UDWiki:Open Discussion/Copyright, Citations, and Attributions

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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 DoomM! Fear is only as deep as the mind will allow it be.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. Strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others 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 DoomM! Fear is only as deep as the mind will allow it be.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)
There's a difference between looking at an image and categorising it, than looking at an image, seeing if it looks copyrighted, searching the entire internet for an owner, finding a contact or website address and then adding it to a template. YOU do that with scores of thousands of images. -- 23:33, 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 DoomM! Fear is only as deep as the mind will allow it be.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)
Which brings up my next question. "How exactly do we define allowable Copyright materials on the wiki?" --•▬ ▬••▬ • •••• •▬ ▬•▬• ▬•▬ #nerftemplatedsigs 23:27, 28 June 2010 (BST)
Since the people who care have been asking those questions for 4 years and it hasn't been answered, I wouldn't hold my breath right now. -- 23:33, 28 June 2010 (BST)
You can't answer a question if someone is holding their fingers in their ears and shouting "LALALALALALALALALALALALALALA". --Akule Maker of fine, hand-crafted UDWiki sass since 2006 -- Akule School's back in session™ 23:42, 28 June 2010 (BST)
Citing what we have should be first. Then we would have to figure out what we want to be allowed in and what shouldn't be. Or we just follow this:
Kevan said:
There's definitely room for movement, I don't see the wiki content as being that different from a hosted forum with people fair-using random copyrighted images for their usericons. The only thing I'm uncomfortable with is people uploading unedited images which then appear to be original content on my server, particularly to people finding it through Google images (UDWiki is the top result for "resident evil army", linking to a now-deleted image) - it's okay if it's an obvious frame from a film or something, but anyone who found the mall nudists artwork would assume it was original UD-user-created content, or public domain clipart, and that's bad. If there's a good summary of what is and isn't fair use, I'd be happy to adopt that for the wiki.
Or this:
Kevan said:
Alternatively, this might just be an argument for re-enabling off-site images (which is just a single config setting) - the only reason I disabled it was to avoid the problem of people hosting pictures on their own servers and then changing them unexpectedly (perhaps after being banned), and to make it easier to keep track of who was responsible for what, but I don't have a strong feeling either way on this. --Kevan
That way if the images are hosted off-site, Kevan is better protected, and if we get a complaint about a copyrighted image, we can have a Speedy Deletion criteria for sysops that allow them to delete an image if it its copyright is contested by the copyright holder. --Akule Maker of fine, hand-crafted UDWiki sass since 2006 -- Akule School's back in session™ 23:42, 28 June 2010 (BST)

Not this shit again... Remove/Cite copyright material? In 2005? Yes. In 2010? No. The amount of copyrighted material used without permission on this wiki is catastrophically large. Even with everyone one board it would take straight weeks to complete, and that's ignoring the fact that 98% of members won't do it because they won't bust a gut for something that isn't a problem. If Copyrights became a big problem Kevan would have pulled the plug by now but he hasn't. I can't believe this conversation has come up again and again and Akule's still fighting the battle. It ain't gonna happen. As for citations, I'm interested by it, I want to know the scope of what POD means by citations and where they would be applied, but really I'm sceptical of any of this occurring. It's a random wiki for a random web based game that has a handful of followers, why bring this aspect of redundant legality into it? You have to draw the line of overzealous behaviour somewhere, and that's coming from mr. serious op here. --

23:33, 28 June 2010 (BST)

Yes, how dare the sysops follow Kevan's wishes. For shame Akule. For Shame. After all, he asked the sysops to work together to hash out something, but not surprisingly, people did not do it, because they could care less about him. Oh, and for the record (which you obviously don't care and didn't read), I didn't bring it up I responded to it and was invited here. I then said we should just cite the images with the Template:Copyright and then see where we stand. But hey, jumping to conclusions is what you do best, right? --Akule Maker of fine, hand-crafted UDWiki sass since 2006 -- Akule School's back in session™ 23:42, 28 June 2010 (BST)
Why do you even do any sysop work? I mean, with all of the vandalism cases, deletion cases, protections, and move requests, that shit must be endless. "Even with everyone one board it would take straight weeks to complete maintain, and that's ignoring the fact that 98% of members won't do it because they won't bust a gut for something that isn't a problem."
Now, I will point out that a few users went to UDWiki:Image_Categorisation, went through all of those very same images, categorized them, and have no problem keeping up on it. So I'll call BS on this argument. What else do you have? --Akule Maker of fine, hand-crafted UDWiki sass since 2006 -- Akule School's back in session™ 23:57, 28 June 2010 (BST)
As for what the citations entail, just go to Template:Copyright and read the directions. That's it. Gosh, that seems so hard, huh? If we had done that for the Mall images for the Battle of the Bear Pit we'd still have them. --Akule Maker of fine, hand-crafted UDWiki sass since 2006 -- Akule School's back in session™ 00:07, 29 June 2010 (BST)
are you clinically retarded? Why are you still using the "we" argument with image categorisation? As far as I care Ross, Nubis and Vantar did the biggest mass and I am the one who has kept the images categorised for most of the last 18 months. So don't you fucking start using our own work against us in an argument. "I do dick around this place but I KNOW heaps of other people will do the work I intend to throw at them" doesn't work, least of all on me. Kevan is indifferent unless someone kicks up a stink about copyright. I agree with this- the second someone makes a fuss about a user copyrighting their shit, then we take it down no question. Otherwise, just spamming a generic copyright notice on images solves shit all and there is no way in god's hell that it's going to work if any more effort is required, so why bother? Stop frothing too, if I may suggest. Honestly, if all you want is for template:copyright to be on every copyright image you can do it yourself without preaching in ineffectual discussion forums like this for someone else to. -- 04:36, 29 June 2010 (BST)
Dude, no offense, but scale it back a bit. I know Akules getting to you, but this was a fairly civil conversation until the last little bit here. And really, the only one who's getting bent out of shape about it is you. Not to mention Akule already explained to you that this has nothing to do with him, and everything to do with me.... And all of this is the first I've heard of it. Just pull it back a bit. -Poodle of DoomM! Fear is only as deep as the mind will allow it be.T 04:42, 29 June 2010 (BST)
Don't you tell me what to do. You've already you're demonstrated via crappy arbitration and self-bans what your level of "going too far" is. It's a laugh thinking Akule's getting to me when I'm just doing my job/expressing opinion when he throws random insults and kneejerk reactions/ad homonyms both here and on A/VB. People below me agreed with me on both pages, but Akule runs around with his arms in the air screaming "retard" around like it's the insult of the day. Don't you get involved either Poodle, if you want to see how someone can get to me, you may keep posting. -- 04:47, 29 June 2010 (BST)

Well to me, it seems that Kevan, by no means, is opposed to have a policy like this in place. People have been trying for years (so says DDR) to get this enacted. It seems to me that this would have a place here on the wiki. That said, and please don't take this wrong DDR, but do you really not know what I mean by citation? I know we all come from different countries and what not, and don't know what things are like in schools where you live. Where I'm at, everything that could be related back to a specific source had to have a citation for it. Otherwise, it had to be your own unique wording/phrasing/paper/whatever. Again, I imagine different countries are different with copyrights.... and that different schools do different things. Do you know what I'm talking about? I could set up an example for you if you'd like.... -Poodle of DoomM! Fear is only as deep as the mind will allow it be.T 02:34, 29 June 2010 (BST)

As DDR correctly pointed out, this project (whether we're talking about citations for all copyrighted material or deleting all copyrighted material) is far too large to undertake at this point in UDWiki's life, so, I think we can throw out the idea of going through and citing or deleting all existing copyrighted images. There's also a question of what we're trying to accomplish. If we're trying to shield UDWiki and Kevan from all possibility of incident, we'll likely need to delete the wiki and start from a blank slate since there's no way we can tell whether or not names, images, or whatever else are copyrighted or trademarked at this point. I think that we shouldn't be looking to prevent situations any more than we already do (especially since there haven't been many anyway), but rather that we should be looking to handle any situations that may arise. I think that goes in line with what Kevan was saying anyway.

I know that the US has "safe harbor" laws that protect places such as UDWiki in situations where its users upload infringing content, so long as UDWiki works with copyright holders to remove or license the content once they have received notification of the infringement. Can a UK user comment on whether or not such laws exist over there? If so, then all we really need is a new scheduled deletion allowing sysops to delete copyrighted material in cases of a C&D or a notification of infringement being sent. Nothing more than that. We also might strengthen the wording of the copyright text on the upload page.

We could also make a policy allowing for the deletion of pages or files that show a blatant disregard for copyright (e.g. brand names, corporate logos, etc. that have been directly ripped with no modification), since if we're complicit in the act of copyright infringement (i.e. we're aware of it and/or encouraging it) UDWiki can still possibly be held liable, even with safe harbor laws, for the actions of its users. We wouldn't go hunting for them, since that's not our job, but if users who feel strongly about the subject (I'm looking at a few of you here) were to bring them forward, then we could handle them appropriately, I guess. So long as we dealt with the most obvious ones ourselves and had policies in place to allow us to work with copyright holders, we should be fine, I think, and none of that seems too unreasonable.

And it goes without saying that IANAL. —Aichon— 04:08, 29 June 2010 (BST)

I like what you've suggested. Perhaps we could strengthen the copy right warning. How would you suggest it be worded? As it pertains to the stuff we currently have regarding copy rights, do we consider this sort of thing policy already, or not? I'm also all for a new SD criteria for blatant copyright infringement, similar to what you mentioned. Would it really pass though? I wouldn't think so. At that, everything I'm talking about here, everything I had intended to have come up in this conversation has. And really, I'm not looking to have anything applied retroactivly, but just as something to do going forward, if it's even possable (or plausable). -Poodle of DoomM! Fear is only as deep as the mind will allow it be.T 04:30, 29 June 2010 (BST)

I don't believe Akule (and others) is trying to make this an issue AGAIN! Of coures Kevan cares if he is sued, of course any image that causes a problem will be deleted... wait, thats it! How about wording it:

  • "Due to the inherent difficulty in policing a wiki such as this are unable to prevent copyrighted images being posted, however, we will speedily remove any copyrighted image which the owner requests removed" Problem solved and the wiki lawyers can go back to bed. --Honestmistake 08:07, 29 June 2010 (BST)
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