UDWiki:Open Discussion/Copyright, Citations, and Attributions

I actually had a little chat with Mis regarding copy right information, and how to use it appropriately, with citations. He said as long as I attributed the work correctly I should be fine. My thoughts lay within the same realm, but thought it appropriate to establish a policy regarding copyright information.

Basically, with all the media out there, Images, the ability to upload musical media, and the like,... I figured it would be appropriate to have a policy regarding attribution of ownership. Basically something like wikipedia has for Non-Free Content, and their Copyright Policy.

To be honest, the Non-Free Content policy is more along the lines of what I had in mind when considering this, though I liked the format of wikipedia's Copyright Policy. So I'd like to discuss possibly having a policy regarding attributing ownership, rights, and copyrights to their respected owners appropriately. Also to be discussed should be what media should require citations, and attributions, as well as what should be included in the citations, and what the criteria should be for identifying material in need of this information.

Discussion

I'll be glad to participate. The first big thing is that we are using UK copyright law and not US copyright law, since the UD servers are based in the UK. Feel free to read Project:Copyrights, the UDWiki talk:Copyright Project, Copyright, International Copyright, and UK Copyright fact sheet and Fair Dealing in the UK. One of the first things we will want to do is to go around and finish documenting all of the images, citing them, and adding the Copyright Template to those images. --Akule ^{Maker of fine, hand-crafted UDWiki sass since 2006 -- Akule School's back in session™} 22:11, 28 June 2010 (BST)

I like what you submitted here Akule. Perhaps we should write something up regarding international copyright law, because that seems to be the most influential here. It seems that if a work were created in one state/country/province, that a copyright for that work would be honored elsewhere in the world. So it would seem that UK Copyright Law would be unimportant, especially using this as the basis for that argument. -Poodle of Doom^{M! T} 22:27, 28 June 2010 (BST)

Nope, the server's in the UK, so UK copyright law is what's most important. Then international.--Yonnua Koponen ^{Talk ! Contribs} 22:33, 28 June 2010 (BST)

Yup. UK Copyright law is what's most important. --Akule ^{Maker of fine, hand-crafted UDWiki sass since 2006 -- Akule School's back in session™} 22:44, 28 June 2010 (BST)

Are we really going to find sources for every non-original image on this wiki? That kind of effort might make Mis cry. 22:21, 28 June 2010 (BST)

No,... I don't think that that is truly necessary. I would love to see it done, and if someone wanted to look over images, and make it happen, that would be great... but we could just wait until the needs arise. -Poodle of Doom^{M! T} 22:24, 28 June 2010 (BST)

We categorized the wiki. I don't see why we can't use the UDWiki:Copyright Project page to do the same, but just for copyrights. --Akule ^{Maker of fine, hand-crafted UDWiki sass since 2006 -- Akule School's back in session™} 22:44, 28 June 2010 (BST)

I think we should have a hybrid between US and UK copyright laws. --•▬ ▬••▬ • •••• •▬ ▬•▬• ▬•▬ ^{#nerftemplatedsigs} 22:22, 28 June 2010 (BST)

See my response to Akule above.... -Poodle of Doom^{M! T} 22:27, 28 June 2010 (BST)

But the one thing I think would be a problem is this: Most users don't readily have permission to use Copyright images, but they upload them to this wiki anyway. Most of the time, the would just credit the original users (as it is with the Copyright Image templates). In fact, I don't even think there was a case once of UDWiki recieving a "cease and desist" notice. --•▬ ▬••▬ • •••• •▬ ▬•▬• ▬•▬ ^{#nerftemplatedsigs} 22:32, 28 June 2010 (BST)

Incorrect. Kevan himself stated he had two by 2007.

Kevan said:

Two: one angry lawyer demand over use of the name "Medical Defence Union" and one obviously reasonable request from Packard Jennings about the mall pictures. The wiki bureaucracy should be able to support the speedy deletion of any future such requests; if you want to thrash out a good wording, that's fine - but given that this is purely an issue of what I decide to host on my own server, this must be enacted in some form, and I'll press the "carte blanche" button when it's ready to go. --Kevan 19:50, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Here are some more thoughts from Kevan on this topic. --Akule ^{Maker of fine, hand-crafted UDWiki sass since 2006 -- Akule School's back in session™} 22:44, 28 June 2010 (BST)

Note, Kevan supports a policy on copyrights AND for the Speedy Deletion of Copyrighted Images, by saying that it must be enacted in some form. He also notes that he can enable off-site hosting if we wanted. --Akule ^{Maker of fine, hand-crafted UDWiki sass since 2006 -- Akule School's back in session™} 22:51, 28 June 2010 (BST)

And what about names that are clearly copyright? Some groups, such as the Channel 4 News Team, are clearly copyright. I don't think Ron Burgundy (yet another copyright) got permission from the makers of Anchorman to use the names and such. What's our copyright policy on that? --•▬ ▬••▬ • •••• •▬ ▬•▬• ▬•▬ ^{#nerftemplatedsigs} 22:59, 28 June 2010 (BST)

Or how about a name that's not a group, such as the Sears Auto Repair, which is clearly a copyright on the name, and is, may I also add, a name that is clearly being used in-game? --•▬ ▬••▬ • •••• •▬ ▬•▬• ▬•▬ ^{#nerftemplatedsigs} 23:03, 28 June 2010 (BST)

That depends. Are we following the current Copyright Policy to the letter? By the letter of the law in fair dealing in the UK and according to the Copyright Policy _{(you know, the little text at the bottom of each edit page that states: "You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource (see Project:Copyrights for details). DO NOT SUBMIT COPYRIGHTED WORK WITHOUT PERMISSION! ")} it would not be allowed. Of course, if you look at the UDWiki talk:Copyright Project, you'll note that we were going to concentrate on just citing copyright first, and then going from there. Oh, and I had actually brought up this very topic before, but it was a part of a series of deletion requests to point out that the sysop team at the time were very strictly obeying the letter of the law in some policies (which they used to chase off people they didn't like), but completely ignoring other policies, which I felt was hypocritical.

A question for everyone: Tell me, do you honestly want it to go that far? Where is the line for people? Where is that point that you want to say: "I don't care about copyrights that much. If it comes up, we can deal with it then." --Akule ^{Maker of fine, hand-crafted UDWiki sass since 2006 -- Akule School's back in session™} 23:15, 28 June 2010 (BST)