Wikipedia talk:Copyrights

Photos of food

Surprisingly, I couldn't find any mention of food, neither on WP:IMAGEPOL nor here; also couldn't find any food-related license templates, which makes me believe I know the answer to my questions already, but here goes:

Is food "design" copyrightable? If I photograph a cake that I didn't make, is that breaching the cook's copyright? Would I only be allowed to take pictures of foodstuffs that I personally made, or that I have been granted permission to?

(I understand a photo someone else took is copyrightable by itself, in this hypothetical I assume I'm the one who took the photo, and wondering specifically about the food's copyright)

I believe the answer to these questions to be "no", but I feel I must ask to be sure. — Avelludo 16:01, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

There is a scholarly discussion of the issue at Food Art: Protecting "Food Presentation" Under U.S. Intellectual Property Law. It is possible that a chef's food presentation design is protected under copyright law, but the issue of whether a particular design is covered by copyright probably would require a ruling from a court. - Donald Albury 16:43, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

A complex mold to create a speculaas cookie, too old for copyright protection

Avelludo, if a complex design is made (usually with a mold), copyright can come into play. But it has to be judged on a case by case basis. To the degree that the design is functional (e.g. cherries on top of a cake), there is no copyright. But where elements serve no function like chocolate or a cookie made with a mold (e.g. Oreo's) or a photo that is printed onto a cake , the design may be eligible for copyright. For cake decoration (like complex swirls or drawings with buttercream), it's much harder to say. In many cases such decoration would end up being de minimis, and this may even apply to foods from a mold. For example: a pile of cookies without focus on any particular one possibly won't violate copyright while a single cookie in full focus possibly would. File:Spekulatius four pieces of.jpg for example may or may not be a copyright violation. (might still be argued either way and I don't know how old the design is) File:Birthday cakes.JPG would be a copyright violation if this photo of Marilyn Monroe is protected by copyright. (it may or may not be public domain already) File:Kuva kakkuun7.jpg is likely a copyright violation. The uploader claims to be the author and I'm sure they printed and photographed the cake, but unless they also photographed the tiger, it's a derivative work. The tiger photo has been used on the cover of Terrell Living of January 2009 and there's a larger version on Pinterest. The actual source is a mystery though, but it's not the cake. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 20:46, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

Thanks guys. It's a bit more complex than I initially thought!

If I understand it correctly:

• The plating itself isn't copyrightable, as it lacks the "fixation in a tangible medium" requirement and, to a lesser degree, isn't "separable from its utilitarian function". Thus, it can be photographed without breaching copyright:
  • For example, a fried egg on a plate isn't copyrightable, even if said egg was served by a fancy restaurant.
• The design of the food might be trademarked, if it's distinguishable enough:
  • Mold designs (e.g. Oreo cookies, Goldfish crackers) could be trademarked, but that's possibly circumventable if the photo doesn't focus specifically on the design (e.g. a bowl of cookies);
  • Otherwise copyrighted works on the food should bar pictures from being uploaded: printed photos on cakes, Spider-Man themed candles, etc.

It might be interesting to add a summary of this information to WP:COPYRIGHT or WP:IMAGEPOL (or both!). I'm also thinking it could be useful to have license templates specifically for this sort of thing.

In any case, thanks a lot! — Avelludo 23:29, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

Avelludo, you are confusing copyright and trademarks. Very simple things can be trademarked, for example the word "Apple". We don't care much about trademarks. (beyond sometimes tagging affected files with {{trademarked}}) A trademark only protects certain actions, like selling product with a specific name on it, and often only applies to a sector. For example, Apple Corps and Apple Inc. have been in conflict for a long time, one of the issues was that Apple Inc. had moved into the music industry with iTunes. As for whether food is "fixated in a tangible medium", I suspect it is, but it's potentially thin ice. Is an ice sculpture fixated? A sand castle? Sure, soup isn't fixated. But a cookie or chocolate bar? "fixation in a tangible medium" means you can't copyright an idea or something you said, you have to write it down first. But once it's recorded, it's fixated. Whether the actual creator or the recorder would own the copyright for the depicted work is unclear but I wouldn't recommend relying on that. Most food items, like your fried eggs, are utilitarian though. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 01:52, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm not all that familiar with copyright law, so I make these kinds of mistakes all the time. It's why I asked about food in the first place! I very much appreciate the patience and thoroughness :) Thanks a bunch. — Avelludo 02:10, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

Cheerios image

Hi all! I have been having a discussion with @Sundayclose: on the Cheerios article regarding an image. So this is the image in question (here used only for demonstrative, not copyright purposes, please do not remove until discussion is complete):

I took this picture with my phone of the back of a Cheerio's box. The question is that if I list this as "fair use" is it "fair use" or not? I know there are hundreds of corporate or company logos all over wikipedia that are effectively "screenshots" of the company logo but with the statement of "This image is copyrighted, but I believe it is fair use." If we cannot use publicly available material, with a warning that we do not own the copyright, and that we describe as "fair use", for non-commercial purposes... then jeez, we need to reform some laws!! Th78blue (They/Them/Theirs • talk) 21:04, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

I'll be the first to acknowledge that I don't have a lot of expertise in image copyright on Wikipedia. I just wanted to be cautious. I hope someone who knows more will give their blessing for using this image! Sundayclose (talk) 21:11, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

An image can't be "fair use" on its own. We can only say that using it in a specific context is fair use. In this case, I think the relevant guideline is WP:LOGOS. pburka (talk) 21:29, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

@Th78blue and Sundayclose: This is really not the best place to discuss individual files. A better place would be at WP:MCQ, but an even better place would be at c:COM:VPC since this file is uploaded to WP:COMMONS. Wikipedia and Commons do overlap a bit when it comes to files, but there a some differences between the two which is why it's generally better to discuss files uploaded to Commons on Commons and files uploaded to Wikipedia on Wikipedia. Since this file isn't being used anywhere on Wikipedia other than this page, there's really not a lot to discuss here.

A couple things for general reference before discussing this further on Commons: (1) Commons is a global project and files uploaded to it can be used by any Wikimedia Foundation project; (2) Commons doesn't really care how a file is being used as long has an appropriate copyright license and the potential for encyclopedic use by some Wikimedia Foundation project; and (3) Commons doesn't accept any "fair use" content per c:COM:FAIR so whether this file can be kept is likely going to depend upon c:COM:Packaging. A couple of things about image use on Wikipedia for general reference: (1) Wikipedia (i.e. English Wikipedia) is a local project and files uploaded to it can only be used on Wikipedia; (2) Wikipedia accepts both freely-licensed images and non-free images (i.e. copyright-protected images); and (3) Wikipedia requires that all image use comply with WP:IUP, but non-free images also need to comply with Wikipedia's non-free content use policy. -- Marchjuly (talk) 22:04, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

It appears likely to me (but I am also not a copyright expert) that this image can and should be tagged as public domain, rather than free use, using {{PD-textlogo}} or {{PD-US-not renewed}}. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:15, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

citing linguistic examples

Just to head off potential issues of someone enforcing COPYVIO too vigorously, where would be a good place to note how linguistic data is cited? You can't paraphrase it -- that would be OR -- nor should you put it in quotation marks. The practice in linguistics is to copy the sample text, its interlinear gloss and translation verbatim, and add a citation, usually to the right, for each such passage. An editor might object that the translation passes the creative threshold and is copyrightable, but that's not how it works with linguistic publications. — kwami (talk) 08:59, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

It sounds like you're asking for a blanket exemption from copyright policies for linguistic examples, which isn't the case at all. They have to be treated the same way as other pieces of text. Yes they would absolutely pass the creative threshold for copyright protection (which is very low), and there's a difference between "enforcing COPYVIO too vigorously" and "enforcing COPYVIO". Other linguistics publications either aren't following the same copyright policies as Wikipedia or just don't care about copyright. Hut 8.5 12:28, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

It's not an exemption because because it's not a violation of copyright. By your standards, nearly every 2ary source linguistic publication ever published, in every country and by every publishing house, is in violation of copyright, and a couple thousand WP article are in violation of copyright. That's not reality. If someone elicits the sentence "I bought some fish last night" in the language of one of our articles, glosses it and translates it, then it's not copy-vio for us to cite it verbatim to illustrate that language. That's standard practice. It would only be plagiarism if we didn't cite it. So yes, I would like clarification that verbatim linguistic examples are acceptable under WP policy, so that ppl don't erroneously think the situation is as you describe it. — kwami (talk) 20:21, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

Just a note of the recent discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Linguistics#Example sentences are all copyright violations and should be removed. – Uanfala (talk) 02:35, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

Here's a link to a chapter (arbitrarily chosen) by Matthew Dryer in the online version of the The World Atlas of Language Structures. The Atlas was first published by Oxford University Press, and is now hosted by the German-state funded Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. The examples (1) and (4)–(7) have exactly the format that is described by kwami above, and all sources are fully copyright protected. Does anyone in all earnest insinuate that the scholar and the two legal entities mentioned above deliberately or neglectfully violate copyright laws here? –Austronesier (talk) 15:27, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

First of all there's a difference between a violation of Wikipedia's copyright policies and a violation of copyright law. The two are not the same thing and the project has tighter restrictions than the legal minimum in some areas because of our commitment to building a free content encyclopedia. Secondly the fact someone else is publishing this material does not mean it's not copyrighted or that it can be used. Possibly they didn't care about the copyright issue, didn't think anybody would notice, or didn't even consider the issue themselves. None of these are good reasons for us using the material. There is nothing wrong with using brief attributed quotations from copyrighted sources in some circumstances (see Wikipedia:Non-free_content#Text), but excessive quotation from copyrighted sources isn't allowed and linguistic examples are subject to the same principles which apply elsewhere. Hut 8.5 17:44, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

Your claim that all linguists, linguistic departments at universities and linguistic publishing houses world-wide are serial copyright violators, who for some reason are never prosecuted, is simply ludicrous. You obviously know nothing about the topic, and shouldn't be presenting your ignorant speculation as fact. The data is not copyrighted. Copying large amounts of data may be inappropriate for an encyclopedic overview of a topic, but it's not copyvio. The analysis, interpretation and conclusions are a different matter, for those are creative work on the part of the author.

If science is not allowed on WP because data violates WP's copyright policies, then WP needs to be abandoned as an encyclopedia. Better I think to modify our policies to reflect reality. — kwami (talk) 07:07, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

Don't be ridiculous. You've jumped from "excessive quotation from copyrighted sources isn't allowed" to "science isn't allowed on Wikipedia". Neither I nor anybody else has said anything like that, and if you're going to erect absurd straw men then I don't see any point in continuing this. What is definitely not allowed on Wikipedia are incivility and personal attacks. Seriously, try telling your colleagues that their comments are "ignorant speculation" and see how long you last in your job. Nobody is going to amend this policy to allow a magic exemption for linguistic examples (not that the community can change copyright policy anyway). Hut 8.5 12:11, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

I'm asking how we can ensure that scientific data can be incorporated into our articles without over-zealous copyvio editors deleting it because it triggers plagiarism-detecting software. Your response was obstructive. Instead of helping work out how WP can host articles on scientific topics, you appear to think that standard scholarship is indeed a copyright violation, and therefor cannot appear on WP. If you understand that is not the case, and you were careless in your wording above, please contribute to this discussion in a positive manner, with your ideas on how this (or another) policy page can clarify to the copyvio people that copying large amounts of data from a copyrighted source is not in itself a copyvio problem, and the material shouldn't be summarily deleted. — kwami (talk) 12:58, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

I'm not going to discuss this with you. You're now accusing me of acting in bad faith (I'm now "obstructive" as well as "incompetent") and you're still claming that I want to stop Wikipedia having articles on scientific topics, which is ridiculous. If you can't accept that people who disagree with you aren't all stupid and may not be out to severely damage the project then it's not going to be possible to have a constructive discussion. Hut 8.5 18:13, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

Another example would be the large amounts of data we copy verbatim in astronomy articles. All the orbital parameters of the thousands of asteroids and moons we have articles on, for example, are copied verbatim from sources that are often copyright-protected. Is astronomy another field that isn't allowed on WP?

In biological classifications, we've copied lists of tens of thousands of species and their interrelationships verbatim. Is biological cladistics forbidden on WP because of copyright concerns?

The characteristics of atomic isotopes. In probably all fields of science, there are areas where data needs to be copied verbatim if we are not to engage in OR or even falsify our coverage of the topic.

We could say something like,

Data that is not subject to copyright may be, and indeed often should be, copied verbatim. Examples are parsed and translated example sentences in linguistics, orbital and physical parameters in astronomy, and lists of member species and their interrelationships in biological classifications. Paraphrasing in such cases is inappropriate as it can distort the data and run afoul of WP:OR. Paraphrasing or other alteration in such cases is inappropriate wp:OR because the change will produce different data and thus invalidate the citation.

— kwami (talk) 07:38, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

I would word your last sentence more firmly. How about "Paraphrasing or other alteration in such cases is inappropriate wp:OR because the change will produce different data and thus invalidate the citation."

Hut8.5's concerns are not groundless, see for example Climatic Research Unit email controversy#Responses, fourth paragraph (An editorial in Nature ...): data may indeed be subject to IPR, so we do need to identify precisely that which is in the public domain and that which is not. "Everybody does it" and "custom and practice" aren't really strong enough: do we know for sure that the authors cited above haven't paid to 'clear' the rights? Can we cite an RS that says "you may do this"? Not easy! --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 11:46, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

Yes we do, actually. Ask anyone who's published in linguistics. You can copy data from copyrighted sources as long as you don't engage in plagiarism. That's standard practice, and no-one pays to get the rights. (People even copy data from works that copied it from other works, which of course can be a problem if there are copy errors, but copyright isn't an issue.) It's not like copying poetry, where you do need to pay if you use more than Fair Use allows. Similarly, you don't have to pay to reproduce orbital data for astronomical bodies, or to list the boiling temperatures of various elements, even though it was expensive to collect that information, you just need to say where you got the data from. — kwami (talk) 13:03, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

I've have published articles with Routledge and OUP in volumes that went through the hands of the volume editors and series editors. I have cited verbatim interlinear examples from non-free sources. All instances involved are keenly aware of plagiarism and copyright violations, and my citations (and many others by other contributors) did not require any payments "to 'clear' the rights".

I want to stress that this is not about making room for an "anything goes"-policy, but rather to overcome a potential "nothing goes"-attitude that is not in accordance with WP-policies. Large reproduction of data without in-text citation that also reproduces the expositional structure framing the data is of course not acceptable for plagiarism and copyright reasons. But this is not what we are talking about. I have linked to a concrete example before, but based on the reply (that even didn't stop from questioning the professional ethics of the explicitly named scholar, publisher and research institution), I will reproduce it here to elicit a more specific answer:

Anywa (Reh 1996: 199)[1]
Dìmó	ā-rúBó	kī	tìí
Dimo	PST-thread.ANTIPASS	OBL	beads
‘Dimo threaded beads [and then ...]’

^{[1] The citation Reh 1996 is linked to a full bibliographical reference}

What is excessive about this kind of citation if we made it here in WP? What makes it different from a 50-word blockquote?

I am aware of the pre-emptive care that requires WP policies to be stricter that copyright laws, but this falls way below the line of any violation, and doesn't enter any gray area either. –Austronesier (talk) 14:07, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

@Hut 8.5: –Austronesier (talk) 20:00, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

I don't think there would be a problem with including that example by itself, but I don't see anybody actually saying this example isn't OK in the first place. The rules on copyrighted quotes are here: they have to be brief, they have to be used to illustrate a point, they have to be formatted as a quotation and they have to have an inline citation. This example is brief and has a citation, so if it's formatted as a quotation and is used to illustrate a point then it's OK. If you wanted to include a large number of examples like that (say all seven examples in that link), then that's no longer brief and so it's not OK. The only concrete cases of these things being removed that I can see are [1] and [2], which both use substantial amounts of text from copyrighted sources. Hut 8.5 20:43, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

So there might have been misunderstandings in this thread, ok, let's try a clean start then. What other ways do we have to format it as a quotation when using actual quotation marks is not really feasible due to the standardized layout structure of interlinear examples? Would something like "The following interlinearized example is quoted from McFoo & Barowski (2018: page):" immediately preceding the example suffice? –Austronesier (talk) 21:04, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

My concern is the statement "if you wanted to include ... all seven examples in that link, then that's no longer brief and so it's not OK." It is extremely common to use seven examples from a single source, so you are essentially saying that FA-quality articles in linguistics are not allowed on WP. That's not acceptable, and we're here to make sure that kind of spurious (c)-enforcement isn't a problem in the future.

I could see a different argument in this case: that there is creative judgement on Dryer's part in selecting which examples from which sources best illustrate the grammatical pattern in question, and that copying all of his examples would violate Dryer's copyright in selecting them. But it wouldn't violate copyright of the original sources. If we went to the sources that Dryer found, and chose seven different examples -- or maybe added some additional sources as well -- then there would be no (c) concern. If we took all seven from a single source there would still be no (c) concern. I suppose it amounts to what you consider to be "brief", but seven examples would almost certainly be needed for an FA-quality article, and if we were illustrating a language that only has one good source for it, then that would mean seven (or more) examples from that single source.

Point of clarification

Hut8.5, as a point of clarification, can I ask what the copyright standards are for verbatim copying of published data in other fields? For instance, do covid case numbers on Wikipedia have to be sourced from public domain publications? I can't speak to copyright law itself, but I think the reason this discussion is a little baffling to professional linguists is that verbatim copying of published data sentences isn't merely permissible but obligatory in our professional lives. I would get fired if I got caught altering a data sentence (unless I was a native speaker), and could even conceivably go to jail. Botterweg14 (talk) 00:12, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

Generally speaking you can't claim copyright on statistics because there is no creative element involved. At least in the United States you can't claim copyright on something unless there was some degree of creativity or judgement involved in its creation. There's a famous legal case in which the Supreme Court ruled that a company couldn't claim copyright on a phone book because it was just raw factual data with no creative expression involved. So something like COVID-19 case statistics can't be copyrighted. If you were writing about, say, an Olympic cycling race then you could copy a list of the athletes' times from a copyrighted source because it would be raw factual data with no creativity, but you couldn't copy an analysis of the race written by a journalist.

Again, nobody is saying you can't ever copy things from copyrighted sources on Wikipedia. Brief quotations from copyrighted sources are fine as long as they are used to illustrate a point, they are formatted as quotations and they are cited to the original source (Wikipedia:Non-free content#Text). Hut 8.5 18:01, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

But you have to calculate the statistics, and the orbital parameters of an asteroid. There's a degree of judgement involved in that (what kind of error regression you use etc.). The judgement involved in parsing a linguistic example is comparable -- you might need to judge whether an element is a suffix or a separate word, or which of several homonyms it is. But neither is creative in the sense that copyright protects. We might even note that source A concludes that a morpheme is a suffix, and source B treats it as a separate word, just as astronomers might come to different conclusions as to whether an object is a dwarf planet. Copying someone's list of dwarf planets isn't copyvio despite the judgement involved, and even if there are 120 of them (as there are according to some sources). The author of the linguistic source didn't create the example sentence or the translation -- they only parsed it. — kwami (talk) 21:15, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

You're arguing about how copyright law should work: not how it does work. My understanding is that years of precedent have established that speech (i.e. words) are creative and protected by copyright, but numbers generally are not. You say the author of the linguistic work didn't create the examples, but someone must have. They're elements of speech, so presumably they're protected by copyright and they're being used in the linguistics source under a (perhaps implicit) fair use rationale, just like an attributed quotation. If I understand correctly, you're arguing that you don't have to attribute these quotes, but I don't see why you shouldn't. pburka (talk) 22:37, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

So if I say "Hey, how ya doing?", I have copyright over that utterance? You can't use it yourself? That's not how copyright works. — kwami (talk) 23:57, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

I think everybody here is in agreement that data sentences need attribution. The question is just whether their use with attribution can go beyond a snippet here and there. I'm getting the sense that there might be less disagreement about that than it seemed at first. Botterweg14 (talk) 23:08, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

pburka, what we're talking about here is someone asks, "how do you say, 'the dog chased the cat'?" and then writes it down. Such simple things are not subject to copyright. If someone is having a public conversation, and you write it down, can the speaker really claim copyright over it? But in practice, the researcher will have people sign release forms allowing use of their data. That was a university requirement in my case; I had to sign documentation that I would abide by policy for both copyright and privacy. I do have some data that hasn't been released for general use, and where I archived it it's marked as such. The problem wasn't copyright, but that one person was speaking badly of another and they didn't want it played on the radio. There are cases where linguists use copyrighted material such as poetry for examples, and in such cases they mark it as copyrighted. We would know not to make excessive use of such material precisely because it would be marked. But in most cases you have something like "speaker B6" (who wished to remain anonymous) said "the dog chased the cat". We're not infringing on anyone's copyright when we use that data. It's not a matter of using it in small amounts as Fair Use, it's not copyrighted at all. The author of the source has no copyright because they didn't create it; the speaker either released it or it isn't subject to copyright because it's a trivial statement with no creative content. — kwami (talk) 23:53, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

You can't claim copyright on facts, like the orbital parameters of an asteroid. There is no creative expression involved in calculating those. There would be no problem with using the phrase "the dog chased the cat" in a Wikipedia article either, but that's not the issue which prompted this discussion. The edit which did [3] involved adding eight examples, most of which were longer than that one. That isn't appropriate under Wikipedia's copyright policies. If you were writing an article about a poet then you could probably quote one line from a copyrighted poem they wrote, but you couldn't quote an entire copyrighted poem. If nothing else there is definitely judgement on the part of the linguist for deciding that those eight examples were particularly representative of aspects of the language, and there is creativity involved in translating sentences from one language to another. Hut 8.5 08:58, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

So we appear to be in agreement that the English sentence 'The dog chased the cat' is below the threshold of originality. But that should be equally true of the French 'Le chien a chassé le chat.', or to the pairing of the English with the French sentence. Right? I can't see how the straightforward translation of a simple sentence may introduce the sort of creative content that could push the whole thing above that threshold. Again, before we turn to the longer or more complex cases, it will be good to have some idea where we stand on the basics. – Uanfala (talk) 20:40, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

Linguistic examples usually will include an additional line which contains the analysis of the sample clause and which IMO primarily makes up the part that involves creativity. If the analysis is in prose, all doors to paraphrasing are open, but mostly we have a formalized parse as in the example I gave above, and this – as we all agree – cannot be altered (except maybe for different abbreviation conventions). But as Hut 8.5 already has clarified above, a single example marked as a quotation with an inline citation is ok. –Austronesier (talk) 21:45, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

I would think the formalised parse is the part that's least susceptible to interpretation as being subject to copyright. Yes, it's the bit that requires the most thinking on part of the linguists, but its form is not really creative: in most cases, different linguists carrying out an analysis should converge on substantially identical parses. So, they're comparable to elaborate chemical formulas or to very precisely calculated orbital parameters. Also, I would think it's acceptable – and in a text aimed at lay readers like Wikipedia, often desirable – to alter them, omitting detail or simplifying presentation (e.g. "do.PFV.PST" -> "did"), as long as the underlying analysis hasn't been altered. But that's a question for another discussion.

More importantly, I still don't see any sort of shared understanding here. Why should it be a relief to know that a single example is usually OK, if the examples concerned happen to all be below the threshold of originality and so copyright considerations shouldn't enter the picture in the first place (if we don't indiscriminately reproduce hundreds of simple sentences per article, that's for ethical reasons that are unrelated to copyright law, at least the way it's understood in the US). And a single example each is not what we have on Wikipedia. A well-developed language article will have dozens of such examples (at least some of which will be complex enough for copyright to be relevant) and if it's a lesser known language, then chances are that most of those examples will come from a single source. There are nuanced considerations here (extent of fair use, or the differences between authored narratives, folk tales and elicited sentences), but before we get there we need to at least have some common understanding about the basics, and I'm not seeing that here. – Uanfala (talk) 17:28, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

So you still maintain that linguistics of any depth is not allowed on WP because good coverage of a language would be a copyright violation. Just about any FA-quality language article is going to need more than half a dozen examples. If that truly is WP policy, and you simply aren't misunderstanding it, then policy needs to change. It's ridiculous to say that a scientific field isn't allowed on an encyclopedia.

Take Latin grammar. In the "Use of cases" section alone, I count 28 translated examples. That's way beyond your limit. Do you really maintain that we need to gut that article because of copyvio concerns? — kwami (talk) 09:31, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

I'm not going to respond to you again as you seem to be incapable of having constructive disagreements. You have repeatedly accused me of trying to stop science or linguistics from being covered in Wikipedia, which is absolute rubbish. Nor did I say that whether something is a copyright violation is determined purely by the number of examples. It isn't. It's not clear to me that the examples Latin grammar are copyrighted in the first place, e.g. some of them are sourced to Cicero. Hut 8.5 12:43, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

That's because you've repeatedly said that. We'd all like a straight answer. If you're not going to give one, you shouldn't be here.

You again contradict yourself. You said twice that it's the number of examples that matters. You also said that it doesn't matter if the examples themselves are copyrighted to begin with, because the fact that the source selected them as pertinent examples makes them copyrighted. So it shouldn't matter if they're from Cicero. Regardless, that won't be the case for most of our language articles, where the speaker is anonymous.

What I'm hearing from you, and the reason I'm frustrated, is that anyone can gut an article at any time for apparently arbitrary reasons, claiming copyright violation. We'd all like clarification that there are some actual standards, and what those standards are. — kwami (talk) 16:57, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

I understand you want a formula, but copyright law isn't as clear as you or I might like. The best guidance you'll get is don't copy extensively from a single source, unless it's explicitly public domain or licensed under a compatible free license. If you do copy small excerpts verbatim, fastidiously attribute the copied text. I suspect that it's possible to cover linguistic topics in an encyclopedic manner without wholesale copying from others' works, but if it's not then perhaps those topics aren't compatible with our third pillar and ought not to be in a free encyclopedia. pburka (talk) 18:13, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

But that's the point. Even when we have only a single RS, extensive verbatim copying of data *is* compatible with a free encyclopedia. It's precisely that misunderstanding that we wish to clarify. If you don't wish to participate further, fine, that's up to you -- but we need to get this clarified so that others won't have the same misunderstanding that you do. — kwami (talk) 19:20, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

IMDB - using their data without acknowledgment

IMDB information is being used without acknowledgement

1. No reference is given, but their cast & crew orders (based on number of tv episodes which we don't record) and ours nearly all match (except main characters) The IMDB order is based on the number of TV episodes each character appeared
2. We are using their data without acknowledgement eg (crew in info boxes)
3. We are using sources that use IMDB data such as NYT
4. We are also using their data to "lead us"

"IMDb content is mostly user-submitted and often subject to speculation, rumor, hoaxes, and inaccuracies. The use of the IMDb on Wikipedia as a sole reference is usually considered unacceptable and is discouraged. Its romanization of Chinese titles does not follow the standard. Reliable sourcing from established publications cannot be stressed enough. Anonymous or pseudonymous sources from online fansites are generally unacceptable. So, while itself discouraged as a source, IMDB might provide information leading editors to the preferable reliable sites."

Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 01:05, 28 November 2021 (UTC) Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 02:32, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

I doubt there is a copyright issue here because a list of actors who appeared in a TV series or similar is factual data with no creative expression involved, especially if they are ordered by a simple numeric metric such as the number of episodes. The reliability of IMDB is independent of copyright. Hut 8.5 08:33, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

So it's more plaigarism ? Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 11:44, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

It's not plagiarism either, there isn't exactly anything to plagiarise. Hut 8.5 17:31, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

It's more coincidence and nothing to worry about. In your example above, we have (as recurring characters):

• Ken Osmond: 1 vs 1
• Rusty Stevens: 2 vs 2
• Stanley Fafara: 3 vs 3
• Rich Correll: 4 vs 6
• Stephen Talbot: 5 vs 4
• Jeri Weil: 6 vs 7
• Patty Turner: 7 vs 23
• Karen Sue Trent: 8 vs 14
• Bobby Mittelstaedt: 9 vs 18
• Richard Deacon: 10 vs 9
• Frank Bank: 11 vs 5
• (Wendy Winkelman and) Veronica Cartwright: 12 vs 30
• Buddy Joe Hooker: 13 vs 12
• Tiger Fafara: 14 vs 10
• Cheryl Holdridge: 15 vs 16
• Pamela Baird: 16 vs 22
• Edgar Buchanan: 17 vs
• Madge Kennedy: 18 vs 24
• Diane Brewster: 19 vs 25
• Wendell Holmes: 20 vs 26
• Sue Randall: 21 vs 8
• Burt Mustin: 22 vs 13
• Doris Packer: 23 vs 11
• Madge Blake; 24 vs 15

Basically, you saw that the first three matched, and assumed that this had to mean that someone copied this from IMDb and that this was a problem. The remainder is in a completely different order though. Nothing to worry about in general, and certainly not in this specific case. Fram (talk) 12:05, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

Thank-you for doing that work, and I should have noticed. I came across IMDB because I was looking through how can we make it more fair for new article creators eg if a ref is not reliable warn them)

As an aside, with IMDB reliability, I don't understand why we don't do a large scale comparison, and find the accuracy and if it's better. Or contact the newspapers and ask.

The Cast and crew really be referenced though

It was the comment about "leading editors" that worried me. I did a cross check a few days ago No_Time_to_Die, at first I thought the Swedish and French refs were odd, (but then I did translate and I thought they were excellent), and there were some odder ones (referring to a poster and something else) and were not necessarily about the actor in question. I assume the means of finding them was their search engine

(And we should really really really get rid of this

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Film/Resources

"Editors can prepare a list of resources on the article's talk page or on a sub-page in their userspace, depending if they want to work on the article directly or work on a draft in their sandbox to import into the article later. Online resources can be accessed quickly; for websites that are subscription-based, use the BugMeNot Internet service to bypass registration. Print sources can be located in libraries or book stores. Editors may find it easier to access some periodicals through library databases rather than seek out physical copies" Wakelamp d[@-@]b (talk) 13:56, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

Discussion at WP:VPP § Requirement to contact copyright holders of existing content before allowing fair use

 You are invited to join the discussion at WP:VPP § Requirement to contact copyright holders of existing content before allowing fair use. -- Marchjuly (talk) 23:23, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

Enochian

We have an interesting copyright violation here - it got correctly revdel'ed, but then that revdel was reversed. The issue at hand here is a list of pronunciations of Enochian - a language for which the only native speakers are angels. The editor who introduced the material is pretending the situation is like any natural language where the pronunciations are simply lists of agreed-upon facts. However, this is essentially a fictional language: no native speakers have been interviewed, only one real linguist has addressed the issue, and there is no agreement or corroboration of the 'facts' from other linguists. Therefore this material is a shorthand description of a linguistic theory rather than linguistic facts. As a theory it is unique, and thus protected by copyright. Skyerise (talk) 20:21, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

@Kwamikagami: Please provide the names of the "several linguists" other than Donald C. Laycock claimed in the article (with a citation needed tag) to have addressed Enochian. Please also provide the papers or books in which they describe how Enochian is pronounced. Then please show that there is agreement between say even three linguists about the pronunciation. If you can do this, I will concede that the pronunciations are indeed 'fact' and that there is no copyright violation; however, if on the other hand, Laycock is the only qualified linguist to have addressed Enochian pronunciation; or perhaps there is one more, but their opinions aren't in agreement - then Laycock's theory has not been corroborated into fact, should not be presented as fact, and is indeed a unique creative product of Laycock's research which - not being actual agreed-upon fact - would indeed be protected by copyright. Skyerise (talk) 20:31, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

I take it I may edit the article then without accusations of 3RR? That's why we're back to the stable version in the first place.

I'll look into it. But if there's only one RS, there's only one RS. There are no "facts" here -- see WP:TRUTH. If there is more than one RS, then we need to present them per WEIGHT. If you know of any others, please provide -- I'm only aware of Laycock. As for your claims that the only native speakers are angels, I can't tell if you're being serious -- such an approach would certainly run afoul of FRINGE.

Your copy-vio claims have been rejected -- reporting an analysis is the essence of what we do on WP. I assumed you were arguing in bad faith (arguing that anything you don't like is copyvio), but that's no longer relevant. — kwami (talk) 20:47, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

@Kwamikagami: No, you leaned on one copyvio person to reverse their decision. They reversed it without taking into account my arguments. That is not a rejection, just a temporary setback. You still need to show that the material is agreed-upon fact, as that is the exception you are attempting to claim. Skyerise (talk) 20:50, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

"Truth" is irrelevant for WP. We go by RS's. You should know that after 12 years here. We can follow RS's, including your (valuable) corrections and improvements, or we can revert to the stable but inferior (sloppy) version of the article. Your choice. I'm not going to argue about silliness. Meanwhile, I've tagged the statement you contest as 'cn' and am seeing if there's anything to it or if it should be deleted. — kwami (talk) 20:58, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Skyerise, your post here comes across as an elaborate prank. In case it isn't, then the section Wikipedia:FAQ/Copyright#What is copyright? may be useful, in particular the quote: Ideas and facts are not copyrightable in most places, only the form of expression of them. Information about entities, whether they exist in the real world or are fictional, or about the claims people have made of those entities, is not subject to copyright. – Uanfala (talk) 22:54, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

The information presented is too simple to be copyrighted. I concur with Uanfala's assessment that there is no copyright violation in the table. If it soothes over ruffled feathers, the mapping to English and the Enuchian letters are all Public Domain in the first place. Formulas, pronunciations, and chemical structures are some things that simply are not protected by US copyright. Sennecaster (Chat) 23:10, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

January 2022 Copyright Policy Appears to Contradict Put-back provisions under DMCA statute

This policy appears to be problematic in that it appears to be expressly contrary to the counter-notice provisions contained in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which holds force of statutory law and which may create a potential cause of legal action under the existing copyright law for injunctive relief to compel compliance with the law. It is worth noting that where the law establishes a particular procedure and manner of analysis and doing things, platforms are not then free to choose their own procedures in contravention of what the statutory law explicitly requires, because of the requirement imposed on all to abide strictly by the law. 98.178.191.34 (talk) 22:04, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

Re-use of Conservapedia edits, seemingly by their original contributor

As I understand it from Wikipedia:WikiProject Copyright Cleanup/Sources#Other Wikis, by name, third-party editors here can't copy material from Conservapedia, because of the revocable licence issue. (Setting aside such considerations as good taste and sound judgement for the time being.) But if an editor makes a contribution there, and then the same person makes an identical addition here, does the same still apply? I'm not clear if Conservapedia's 'copyright policy' [sic] claims ownership of submissions, or just publishing rights of some sort. Their document actually seems confused as to whether it's a copyright notice or a licence; I think the author should perhaps ask for a refund on his law degree. So I don't know if it has any valid legal effect at all, much less which. Any clarification appreciated. Context: a number of edits under discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#Edits replicated from Conservapedia, and indeed an editor who might intend similar such edits in the future. 109.255.211.6 (talk) 06:13, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

I am not a lawyer, but my understanding is that copyright of a work belongs to the author. While there was a time when publishers often made authors sign over copyright, I have not seen anything to indicate that the Conservapedia license includes such a transfer. Unless an author has entered into a valid contract to transfer copyright, I believe they retain copyright. Donald Albury 15:16, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

... and there would need to be some exchange of consideration and formal documentation of a copyright transfer for it to be valid, would there not? Jclemens (talk) 18:05, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

I'm not sure a contract needs to exist just to 'give' someone something, like for example your copyright. Which isn't to say this 'legal binding document' isn't badly defective -- my hot take as a non-American non-lawyer is that it certainly looks to be. Their page states "Content is copyrighted under the laws of the United States of America, as such you agree to be bound by applicable US laws and to submit to the exclusive jurisdiction of the United States District Court sitting in the City of Newark, State of New Jersey." I'm not sure if that's trying to say "you retain copyright in your submissions -- but we have irrevocable right of publication, yet retain the right to revoke re-publication" or if it's trying to imply that they hold the copyright. 109.255.211.6 (talk) 20:43, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

From the site owner and "copyright policy" author's statements elsewhere, it's not intended to be a copyright claim, and he does envisage "dual use" of contributions. Specifically he suggests publishing on his site first and then elsewhere, rather than vice versa, and seems to believe this makes some unspecified crucial difference. Sounds like magical thinking to me, but it would cover the above case, at least. 109.255.211.6 (talk) 21:07, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

1944 photographs from the RAF archive

Hello, a question for some copyright expert from the United Kingdom: this photograph was taken on 11 September 1944 at the Parc de Princes in Paris, France, by a Royal Air Force's photographer prior to a rugby union match between RAF RU team and Paris Universitaire FC. Can there safely apply {{PD-UKGov}}? Thanks -- Blackcat 00:02, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

Invalid markup

The list in the lead section of this page after "To this end" is indented using two leading colons. This produces two description lists with a single description, but no term. This is invalid, and an incorrect way to indent a block of text. I don't think this list needs further indenting than simply being a list provides it, but if it really must be indented, use {{block indent}} instead. Otherwise, simply delete the colons. Hairy Dude (talk) 21:38, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

 Done outdented a level. — xaosflux ^Talk 23:12, 14 April 2022 (UTC)