Wikisource:Possible copyright violations/archive 2

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This page gathers the discussion and record of deletions for copyright violations decided in 2005.

Other archives see Wikisource:Possible copyright violations/archives.



Wouldn't this work still be protected under copyright? I'm sure the speech is originally in German and that we have its translation here. Would we not be violating someone's copyright by posting the speech here? Zhaladshar 01:26, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

  • Agreed. It's the contributor's responsibility to make a case for Public Domain, and he hasn't done that. Eclecticology 06:56, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)
  • Deleted. We've waited long enough. Eclecticology 08:54, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I beleive Lovecraft’s fiction is still under copyright by Arkham House. Shame :( ~ Mlk 02:30, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC) ~

Anything published before 1923 is clearly in the public domain. According to the Wikipedia article on Lovecraft there is considerable dispute about whether the copyrights on the later works were properly renewed. If these were not properly renewed, they are in the public domain. Each of the relevant works should be checked individually. Eclecticology 06:47, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I agree, there is still no clear consensus on whether Lovecraft's works published post-1923 are in the public domain[1].

Also, the works copied into wikisource may not have come from the original documents and could simply have been copied from later editions that could have been subsequently edited and, thus, may well still be under copyright regardless of when Lovecraft's original copyright expired. --Axon 15:48, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)

According to Lovecraft's biographer, Arkham House never had the full copyright of any of Lovecraft's works, save for six stories published in "Weird Tales". Furthermore, since these works were not renewed, they have fallen into the public domain. See S.T. Joshi's "H.P. Lovecraft: A Life" (pp. 640-641).

Regarding the editing, my talks with a lawyer revealed to me that a work has to be transformative before it is deserving of new copyright protection. Thus, while an anthology or collection of stories is a new work, if those individual stories are not copyrighted, the copyright owner of the anthology cannot claim protection for the individual story. Simply correcting the stories and fixing misspelled words is not transformative. --Chris Karr [2] 13:27 21 Mar 2005

Je pensais que c'était une ancienne traduction, mais il semble que non. Je le signale ici, en attendant vérification. Caton 08:24, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Deleted. Zhaladshar 21:25, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

By Author:Bertrand Russell - according to the WP-article it was published in London in 1912. Does that make english law apply? In that case it would probably still be copyright protected, as Russell died in 1970. Christian S 08:12, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)

This problem will always be a tricky one. Since the servers are in the US it is practical to suggest that under US law anything published before 1923 is in the public domain, and anything published after 1922 depends on the law of the author's country. This does mean that there will be many ambiguities, particularly with early 20th century writers such as Russell who lived long past 1922. I see such a policy as a balance between good faith and practicality, and objections from persons with an interest in the material should be considered seriously. In the absence of such objections we should be safe. Eclecticology 10:07, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I moved this over here from wikipedia back in September, as it certainly didn't belong there. See Little Rock Nine for context. As I neglected to put this on my watch page, I missed Zhaladshar's question about copyright status. The comments appear to be extracts from a news interview of last year. [3] I don't know enough about copyright to assess the status: is it CNN's, Eckford's, or is an interview public domain? Second if the full interview is copyright, might these excerpts from a longer interview fall under fair use, in support of the relevant wikipedia article? Wolfman 01:41, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Deleted. Zhaladshar 21:25, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

copyright notice at bottom of: http://www.americanhumanist.org/3/HumandItsAspirations.htm

Yeah, I think we've had a run-in with this manifesto before, and I think we deleted it before, too. Probably should delete it again, and post a copyright notice in its place. Zhaladshar 14:35, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Deleted, copyright notice posted. --Christian S 18:56, 4 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

By Author:George Orwell

I think we have deleted it before, but I couldn't find it in the copyvio archives. The current version was taken from Gutenberg in Australia, where it is in the public domain, but I believe that it is still protected in the US, where our servers are, until 2021. Christian S 18:17, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

We have. That's why the page has the notice: because we have a problem with people adding Orwell's works (I think 1984 may have popped up more than once, too). We've done it with some of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s works, as well. Zhaladshar 20:19, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Well...I just looked at 1984's page history, and someone actually did add the work again. I could have sworn that we put the copyright notice on that page. I guess someone needs to re-delete this page and we can put the notice up again. Zhaladshar 20:25, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Deleted, supplied with a copyright notice (and a link to a server in russia, where it apparantly is in the public domain), and protected. Christian S 16:50, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I just checked up on it, and you are absolutely right, somebody actually did make a copyright notice - at the alternate title Nineteen Eighty-Four ;-) Christian S 16:58, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Ah, yes, that would be it. Thanks.  :) Zhaladshar 01:05, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Author (1886 - 1965), copyvio --Shizhao 11:42, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I agree. --Shin-改 14:14, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I Deleted 龍谷大学学歌, Talk:龍谷大学学歌 and 龍谷大学校歌.

Howard died in 1936 and everything on this site by him is between 1923 and 1936. Until the next year, these works will still be protected under copyright, yes? Zhaladshar 15:05, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I'll echo the info I posted at Author:Robert E. Howard: "Paul Herman has done some extensive research into the copyright status of works by Robert Howard. He released a document for a Howard site called REHeapa titled 'THE COPYRIGHT AND OWNERSHIP STATUS OF THE WORKS AND WORDS OF ROBERT E. HOWARD' in December of 2002. The document exists at http://www.robert-e-howard.org/AnotherThought4ws02.html. This document also contains a comprehensive list of Howard works in the public domain."
Mr. Herman's research is about as extensive as is possible, and he concluded that a long list on Robert Howard's work is in the public domain. The copyright status of much of the rest of his works is in dispute. CSN 22:32, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

A recent writing. It's not clear whether it has been released under GFDL by the copyright owner. Someone with better Russian language should have a look at this. Eclecticology 08:43, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

To me (I'm native russian speaker), this article looks like a nonsense, senseless mere verbiage. May be, it's just a joke? ChVA 20:25, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)
We've waited long enough. Deleted. Zhaladshar 21:21, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

This is the cover of the 2003 Penguin book Barnaby Rudge. There is no indication that the art is public domain, and I'm willing to bet that the cover is a newer piece of art and is still protected under copyright. Zhaladshar 15:15, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Deleted. --Christian S 19:24, 4 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

From [removed, see history until May, 19] - really, that's where the user copied it from.

How can a natural constant be protected by copyright? On what basis do you claim that it is copyright protected? Christian S 06:45, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)
No, of course. This is either a joke or a troll. Yann 07:42, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)
A natural constant can not be protected under copyright (besides, even if it could, it's so old that it would be in the public domain anyway). This is just a bogus posting. Zhaladshar 15:03, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Keep - The only thing they could possibly copyright is the particular formatting of the page, and that's a bit ludicrous, don't you think? Ambush Commander 01:45, 10 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Polish authors[edit]

Works by the following authors have been submitted to Wikisource despite their copyrights having not expired yet:

The expiry date in Poland is 70 years after the author's death, although some of them are PD in the US (since they were written before 1923). But some, like all Szymborska's poems, should be deleted immediately. Ausir 20:59, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Works by Jan Brzechwa, Krzysztof Kamil Baczyński and Władysław Broniewski has been deleted - I'll continue tomorrow. --Christian S 19:40, 4 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
You can skip Tetmajer (at least for now), since his works are PD in the US... Same with some of the works by Leopold Staff. Ausir 08:29, 5 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I have now deleted all the texts exept the texts by Tetmajer and the pre-1923 texts by Staff. I was unable to delete some of the texts due to a known compression bug, these have been blanked and properly categorised for later deletion when the bug has been fixed. --Christian S 11:30, 5 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit[edit]

Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit has long been in the public domain. Translations are, of course, another matter. I have found a translation of the Phenomenology with the following license:

From Harper & Row’s Torchbooks' edition (1967) of the Phenomenology (1807), translated by J B Baillie (1910), from University of Idaho, Department of Philosophy, thanks to Jean McIntire http://www.uidaho.edu/. § numbers from the Baillie translation have been inserted into the text of the Baillie

translation and linked to explanations by J N Findlay.

Permission is granted for electronic copying, distribution in print form for educational purposes and personal use. If you reduplicate the document, please indicate the source. No permission is granted for commercial use of this material.

As far as I understand the copyright page at wikisource, I believe the aforementioned translation could be copied to wikisource without any problems (granted that the note above is included with the text). Is this correct?

Thanks for your help. (Alex beta 16:16, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC))

In Wikipedia, we do have instance of non-free images used in a fair-use + permission-granted sense. I think it should be okay, we can claim fair-use and permission-granted. Although this was only applied for images... so an actual text has never been precedented. I guess we have to set one. Ambush Commander 01:47, 10 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you very much. I'll start adapting the text to Wikisource as soon as I find some time. (Alex beta 12:12, 10 May 2005 (UTC))[reply]

All works by Lupicínio Rodrigues (died in 1974). These are presently:

Christian S 16:11, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The author ระวี ภาวิไล (Rawi Vilai) is still alive. According to Thai law, This is not PD at all.

--203.118.82.11 09:01, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Deleted. Zhaladshar 14:50, 9 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

author Bei Dao(北岛)is still alive. --Shizhao 11:55, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

INTRODUCCIÓN to Cuentos fantásticos[edit]

This includes a reference to 1970 and is probably protected. This does not generally apply to the stories in the collection. Eclecticology

see Talk:The Gardnerian Book of Shadows

I tried to delete the text, but i get this error message:
"Can't delete this article because it contains block-compressed revisions. This is a temporary situation which the developers are well aware of, and should be fixed within a month or two. Please mark the article for deletion and wait for a developer to fix our buggy software."
It is definitely copyvio (the text is later than 1960), and i have supplied it with the copyvio template - i guess that the deletion will just have to wait till the bug is fixed. --Christian S 19:11, 4 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Deleted. Zhaladshar 19:30, 21 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

This book was published by Prometheus Books on September 1, 1986 and is authored by Robert G. Ingersoll. Zhaladshar 17:30, 4 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Deleted. Zhaladshar 21:22, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

This work was published in 1937, and Parsons died in 1979. It is not in the public domain yet. Zhaladshar 17:35, 4 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Deleted. Zhaladshar 21:24, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

This is Crown copyright. The copyright has been waived subject to certain conditions, but those conditions are NOT compatible with the GFDL. From reading the copyright notice, things posted to Wikisource must either be GFDL licenced, or public domain. David Newton 00:46, 21 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

This seems like it's a foreward for a recently published book. I can't find anything about it on Google, but it seems to be too recent for me. Zhaladshar 16:28, 30 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Huxley did not die until 1963, and this was published in 1932. More than likely this is a copyvio. Zhaladshar 13:24, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Delete. Yann 10:04, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

This is not PD or GFDL. It is still copyrighted. --Shin-改 05:39, 16 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Done. --Shin-改 01:21, 20 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Hesse died 1962. So it isn't public domain. --Jofi 21:59, 19 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

But published in 1922. Marc 06:26, 20 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Wow, this one just barely makes it in under the public domain. Since it was published in 1922 (and because it's not a translation), it is PD. Zhaladshar 12:33, 20 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
It's PD in the US (publishing > 70 yrs), but it's copyright protected in the EU (death < 70 yrs). Since it's a German text of a German author, it would belong to de.wikisource. But it won't be added there because of its copyright status. I don't know if it's allowed to publish a "German text of a German author, copyright protected by German law" in the US. If so, it could probably stay at the international domain (I'm not a lawyer).
BTW: Why do you call Brave New World (see below) a copyvio but Siddharta not? It's the same problem. --Jofi 22:05, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Because Siddhartha is published in 1922, and Brave New World in 1932. I think it is saved to assume that Siddhartha is PD in the USA and therefore OK to have it here. See [4]. And why would you have different rules for de.wikisource than for the rest of Wikisource? This is just an artificial subdivisions. Yann 10:03, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)
de.wikisource will be a project in German for German speaking people from German speaking people. So EU law has to be kept in mind (see meta:Rechtsfragen_März_2005#I._Anwendbares_Recht in German). And it should be clear for the users that they can use wikisource material in the terms of GNU-FDL. Otherwise people who mirror de.wikisource or parts of it could be punished. And I dont' think we make many friends if we try to do some tricks with the copyright laws. Having Siddharta at Wikisource isn't that important. --Jofi 22:48, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Since when do we create projects reserved for a nationality ? Anyway, there are people speaking German outside of Germany, so de.wikisource won't be a project for German people only. Actually I will object creating de.wikisource all together if that is your purpose. Yann 08:37, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I wrote "German speaking people". What else should be de.wikisource for if not for German speaking people? And most German speaking people live in the EU. --Jofi 21:47, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)
But, the servers that host de.wikisource.org will be in America, so only American copyright laws matter. Other servers that mirror "de" will need to take responsibility for themselves as to the copyright status of the works according to the laws of the country in which their servers are located. There is no need to purge our databases of all the works that might be copyvios in other countries simply because others might mirror our site. Zhaladshar 23:36, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)
"only American copyright laws matter": That's not so clear (see link above). And I didn't write about copyvios in any country, but about copyvios in the EU. From about 100 Mio. people speaking German as first language, there are only about 3 Mio. in Switzerland not part of the EU. --Jofi 21:47, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Applying German law because it is German text is a bad rule. There is no reason to do that. Yann 21:52, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Will you spend the costs if Wikisource is being sued? It is likely that the Suhrkamp Verlag will definitively NOT accept the existence of a German text in Wikisource. There is no chance that a German court (or a court in a EC country) will decide that it is OK. Historiograf --172.178.52.106 22:09, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)
It seems you have very little understanding how copyright law works. German law doesn't apply in the USA. US copyright law allows this text to be published here. There is no reason not to publish it. Yann 22:15, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)
(BTW: I asked at German mailing list for opinions.) If I am a German and I move the text to de.wikisource, this is a kind of publishing the text. What does this have to do with servers in the US or anywhere? German court can use German law to sue German users for copyvio of German texts. (That's my opinion.) --Jofi 22:20, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I think the point is, as a resident of Germany, it would be a violation of EU copyright law for you to access Siddharta anywhere on Wikisource. However, since the servers hosting Wikisource reside in the US, US copyright law applies. It doesn't matter what EU courts say since it is perfectly legal to host public domain works in the US regardless of their status in other countries. It doesn't matter that the domain name is de.wikisource. As far as Wikisource is concerned, anyone accessing a text has to pay attention to the copyright laws of their country of residence. This responsibility rests with the citizens of the EU, not Wikisource. Take for example the various texts hosted in Australia or Russia that are PD. As a resident of the US, I can't copy those texts to my computer since American copyright prohibits this, but that doesn't mean that some Austrialian group can't host those texts in Australia. On a side note, has anyone ever looked into moving the Wikisource servers to a country with less stupid stringent copyright laws (somewhere with published + 50 for example) so we can include more texts? CSN 23:46, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

ok, a few things like i know them (IANAL)

the us and eu and ... are all part in a union(perhaps the wrong word) that says they accept the copyright of the other countries in that union.
even if there is no problem for the servers in the us when breaking german law, a german contributor or admin will be in conflict with the german law (and the admin WILL have problems even if he did not even touch that file, but was (theoretically) able to remove it)
moving the servers to an other country so copyright does not apply.... that was intended as an joke, right?
Yes as I said, any German citizen that uses Siddharta would be violating EU copyright law but how does that have anything to do with whether or not it is legal to host the article on Wikisource. allofmp3 is a great example of something that is not at all legal in the US but that we can't make Russia take down. Same with Swedish BitTorrent sites like thepiratebay. They have a whole legal section dedicated to making fun of lawyers from the US and UK that think their laws apply to another country. Surely, Wikisource is only responsible for the copyright laws of the country which hosts their content.
And no I was not kidding about moving the servers. I personally feel that publication + 70 or life + 70 or hell, just a flat 50 years is much too long for works to remain copyrighted. It stifles creativity. It's bad for society. Moving the servers to a country with less strict copyright laws is a perfectly reasonable and legal option that would allow contributors from countries without draconian copyright laws to post stuff that we can't. I seem to remember about 6 months ago that Yahoo donated some servers in Asia to Wikimedia. What is to stop the project from setting up servers elsewhere? CSN 22:09, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I agree with CSN about this, although there are other issues (technical...) to take into account. Yann 15:07, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)
yes, 70years is to long, i agreeon that. but ist is not the matter here, it is the legal side. if the server is in asia or on mars does not matter, if it is an owner in germany that goes legaly agains an german admin or contributor. the german law does not care about the place of a crime.
i hope you do understand my problems now.
What CSN and Yann suggest would mean that every EU user at de.wikisource would have to use anon proxies when contributing and nobody would be able to use his real name. For many people that wouldn't be very attracting. --Jofi 2005-06-28 12:58:38 (UTC)
So, instead of the contributor's themselves taking responsibility for their actions and not involve themselves with editing things they are not allowed to edit, we should just delete a legally permissible work from our servers? Zhaladshar June 28, 2005 15:12 (UTC)
It's not only the contributors who can be taken responsible but also people who are taking part in it in some way. For example the admin who moves Siddharta to de.wikisource could be taken responsible. --Jofi 2005-06-28 15:45:56 (UTC)
But it sounds like only the admins who are residing in Europe (and NOT America) can be prosecuted for editing Siddhartha. So any user who lives outside of Europe can still edit it without fear of prosecution. So there is still no need to delete it. Zhaladshar June 28, 2005 16:07 (UTC)
Please look at w:en:User:Quadell/copyright for more information. It's a really good page all about copyright. Zhaladshar June 28, 2005 16:14 (UTC)

In my judgement it does not matter where you are when you commit a copyright violation. Else - for example - Microsoft wouldn't care about piracy of American Windows copies outside the USA, would they? The author of a work permits a publisher to create copies of it. If there should be another (foreign) publisher who has the interest to publish the book, he would probably contact the current copyright holder (publisher or author) and ask for permission. However, copyright may be given to multiple publishers in different countries - at least that's what I think about this matter. So if we discuss whether this is a copyright violation or not, we should ask the one who put it into WikiSource, User:Marc. He should be able to reveal the source of this text, if it was copied from a book released by a German or US-American or anywhere-else publisher. Copyright laws should then be applied as in the country of the publisher. But be aware of what I say for I'm not a lawyer, either. BTW, I doubt that "Siddharta" was typed in completely by Marc, maybe it's from wikipedia:Project Gutenberg or something like that. --217.83.14.111 30 June 2005 15:07 (UTC) ()

Yes, it matters where you are when dealing about copyrights. That's the whole point. Because the copyright law is different from country to country, you can't make a global rule about it. As another example, 1984 from G. Orwell is in the public domain in Australia and Canada, but not in Europe and in the USA. Yann June 30, 2005 21:43 (UTC)

Kept. Discussion moved to Talk:Siddhartha. Yann 21:00, 22 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Novocaine's works[edit]

Novocaine is a band from the Netherlands. Their works--i.e., song lyrics--would be protected under copyright. Zhaladshar 12:51, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

You can seriously copyright song titles? I mean so that they can't be listed on a page about the band? How does Amazon list stuff then? Or the millions of fan sites on the web? That's just.... that doesn't make any sense. If the page should be deleted because it doesn't add anything to Source then that's one thing. But a copy vio? Can we list the names of books that are still under copyright? Did you mean the lyrics? CSN 22:40, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Yes, song titles can by copyrighted as they are creative works that have been put in tangible form. And just because all the fan sites put lyrics on they're site doesn't make it legal. As this is a Wikimedia project, it would be in Wikisource's best interest to not allow any copyright infringements, as small as it may be.
Titles are not copyrightable, so listing titles of books (or even the copyrighted songs) is okay. Zhaladshar 23:07, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I think I missed something. Are song titles copyrightable or not? Those two paragraphs above seem to directly contradict one another. Are you saying that song titles are copyrightable but a list of them is fair use so it’s okay to have on Source? Or song titles are copyrightable but other types of titles aren't? I didn't mean the fan sites that list lyrics but fan sites that list discographies. They are essentially just big lists of song titles. That is a copyright violation? Perhaps you mean that song titles are copyrighted since they are a part of an album in the same way that chapter titles are part of a book but it would be perfectly legal to list the chapter titles just like it would be legal to quote a couple of lines from a book when writing a review of that book. That's why I like Source, I learn something new every day. CSN 21:33, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Sorry, I misunderstood what you said previously. No, song titles (like any other title) or not copyrightable. The lyrics themselves are, but not the title. And sites which only list their discographies are not infringing upon copyrights. Sites that list the lyrics themselves are, yes, but not discography sites. Even if the song titles are part of an album, the titles cannot be copyrighted. I hope this clears up some confusion. It would be perfectly fine to list Novocaine's songs, as long as we don't put up the lyrics.
So not the page Novocaine is a copyvio, but its subpages. I added the copyvio note to them. --Jofi 22:15, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Correct. I removed the copyvio notice from the Novocaine page itself to avoid confusion. Zhaladshar 02:56, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Novocaine's subpages have been moved to Dutch Wikisource. Shall we delete them here? If yes, I may do it here but not at Dutch Wikisource as I am not an administrator there.--Jusjih 06:24, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I have deleted Novocaine's subpages as they have been tagged copyvio since June 2005 without valid requests to keep them since then. However, I cannot delete these pages moved to Dutch Wikisource as I am not an administrator there.--Jusjih 07:55, 19 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]