UDWiki talk:Open Discussion/Page ownership and copyrights

1st Header

Agreed, but add a clause that users have four weeks to remove any content which they don't want to be in the public domain. I wouldn't want my face to be in the public domain for life :P --People's Commissar Hagnat ^{[talk] [wcdz]} 19:46, 17 May 2011 (BST)

As the Haggers. (Except we should make Hagnat keep his face on the wiki forever).--Yonnua Koponen ^{T G P} ^^^ 20:18, 17 May 2011 (BST)

I don't know if this would actually even apply to current content, but I'll add a clause to give a "changeover period". It should also be noted that this policy doesn't invalidate any current wiki policy: You can still request content deleted in the manner in which we do now; it merely stops you from being able to say "that policy is my copyright and I want it deleted immediately" or "that page was partly written by me and I want all my contributions removed as they are my copyright".--The General ^{T Sys U! P! F!} 20:54, 17 May 2011 (BST)

For images, i think the most proper approach would be to have some sort of rules for their usage... my face image, for example, is supposed to be mine for my own use, and no other user is supposed to be using it around. Have the rules address that as well, allowing users to limit who can use their images and where, being public domain the default limitation --People's Commissar Hagnat ^{[talk] [wcdz]} 21:00, 17 May 2011 (BST)

Agreed. Though doessn't current policy already allows the original author to have images deleted anyway. I think the best way to make certain is to specify this as applying to "text".--The General ^{T Sys U! P! F!} 21:34, 17 May 2011 (BST)

It wouldn't matter. The way you've worded this shit basically hands "Urban Dead Wiki" the right to do whatever the fuck it wants with anything uploaded or edited here as text. Izzy's little "issue" of late, for instance, would cease to matter as "UD Wiki" HAS UNLIMITED PUBLISHING RIGHTS OVER EVERYTHING on it. Users would cease to have any say what-so-ever over their own fucking user page if "UD Wiki" so wished it. Fuck. You.--

| T | BALLS! | 21:45 17 May 2011(UTC)

It's the way almost every other website works: As I mentioned Wikipedia has a much stricter copyright policy where you effectively make any content you post public domain. This does not counteract existing policies on content (The same way Wikipedia's policy doesn't affect the right to vanish), it merely means that you can't threaten lawsuits to get your contributions removed. Iscariot would still have the right to have his page deleted, but his legal threats would be even more baseless than they are now. If you have any constructive changes to suggest than feel free to make them.--The General ^{T Sys U! P! F!} 22:20, 17 May 2011 (BST)

No, under this thing you suggest he wouldn't have the right. He'd have the privilege. That could be taken away at any time.--

| T | BALLS! | 22:39 17 May 2011(UTC)

I would argue that current policy explicitly grants him the right, and that the only way to change that would be to get a vote through A/PD. Technically, most permissions on the wiki are privileges which could be taken away at any time through a simple A/PD.--The General ^{T Sys U! P! F!} 22:51, 17 May 2011 (BST)

Yeah, no shit, there, Captain Obvious.--

| T | BALLS! | 23:32 17 May 2011(UTC)

Ow, and btw, A/BP was MOSTLY written by ME, and i wants my contributions removed ;) --People's Commissar Hagnat ^{[talk] [wcdz]} 21:02, 17 May 2011 (BST)

Probably; I believe that the original draft was written by me but it was then changed significantly so I don't know how much of my content is still there (which opens up another reason why user copyright of content is a bad idea.)--The General ^{T Sys U! P! F!} 21:34, 17 May 2011 (BST)

Fuck off

Fuck off.--

| T | BALLS! | 19:49 17 May 2011(UTC)

yeaboi! -- ϑ^anceϑ^anceℜ^evolution 10:52, 18 May 2011 (BST)

Policy?

You've mentioned policy a few times but this isn't the correct space to get something passed as policy. You probably want to take it to A/PD if you want it to be binding. ~ _{21:15, 17 May 2011 (UTC)}

herp derp --People's Commissar Hagnat ^{[talk] [wcdz]} 21:17, 17 May 2011 (BST)

I put it here because I was looking for a somewhat informal discussion without the constraints of a policy discussion. I'm also not entirely planning to put this up as an immediate policy discussion: I'm planning to take this to Kevan as he's the one who actually bears the risk on this.--The General ^{T Sys U! P! F!} 22:04, 17 May 2011 (BST)

Yeah, nothing wrong with getting a consensus. I just saw that you mentioned this as a policy a few times and thought you might have wrongfully put it in OD. ~ _{22:12, 17 May 2011 (UTC)}

UDWiki:Copyrights

Please let me know if we are following UDWiki:Copyrights. --Akule ^{Maker of fine, hand-crafted UDWiki sass since 2006 -- Akule School's back in session™} 22:23, 17 May 2011 (BST)

Can of Worms

Okay, so if you do this sort of change, what are we going to do with the content that was previously published by users who no longer go here? They didn't agree to these proposed terms, and might object to the UDWiki just claiming that they have a "royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive right and license to use, reproduce, edit, modify, adapt, publish, translate, communicate to the public, perform and display the submitted content (in whole or in part) worldwide for the full term of any rights that may exist in the content. " I imagine then, when we have content that the user did not agree to, that we will immediately delete that content prior to this sort of rule coming into effect. That way, if the person who created the content wants it re-integrated to the UDwiki, then they can go to A/U and request the undelete, thus giving their permission.

In addition, this proposal does not address third-party copyrighted content that is not owned by the person who publishes it to the wiki, such as Umbrella Corporation. I assume at that example, we will have to resubmit our request to Capcom to the allowance to use any of their submitted content with a "royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive right and license to use, reproduce, edit, modify, adapt, publish, translate, communicate to the public, perform and display the submitted content (in whole or in part) worldwide for the full term of any rights that may exist in the content. " and/or be required to enforce UDWiki:Copyrights. Thus removing all content that is not royalty free or granted permission by the copyright holder for use on the UDWiki (who will, for some reason, agreed to grant a "royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive right and license to use, reproduce, edit, modify, adapt, publish, translate, communicate to the public, perform and display the submitted content (in whole or in part) worldwide for the full term of any rights that may exist in the content. "). --Akule ^{Maker of fine, hand-crafted UDWiki sass since 2006 -- Akule School's back in session™} 22:23, 17 May 2011 (BST)

Simple solution: This only applies to new content. If there is a dispute, simply check the date of the edit against the date the copyright text was changed.

As for copyrighted content, the edit form specifically states You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource (see UDWiki:Copyrights for details). Do not submit copyrighted work without permission! - by posting the content then you are certifying that you have the right to do so. I have, however, made a minor change to address this.--The General ^{T Sys U! P! F!} 22:35, 17 May 2011 (BST)

So then we are going to follow UDWiki:Copyrights? Also, in that event, it does nothing to address the original case that brought it up, as all of Iscariot's content was published to the wiki prior to this going into play. --Akule ^{Maker of fine, hand-crafted UDWiki sass since 2006 -- Akule School's back in session™} 22:46, 17 May 2011 (BST)

Yes, the idea is to make UDWiki:Copyrights sane enough that we can actually follow it. I don't think there's much that can really be done about previous content: this is the sort of thing that should have been done when the wiki was first created.--The General ^{T Sys U! P! F!} 22:58, 17 May 2011 (BST)

Yes...but, that will cause a lot of people to rebel against this, as you stated: "Do not submit copyrighted work without permission!", which means there would have to be a great culling of images and pages. Basically, no one wants to follow UDWiki:Copyrights at all, so convincing them to make the change might be easy, but that is only because they won't follow it. --Akule ^{Maker of fine, hand-crafted UDWiki sass since 2006 -- Akule School's back in session™} 23:02, 17 May 2011 (BST)

Technically, the "Do not submit copyrighted work without permission!" is part of the edit form, so people are supposed to be bound by it when they post. It's true that no one wants to follow UDWiki:Copyrights, but ignoring it only works so long as no one actually takes object to any of our content. I'm just trying to right something which will cover us a bit if someone actually decides to hold us to what we agree to every time we post.--The General ^{T Sys U! P! F!} 23:11, 17 May 2011 (BST)

Yes, and the policy states: "The Urban Dead Wiki prohibits the usage of copyrighted material in anyway way shape or form without the express consent of the original owner of such material. This includes the usage of logos and other forms of intellectual property. " If you are planning on just making the change to the policy in the event that someone requests that their work be deleted, then that is one thing. However, I don't see why you just don't allow people to have their work deleted or changed if someone wants it done. I believe that is the current way that the sysops are "following" UDWiki:Copyrights (I.e. if a copyright holder requests that their content be removed, they remove it). --Akule ^{Maker of fine, hand-crafted UDWiki sass since 2006 -- Akule School's back in session™} 23:36, 17 May 2011 (BST)

Also, won't this effectively nullify the majority of requests for A/D and A/SD, and specifically Crit 7 of A/SD, as the edit to the policy states: "However, you can never retract or alter the license for copies of materials that you place here; these copies will remain so licensed until they enter the public domain when your copyright expires (currently some decades after an author's death)." Meaning that once work is submitted, it cannot be removed. --Akule ^{Maker of fine, hand-crafted UDWiki sass since 2006 -- Akule School's back in session™} 23:47, 17 May 2011 (BST)

I feel that it is impossible to enforce retroactively given the number of years that it has been enforced. The point is this: Copyright extends to anything someone has written on this wiki. In other words, under the current rules there are some legal grounds for someone to demand that we delete every single post they've ever made on the whole wiki. The idea of this proposal is to officially codify what we are currently doing to make it legally soundish (IANAL).

No. This gives us the "right" to use their content if we wish to do so, and they cannot retract that right It doesn't mean that we have to use it; we still have the option to remove it. An A/D or A/SD is a request for that content to be removed. What the proposal means is that they cannot force us to remove content against our will.--The General ^{T Sys U! P! F!} 00:04, 18 May 2011 (BST)

I believe the wording should be expanded to explain this difference (or at least a subsection explaining what it means to the layperson). However, I feel that it would indeed nullify Crit 7 of A/SD, as we would have to put items to be deleted up on A/D to see if people wouldn't mind if the page was deleted or not (I.e. your response about the option of the wiki to use the information against the author's wishes). --Akule ^{Maker of fine, hand-crafted UDWiki sass since 2006 -- Akule School's back in session™} 00:25, 18 May 2011 (BST)

Yes, I'm planning to add an explanatory note for those people who find legal documents somewhat opaque (which they are). I would argue that the "option of the wiki" doesn't require a full community vote, because an admin can make a decision on behalf of the wiki.--The General ^{T Sys U! P! F!} 08:48, 18 May 2011 (BST)

Altered to use Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 3.0 Unported License (CC-BY-SA

It actually does most of what we want and it's written in nicer language that's less likely to scare people.--The General ^{T Sys U! P! F!} 23:11, 17 May 2011 (BST)

See, I'd support a full "post it here, it becomes public domain" policy with the exception of stuff that was already copyrighted. You don't want the risk of it being used then don't post it. Simple enough.       04:03, 18 May 2011 (BST)

Akule Posts Too Much

When you chose this particular license, did you read up on moral rights? In their FAQ, they have this. Specifically the part that says: "If you do not like the way that a person has made a derivative work or incorporated your work into a collective work, under the Creative Commons licenses, you may request removal of your name from the derivative work or the collective work. " Which is going to be tricky, because removing their name from the work would involve removing their edits, which I imagine, goes against some of the idea of this proposal. Obviously, we could keep their content, but we'd have to remove their name from being affiliated with whatever pages they worked on, which could mean LOTS of deletions.

When you look deeper into how this works with moral rights, you find this part, which states (the bold is mine): "In addition to the right of licensors to request removal of their name from a work when used in a derivative or collective they don't like, copyright laws in most jurisdictions around the world (with the notable exception of the US except in very limited circumstances) grant creators “moral rights” which may provide some redress if a derivative work represents a “derogatory treatment” of the licensor's work. Moral rights give an original author the right to object to “derogatory treatment” of their work; “derogatory treatment” is typically defined as “distortion or mutilation” of the work or treatment that is “prejudicial to the honor, or reputation of the author.” Creative Commons licenses (with the exception of Canada) do not affect any moral rights licensors may have. This means that if you have moral rights as an original author of a work, you may be able to take action against a creator who is using your work in a way you find objectionable. Of course, not all derivative works you don’t like are necessarily “derogatory.” ". Which means that if you were the author of a page and don't like how a particular page has been changed (and it is deemed to be derogatory), you can force the wiki to revert it back to your version.

Then, of course, "Other Rights — In no way are any of the following rights affected by the license: Your fair dealing or fair use rights, or other applicable copyright exceptions and limitations;" Which means that this doesn't apply to the usage rights of copyrighted content, and especially since the proposal states: "The Urban Dead Wiki prohibits the usage of copyrighted material in anyway way shape or form without the express consent of the original owner of such material. This includes the usage of logos and other forms of intellectual property." So, if you are going to enforce part of this as a policy, you would have to enforce all of it, which means all copyrighted content that was put up without permission would end up having to be removed.

In addition, by allowing this, it means that you are granting commercial use of any content put up here, such as Guides:The Zombie Lexicon, in which others may alter/transform/expand on the work as long as they attribute the original work, and follow and list this license. I imagine Kevan might object to any information on his wiki being granted for commercial use. Might I suggest Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0)?

Oh, also the Creative Commons people would prefer that you link to this page if you are going to quote from their license. --Akule ^{Maker of fine, hand-crafted UDWiki sass since 2006 -- Akule School's back in session™} 23:30, 31 May 2011 (BST)

Kevan's Words Kevan's Choice

Can we just have someone actually ask the big guy if he'd be ok with this change then implement it based on his desires? He's responsible for it, he's the one that wrote the first one, and we have no place even trying to have a say in it beyond running it through him. --Karek^{maps 2.0?!} 02:40, 18 May 2011 (BST)

The edit notice copyright warning is the default boilerplate; I can't tell who wrote UDWiki:Copyrights, as the history has been wiped. ᚱᛁᚹᛖᚾᚨᚾᛏ 07:06, 18 May 2011 (BST)

Traced some of the history: It appears Kevan was one of the initial contributors, but not the only one. If I had to guess, I'd say the first paragraph was him, with subsequent parts being added later. Given that I couldn't find different revisions, I can't be certain. ᚱᛁᚹᛖᚾᚨᚾᛏ 03:11, 19 May 2011 (BST)

Yeah, I believe you're right. The way Kevan tended to work was to draw a basic framework and then say "Right, this is a wiki so get to work". The only problem is that Kevan tended to assume that everyone would edit in good faith and that no one would be stupid enough to sue over the wiki of an online game--The General ^{T Sys U! P! F!} 08:49, 19 May 2011 (BST)

Like he didn't foresee that his team of sysops would be such petty schmucks that they would rather he got sued than give in to the legitimate demands of a user they happen to dislike.--

| T | BALLS! | 08:54 19 May 2011(UTC)

I have already put his page up on A/SD. The point of this policy is not actually to invalidate requests such as Iscariot's: It's to protect us against ridiculous demands of "every post I made is my copyright so you must delete it".--The General ^{T Sys U! P! F!} 09:08, 19 May 2011 (BST)

I did make a lot of demands. --Akule ^{Maker of fine, hand-crafted UDWiki sass since 2006 -- Akule School's back in session™} 23:09, 19 May 2011 (BST)

That is the reason why this is not a policy discussion: I was planning on getting some sort of consensus and then taking it to Kevan for approval. I don't want to go to him and say "Hey, I don't think that our current copyright policy is suitable; could you fix it please?", as he normally prefers to see community discussion (Remember, he's only ever vetoed one policy discussion and that was based on a single highly-abusable clause).--The General ^{T Sys U! P! F!} 08:01, 18 May 2011 (BST)

Indeed. ᚱᛁᚹᛖᚾᚨᚾᛏ 03:11, 19 May 2011 (BST)

does this apply to personal user pages? or just community edited pages?--User:Sexualharrison00:18, 29 May 2011 (bst)

Technically, this applies to all pages on the wiki but personal user pages wouldn't really be affected because they're covered by out current policies on page ownership.--The General ^{T Sys U! P! F!} 13:17, 29 May 2011 (BST)

No, they would, as this says: "If you contribute text directly to The Urban Dead Wiki, you thereby license it to the public for reuse under the Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 3.0 Unported License (CC-BY-SA)." It does not limit itself to specific pages, therefore it would apply to user pages as well. --Akule ^{Maker of fine, hand-crafted UDWiki sass since 2006 -- Akule School's back in session™} 23:02, 31 May 2011 (BST)

Options

I certainly think it couldn't hurt to let people know that they have options with regard to the copyright status of their contributions; it's certainly worth making this more clear, seeing that the “in perpetuity” clauses are meant to generally cover the site owner for backups, etc. (In fact, it might be worth checking the TOS.) At the moment the only person who can delete content from the server is Kevan; sysops can delete revisions from view, but they are still retained in the database.

That said, I do not believe this policy as it stands to be a workable solution. As-is, users are implicitly giving the right to publish their material by way of agreeing to the default edit page boilerplate:

“	Please note that all contributions to The Urban Dead Wiki may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here. You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource (see UDWiki:Copyrights for details). Do not submit copyrighted work without permission!	”
—Copyright warning

However, they do in fact retain the right to withdraw their contributions, subject to fair use. (IANAL.)

Basically, I believe this to be overkill simply because, at the end of the day, this is just a wiki for an online game; it's not like Wikipedia where they have to worry about redistribution rights. If someone wants to take their toys and go home, it's not like their contributions can't be replaced easily if it's game-related, or simply be discarded if it's group or user-specific. No big loss. ᚱᛁᚹᛖᚾᚨᚾᛏ 06:59, 18 May 2011 (BST)

So it would be okay with you if a frequent contributor demanded that we delete all posts they've every made from the wiki? If, for example, a sysop or ex-sysop demanded that all their posts were deleted then we would be required to completely trash our records by removing A/M and A/VB rulings.

On a side note: The UK doesn't have a concept of fair use, we have a much more limited concept of fair dealing.--The General ^{T Sys U! P! F!} 07:58, 18 May 2011 (BST)

I think that's actually a side issue and doesn't need to be discussed. Basically, this policy doesn't change how we react to requests for existing content; it only changes how we react to requests for new content. As such, it doesn't change what is already the status quo, so there is no point in arguing it. The policy isn't trying to suggest a better way of managing existing content, but rather a better way of managing future content, which really should have been in place from day 1. —Aichon— 20:40, 18 May 2011 (BST)

Praise be to Kevan, and to general copyright law

I'm in favour of Kevan deciding this, and I'm also in favour of Kevan not being sued for re-licensing lots of copyrighted work. Because, y'know, it's not like everything on the wiki was made by the individual and not ripped from google or anything. --Ash  ^{|  T  |  яя  |} 12:05, 19 May 2011 (BST)

No inherent contradiction there. The boiler prohibits the unloading of copy written materials without consent, and anything that was can be considered illegal, ergo it could not be legally relicensed. Unless you're talking about things people contributed with consent, though I'm fairly sure most copyright laws hold a provision that unless a person actively defends their work... You know what no. Are we really having this discussion? This is dumb. If we really can't reach consensus on this lets shunt it over to Kevan. None of us are lawyers and its his ass that gets it if something happens. In the meantime if people threaten to sue us over not deleting all their text contributions I recommend we brave the wrath of their crack legal teams. --Zaruthustra^{Still a Mod in His Mind} 13:39, 19 May 2011 (BST)

As Zar, they can't authorize use of what they don't own so we're protected, or semi-protected, in that regard.--Karek^{maps 2.0?!} 21:05, 21 May 2011 (BST)

Copyrights, Take (insert number here)

Okay, so we're talking about Kevan, and what Kevan wants. Let's take a ride on the ol' wayback machine and see where it ends up. Kevan spoke with Xoid, and he shared the emails on my withdrawn policy, which had proposed adding an additional criteria for the speedy deletion of copyrighted images. Kevan spoke with him about the whole copyright debate and the option of allowing the use of off-site images. I am reposting them here for everyone's convenience:

Xoid said:

Note that these have, obviously, been formatted to be easier to read on the wiki. I can forward the originals if anyone is interested. The Emails: We've got a charming individual listing absolutely every copyright infringement he can find for deletion, even those there are clearly fair-use and/or now in the public domain. Since image deletions can't really be undone at this point in time, I felt it prudent to clarify with you: is what is found on the image upload form (prior permission required for *all* copyrighted images) binding, or is there some room for movement there? Do you even care about fair-use? Should we just nuke them on sight? Since it's your neck that would be on the chopping block if some overzealous company starts seeking legal remedies, I felt it be prudent to get your opinion on that too. --Xoid 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. A good summary? *blanches* The laws differ from country-to-country, there's the Berne convention, there's... you get the picture. Compiling a short list would be like pulling teeth. Requiring a short write up on each image's page as to why it's fair-use would be the way to go in my opinion. Not like we still won't get sued if some overzealous company sees fit, but they're less likely to. --Xoid I guess we're going with UK copyright law, since my server's located in the UK. Requiring the write-up on each image page is definitely a good idea, but I don't think UK law gives much room for fair use (no "parody", for a start), so not much is going to be allowed. --Kevan 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 After hearing about various abuses of PHP generated images that have happened on the UDWiki, I'm incredibly reluctant to suggest reenabling them. From what I've been told, it was technically a browser exploit that could be used for practically any nefarious purpose. I really, really don't like the sound of that, but the guy wouldn't elaborate. --Xoid Sounds very mysterious. I suppose there's the possibility of PHP-generated images that track the IP of the user and the page they're reading (or even serve up a different image if it detects a particular IP), but I hadn't heard of any fierce browser exploits. No point risking it, though, if we don't need to. --Kevan –Xoid M•T•FU! 06:54, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

At the time, we couldn't undelete images. Now we can, so the whole discussion has changed. It is easily possible to delete a image that a person did not get permission for (as was specified in the Implementation section of my proposed Speedy Deletion criterion), and when someone does get permission, then the image can be undeleted.

There is also a section entitled UK law: no questions asked where Kevan made the following request to the sysops:

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)

As you can see, it was clear that Kevan wanted something done with copyrighted images, as he requested this waaaaay back in 2006. Some discussion over the copyright claim on the Medical Defence Union is here on Kevan's page, and the Patrick Jennings request for his images to be removed, was discussed here, and deleted here. It is interesting that this was mainly overlooked, but when he asked for a Privacy Policy, the sysops created one (it should also be noted that the policy is not listed in Category:Policy_Documents).

It should also be mentioned that there is another, frequently forgotten policy entitled simply, Image use policy, which states: "Each original image uploaded to the Urban Dead wiki is owned by the individual user who created it, and may not be reproduced without their express permission." Of course, no one reads it, so it doesn't get followed at all (it would probably help if it was actually listed as a policy...).

For those who are confused on copyrights, I should also point people to theCopyright page, and the International Copyright page. They are a little out of date, but they explain some information about copyrights.

Any questions? --Akule ^{Maker of fine, hand-crafted UDWiki sass since 2006 -- Akule School's back in session™} 23:01, 19 May 2011 (BST)

Discussion of: Copyrights, Take (insert number here)

I talk a lot. It's easier to make your reply here. --Akule ^{Maker of fine, hand-crafted UDWiki sass since 2006 -- Akule School's back in session™} 23:01, 19 May 2011 (BST)

If we want to put together or revive a project to track down and tag images with their copyright status, somewhat akin to Project:Image Categorisation, I'd be up for that. ᚱᛁᚹᛖᚾᚨᚾᛏ 23:08, 19 May 2011 (BST)

I had mainly shelved it, since there were so few people working on it. I'd be happy to continue working on it, now that I have some free time again. If people want to try and get permission for the images again, and shoot for bringing the whole discussion up again, I'd be happy to re-work my old policy, but update it to be the 14th A/SD criterion. I think we will also need to talk about the UDWIki:image use policy, as it probably has LOTS of hidden ramifications on things (such as other users using someone's image without their permission). It'll also need to say something about how images that are not owned by the uploader are not subject to that policy, but are subject to the general copyright policy. --Akule ^{Maker of fine, hand-crafted UDWiki sass since 2006 -- Akule School's back in session™} 23:18, 19 May 2011 (BST)

Just on a side note: There is indeed a horrible browser exploit involving php-generated images. Basically, you can write some simple php code labelled as a .gif image and embed the "image" into a page on the wiki; the code then runs every time someone loads a page with that image in it. I have some proof-of-concept code for it and it's worryingly easy to set up (and, no, I am not sharing that code with anyone).--The General ^{T Sys U! P! F!} 23:27, 19 May 2011 (BST)

So it can be uploaded to the wiki currently, or is it only a problem for off-site requests? --Akule ^{Maker of fine, hand-crafted UDWiki sass since 2006 -- Akule School's back in session™} 23:39, 19 May 2011 (BST)

No, the images isn't actually an image so the server won't be able to display it unless to specifically add the code to tell it how to do so. The way it works is to take advantage of the fact that the browser doesn't actually know what it is requesting: It simply retrieves to address given to it. If the server is set up to run the image as a php script which outputs a redirect to, say, Google (I'm sure you can think of more malicious examples) then the browser will do what it's told and retrieve the redirect.--The General ^{T Sys U! P! F!} 11:31, 20 May 2011 (BST)

Also, here is the proof-of-concept example. If that was include on a page as an external image then everyone loading the page would be redirected to google.com.--The General ^{T Sys U! P! F!} 12:01, 20 May 2011 (BST)

Unless they're running NoScript or similar, yes; you are correct. ᚱᛁᚹᛖᚾᚨᚾᛏ 04:47, 21 May 2011 (BST)

Well, I don't think Noscript would actually block it because it's server-side php rather than javascript.--The General ^{T Sys U! P! F!} 09:27, 21 May 2011 (BST)

Depends on the mechanism it uses. If it's META REDIRECT then it should be blocked by default, as are a number of other sneaky tricks. ᚱᛁᚹᛖᚾᚨᚾᛏ 13:08, 21 May 2011 (BST)

It uses php headers.--The General ^{T Sys U! P! F!} 15:44, 21 May 2011 (BST)

Ah, so HTTP REDIRECT? Wouldn't have thought that would work as an image inclusion, but I'll take your word for it. ᚱᛁᚹᛖᚾᚨᚾᛏ 22:23, 21 May 2011 (BST)

Yeah it sets the "location" header to a different address. I believes it probably works because the php "header" function automatically replaces the current header. It should be noted that I haven't tested the exploit for a number of years (it doesn't tend to go down weLl :P), but I believe it should still work--The General ^{T Sys U! P! F!} 23:07, 21 May 2011 (BST)

I can confirm this. Back in the day a user who somehow acquired my IP address set up a PHP script to log me out of the wiki, made it display as an image, and tried to convince me to use it as my signature. -- Amazing‽ (UD + WTF = HR) 22:41, 21 May 2011 (BST)

Also, it will probably come as no surprise to anyone that I have some scripts that may be able to help with tagging copyrighted images :P.--The General ^{T Sys U! P! F!} 23:29, 19 May 2011 (BST)

That would be very useful. I'm not sure how it will search for untagged copyrighted images versus untagged images that don't need the template, however. Unless we are just having it looked for images without the copyright template. --Akule ^{Maker of fine, hand-crafted UDWiki sass since 2006 -- Akule School's back in session™} 23:39, 19 May 2011 (BST)

It works based of checking for valid image descriptions, keywords, etc. It's not perfect but it is slightly more than "images missing this template".--The General ^{T Sys U! P! F!} 00:25, 20 May 2011 (BST)

It can also tag articles with copyrighted text, BTW.--The General ^{T Sys U! P! F!} 00:29, 20 May 2011 (BST)