yamaguchi (talk) 12:01, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

George Butterworth (psychologist)

I think I should have used {{Copyvio-revdel}}, but there are other issues I wanted to raise about George Butterworth (psychologist), namely how on earth did it get through new page patrol (or the Article Wizard review process) in the state it was in? So hopefully someone here can help with that. Also, I can't actually access the source that I think this was copied from, so if someone could suggest the best way to find someone to ask when that happens, that would be great. Thanks. Carcharoth (talk) 17:04, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

I can access most of it from Google Books UK [18] I can confirm that this version of the article is verbatim. Voceditenore (talk) 18:49, 5 November 2011 (UTC)
Aha! I found the complete version of "Afterword: Tribute to George Butterworth" as a pdf file here. Voceditenore (talk) 19:11, 5 November 2011 (UTC)
Re the other part of your question, as far as I can see, this page was never patrolled. It doesn't appear in the patrol log. There was a big backlog built up at NPP in September and October. If a page hasn't been patrolled within one month it drops off the list of pages to be patrolled [19] and thus slips through the net. Voceditenore (talk) 19:05, 5 November 2011 (UTC)
Thank-you for finding that and looking up the patrolled status. I will carry out a revdel of the offending revisions (first time I'll have done this, so hope I get it right) and will drop a note off to those who edited this page since it was created. Carcharoth (talk) 20:02, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

OK, if someone could check here and here that I've done that right, I'd be grateful. Thanks. I'll remember to Google for copied text in future. I had assumed as the link was to a paywall, that it wouldn't be searchable, but it was. Carcharoth (talk) 20:12, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

Shahdaei paradox

Can I get some eyes on Shahdaei paradox. I was conducting a GAN review of the article when I identified 3 separate instances of copied content (verbatim from different sources, 2 had citations to the source but were not quotes and weren't really good quote material, one did not have a citation). I reported those to WP:CP but I am concerned there may be additional problems still lurking in the article. I also don't have access to some of the cited material. I hope some editors with experience detecting copyvio will take a look at it. Thanks, Monty845 21:38, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

Request a second review

I opened Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/Night w. Night w has been quite helpful so far. Xe re-wrote one of the articles, and I said that I would review it. I took a look at it and its sources, and it seems to me to be still somewhat close to the sources, but I think far enough away to get past close-paraphrasing concerns. However, before I history merge the article back into mainspace, I would appreciate a second editor with more CCI experience taking a look. The article is at Talk:Al-Nurayn Mosque/Temp. The truth is that the article would actually be improved if it weren't so overly focused on every single detail of the arson attack, which would help get the text farther away from the original news sources, but that goes a bit past what a CCI needs to do, I think. But, again, I'd like a second pair of eyes. Once that's taken care of, I actually think a lot of Nightw's could be handled relatively easily, since much of xyr editing is on List articles, where there isn't nearly such a major concern about copying; I can add that to my list of things to do. Qwyrxian (talk) 06:44, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

Alleged persistent copyright violations

Could someone please have a look at my talk page section Amadigi di Gaula and the talk pages of the two other interested parties Talk:Party 1 Talk:Party 2 -- PBS (talk)

Antonio Pimentel de Prado suggests that this might be a recurring problem with one of the editor's work. In light of the long history of copyright warnings on his talk page, he really should be blocked for the most recent copying. Any thoughts? --Mkativerata (talk) 19:04, 23 November 2011 (UTC)
I resisted posting here because (unfortunately) I've become involved in Taksen's approach to editing at Wikipedia. Yes I've been critical, however I feel I've also tried to help Taksen correct the mistakes he has been making. I'm mainly interested in articles related to Handel, but with a sense of apprehension, I just checked the Antonio Pimentel de Prado article mentioned above. I checked the last reference and found the following text:
There is a legend of a passionate romance between the diplomat and the Sovereign, as designed by Hollywood in a film where Greta Garbo plays the leading role. The particulars of this love affair are not known, but in the archives there are writings and letters from the Queen to the Ambassador, full of tender expressions and nuances.
Unfortunately, that text is copied word-for-word from http://www.swedishbulletin.se/sb/articles/0310-sweden-spain.shtml (and the Duplicate Detector report confirms this). I assume that because Taksen is the only editor mentioned in the history, he must have added the text (although I'm a bit mystified as to why I can't get a diff of the first edit, and I find it strange that the first edit comment suggests something other than adding an article).
I'm really at my wit's end because no policy, or guidance from another editor causes Taksen to alter his approach to editing articles (the above example was added by Taksen five days ago), and as I discovered yesterday, the English Wikipedia isn't the only Wikipedia where he's been caught doing the same thing (see the Dutch Wikipedia part of User_talk:Taksen#Reply for an example where he was warned about copying text—three years ago).
GFHandel ♬  04:44, 25 November 2011 (UTC)
That is when he copied the article from his user area into article space. Here is the history prior to that. I have issued him with a formal warning -- see User talk:Taksen#Warning. In the mean time I suggest GFHandel that you take a lead in this and present the evidence that you have unearthed at Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations. I have placed a {{copyvio}} on Antonio Pimentel de Prado, and will file at Wikipedia:Copyright problems/2011 November 25. -- PBS (talk) 05:39, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

{{PD-textlogo}} and the threshold of originality

Where does it begin? That's what I'm wondering. Recently came across File:Seoul emblem.svg, which is tagged as being PD because of a lack of orgiinality. But is that logo in the centre really not original enough? I would have thought there was enough to claim copyright there. And then today, a problem in the opposite direction, File:ShiodomeCenterLogo.gif -- is the stylised S original enough to claim copyright? In this case, I wouldn't think so.

Basically, are these two images both tagged wrongly? Should the first not be FU and the second PD? I'm nowhere near well versed enough to know for sure, and an extra pair of eyes would be grand. Thanks, Buttons to Push Buttons (talk | contribs) 09:44, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

I think you're right on the money, but I'm never as comfortable with images as I am with text. I'd probably recommend running this by WP:MCQ. Those guys know their image issues, largely. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 16:34, 27 November 2011 (UTC)
Huh, never even heard of that board before... Good to know. Much thanks; I've taken it over there :) Buttons to Push Buttons (talk | contribs) 18:42, 27 November 2011 (UTC)
It might be a bit late, but there's also a big discussion about this at commons:COM:VPC#PD-textlogo; second opinions. --Stefan2 (talk) 14:30, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Old enough?

Hi,

File:Rani Sipri's Mosque Ahmedabad.jpg was uploaded by a contributor who does not have a very good grasp of copyright and licensing (but is getting better). This image is identified in the upload as from here. The license is obviously wrong as the uploader is not the copyright holder. The image is circa 1880. Is this old enough to make it public domain? Any caveats? Thanks. -- Whpq (talk) 16:02, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Fixed it. ww2censor (talk) 16:15, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

User page linking to youtube videos

What's the policy about an editor linking to copyrighted material on youtube on his/her userpage? The material is listed as 'stuff I like', not for a "good" reason. --DanielPharos (talk) 14:11, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

I hade a YouTube link on my user page months ago and removed it. The same policy for articles should apply to user spaces in that regard.--NortyNort (Holla) 23:10, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
I agree it should (at least, regarding copyrighted material), but does it? --DanielPharos (talk) 08:56, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Possible copy violations

Hi in the Sinai and Palestine Campaign article I located several copy violation to an online copy of Powles, C. Guy The New Zealanders in Sinai and Palestine, these I have deleted see history. The article is very big and I suspect other sections may be suspect. Only by the better standard of prose.

  • In the Sinai and Palestine Campaign#Reconnaissances, May to June 1916 section this part looks suspect But conditions on the ground in the Sinai desert were extreme; after the middle of May and in particular from mid June to the end of July the heat in the Sinai desert ranged from extreme to fierce. The terrible heat was not so bad as the shocking Khamsin dust storms which blow once every 50 days for a few hours or several days; the atmosphere is turned into a haze of floating sand particles flung about by a hot southerly wind.
  • In the Sinai and Palestine Campaign#Southern Levant section this part looks suspect At Khan Yunis gardens, orchards, fig plantations and grazing were carried on, in the Rafa and Sheikh Zowaiid areas barley and wheat were grown, and at Gaza an important depot for cereals with a German steam mill, barley, wheat, olives, vineyards, orange groves and wood for fuel were grown as well as many goats grazed. Barley was exported to England for brewing into English beer and in 1912 the 40,000 inhabitants of Gaza imported £10,000 of yarn from Manchester. Maize, millet, beans and water melon all harvested in early autumn were cultivated in most of these localities.

It may just be that the editor who added these sections was a better writer, but after finding the previous violations thought it better to mention it. I can not find anything in a Google search to confirm my suspicions. One of the sections I deleted had also been added to the First Battle of Gaza article so that was removed as well. I presume this is the right place to bring this up, if not could you point me to the correct page. Thanks Jim Sweeney (talk) 03:05, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

Just found and deleted another close copy vio to Powles in the Capture of Jericho (1918), also in the Prelude section a close paraphrase to Wavell has been deleted. The rest of this section also looks suspect, again by prose alone, but unable to find anything to confirm my suspicions. Jim Sweeney (talk) 04:22, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
Also a copy vio to Powles in First Transjordan attack on Amman (1918), is there a programme/bot that can check these articles? Jim Sweeney (talk) 05:06, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

Nomination of Template:Derivative for deletion

Hello, this is just a heads up to inform you that I have nominated Template:Derivative for deletion at TFD. Please comment and add your input on the nomination page which you can find here. Thanks, Acather96 (talk) 21:33, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Copyright violation message during editing

Whenever I edit a page, I see a message under the editing window that says "Please do not copy and paste from copyrighted websites," but shouldn't one refrain from copying and pasting from any source?14jbella (talk) 04:21, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

No, it is acceptable to copy and paste from external sources in some circumstances. If the material is in the public domain or is otherwise licenced in such a way that we can use it then there are no copyright concerns. Anyone who copies such text should also specify the source it came from to avoid plagiarism. However provided these two conditions are met there's nothing necessarily wrong with copying text from elsewhere. Hut 8.5 12:20, 3 March 2012 (UTC)
Of course for many acceptable licenses (e.g. CC-BY-SA) doing some sort of attribution is not just a plagiarism issue - it is part of the licensing conditions and so we have to do it if we are to copy the text. Dpmuk (talk) 06:29, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Bot slapp copyright violations

Can you ask your bot not to slapp editors with copyright violation notices in the same minute a user is creating the article.[20] Also, when the copyright violation consists of a single sentence from a bot-created article on another Wikipedia page, it's not a copyright violation. Let's look at the edit:[21]

"Oncosperma is a genus of flowering plant in the Arecaceae family. It contains the following species:" This sentence construct for taxon is a member of next high taxon is not original. Copyright requires originality.

The taxobox is not original. Copyright requires originality.

The list of species is not original. PolBot, who created the text that MadmanBot is claiming is copyrighted, scrubs the information from a database.[22]

PolBot should be stating what database it gets its information from; but its articles are not copyrightable. The bare bones text identified as a copyright violation is not copyrightable due to its complete lack of originality. I've read, in just this year, at least 2 copyright violations in the lead paragraph to the main page featured article (and, I do know how Wikipedia mirrors work, the text was taken from books, older books from the late 20th century, pages not on google books).

Let's put things in perspective and catch major copyright violations, and leave alone poor editors trying to create articles and getting edit conflicts with bots tagging their articles as copyright violations of unoriginal and bot articles with 2 single declaratory sentences. 68.107.135.146 (talk) 16:56, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

You've been talking to the bot's owner since the 1st of the month. Edit conflicts are unfortunate, but fortunately they're also easily countered thanks to MediaWiki software, which presents both your text and the text in the edit conflict version. There's nothing to stop your pasting the content in the bottom of the page - your text - and putting it in the article anyway. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 17:18, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
I'm not worried about my edit conflicts. I don't like to see users run off by bots, particularly if the bot task is without value.
However, here I would like to address the issue of whether the bot should be tagging single sentence species articles as copyright violations in the same instant that the article is created. "X is a genus of family Xaceae" is not a copyright violation. The bot could be set to delay for species articles, identifiable by the taxobox, and this particular sentence construction for species articles could be excluded in the code. In this case, it should definitely be excluded, because the text is a boilerplate written by the coder to be used by the bot. Even if it weren't boilerplate, the content is generic enough to fail the originality test necessary for these 2 declaratory sentences to be copyright violations. They're not. They should not be identified as such. That would eliminate the edit conflict. 68.107.135.146 (talk) 17:45, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
Ah, I assumed edit conflicts were a concern given your statement that "leave alone poor editors trying to create articles and getting edit conflicts". If you're not worried about edit conflicts, then my information on how to avoid problems with them isn't helpful, and the rest is material for discussion with the bot's owner, which I know is still ongoing. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 18:13, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
I'm not worried about my edit conflicts. But, yes, I am concerned at bots aggressively tagging in a way that chases editors off. 68.107.135.146 (talk) 18:24, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

CCI of User:Virago250

WP:CCI instructs editors to seek guidance here if previous disputes between the alerter and the "suspect" have occurred.

I was alerted of a blatant copyvio of Bastard studies on my talk page by a translator of German WP. The article is gone in the mean time, it consisted of an entire paper published at [23]. Assuming (in violation of AGF) that such an egregious thing does not just happen, I checked other articles created by Virago250. I found:

  • German Ost (East), concerns noted here.
  • Nazi twin study, I had to remove all but the first two lines for copyvio.
  • all four concentration camp articles, I haven't acted on them yet. The original is found at [24], the duplication detector report is quite unambiguous, for all of them.

I did not yet check the remaining articles; so far the "success rate" was 100%. The pattern is clearly that articles are produced word-by-word from content published on [25]. Is this "too small" to open a CCI? If no, can somebody please do it for me? I had previous reverts of Virago's content, and discussion on his talk page that might be seen as involvement. Thanks, --Pgallert (talk) 19:01, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

Hmm. Looking into it. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 20:46, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Close paraphrasing examples

There is a discussion at Wikipedia talk:Close paraphrasing concerning the language of the examples being used there. These examples were generated to give contributors guidance in talking to other editors where problems are sufficient enough to warrant tagging of the article, either by blanking with {{copyvio}} or with {{close paraphrasing}}. The specifics at this point seem to revolve around whether or not the examples should be altered to default to use on a single passage of close paraphrasing (by removing the current text "This is an example, there are other passages that similarly follow quite closely") or altered to embrace paraphrasing that may not be as close (by eliminating the term "very" from "very closed paraphrased"). Additional input in this conversation would be welcome to help establish consensus, here. The section immediately above is, really, essential reading. Sorry for the complexity; a content dispute seems to have swelled it a bit. :) Please see the discussion there if you have an opinion and would like to take part. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 19:55, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia:HighBeam

Wikipedia:HighBeam describes a limited opportunity for Wikipedia editors to have access to HighBeam Research.
—Wavelength (talk) 17:33, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

New editor with copyright issues

Hello WikiProject Copyright Cleanup members, including my good friend Moonriddengirl. Today I came across a new editor who is creating a number of new stubs on marine life that have copy violations in them. I left a note on the user's talk page explaining what the problem is. He/She already got a few bot notices to the same effect. I wanted to give you guys a "heads up" because I may not be able to keep a close eye on the person's work from now on, as I am very busy with other stuff on WP and IRL. The user's name is Bastaco and his contributions list is here. Many thanks to you all for your important work, Invertzoo (talk) 13:52, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

Bastaco replied to me on my talk page and I replied on his talk page to that note from him. I do hope he understands that this is a serious problem. I want to stop him before he makes dozens more of these articles and ends up like Graham Bould. Best, Invertzoo (talk) 14:39, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for your very sensible approach to him, Invertzoo. He seems open to discussion. I'll keep an eye on his talk page so that, hopefully, if problems persist I'll be able to intervene before it reaches that stage. We do not need any more Graham Boulds. :/ --Moonriddengirl (talk) 15:38, 27 September 2012 (UTC)
Thank you Moonriddengirl. I still think Bastaco may possibly now feel that simply putting the info into quote marks is enough to make it OK. I think he wants the Wikipedia article-writing process to be much easier and faster than it actually is, so he/she can churn out lots of new articles. As you say, you will have to see what he/she does next. If I remember I will try to keep an eye on what happens, but I cannot guarantee I will get around to doing that. Best, Invertzoo (talk) 22:49, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

RfC notice: Photo credits

Hello, everybody. Editors interested in copyright, images or both may want to participate in a RfC about whether the authors of copyrighted images should be credited in a footnote in the article where the image is used.  Sandstein  10:39, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

Wanting to upload an image of a journal cover

Hello Moonriddengirl et al., I started a new stub Miscellanea Malacologica about a Dutch malacology journal. I am in contact with the editor in the Netherlands about the idea of using a low-res image of the cover for the info box. He has told me he owns the copyright on the images on the website and it is totally OK for me to use an image of the cover, but I told him it is not that simple. I don't know if the Netherlands has a "fair use" exception to copyright as the US does, in which case I could simply upload the image from his website, no problem. If not, then I have to do the rigmarole with him writing to Wikimedia. Does anyone have a suggestion as to how to proceed from here? Do we know how to find out about Dutch copyright law? Invertzoo (talk) 00:00, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

Here is what the editor said today, for what it's worth:

"Dutch Law I know to be relaxed about using copyrighted images. That is, if there is no complaint by the copyright-holder(s) then no action will be taken (third parties have no say, except in contemporary music). If there is a dispute, then there will be a strong urge to deal with it outside court (lawsuits, American style, are still very rare here). And if there is some proof of permission being given (such as in this and my previous email) then there is no problem at all. So for the record: as publisher and copyright holder of Miscellanea Malacologica I herewith grant you permission to use images of the front covers of all published issues of Miscellanea Malacologica for public display on the internet, provided that there will be only a change in size and/or colour. I have to make an exception for the single issue which has a portrait of on the front cover."

Invertzoo (talk) 13:00, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

It doesn't matter whether the Netherlands has a fair use law or not. Wikipedia is hosted in the United States and is only subject to US copyright law. If this person isn't prepared to make these covers available under a free licence then you'll have to upload them under fair use. Hut 8.5 14:35, 1 May 2013 (UTC)
Thanks Hut, User:Randykitty uploaded it already under fair use. Thanks again everyone, Invertzoo (talk) 01:00, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

ArchNet

Hello folks. I recently cleaned up and merged two duplicate articles (with different names) on the Mashhad of Sayyida Ruqayya. I discovered that a lot of the text had been copied or closely paraphrased from the website ArchNet here. But I am unclear as to what kind of license ArchNet has. Would someone take a look and tell me how "open" the materials on the site are? I was assuming their materials are all under copyright, but maybe I am wrong. Thanks, Invertzoo (talk) 15:22, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

Use of non-free Bible translations

There is an RfC concerning what should Wikipedia's policy be on the use of non-free Bible translations: Wikipedia talk:Non-free content/Archive 60#RfC: Use of non-free Bible translations.--FutureTrillionaire (talk) 13:54, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

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