Wikibooks talk:Copyrights

This needs to be updated
Now that I'm going to actually publish a book from Wikibooks, I've discovered a whole bunch of problems relating to copyright status that need to be covered. Essentially, I think we need to take most of the contents regarding hard copy printing and throw them out.

According to U.S. law (and perhaps others), every single author needs to be given attribution, not just the top 5 contributors. Or perhaps we need to get a second opinion on this. Is is the top 5 edits by edit count? What other criteria are we going to use? What about requirements for nationality and place of residence? (This is for formal copyright registration.)

I'm going to take this discussion to Wikipedia for some wider comment as well, but it needs to be updated and modified here, especially as it relates to Wikibooks. --Rob Horning 01:45, 26 July 2005 (UTC)


 * It would be interesting to get an update to learn if there were any results from this. --Swift 03:14, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Why GFDL instead of GPL?
The GFDL looks as though it tries to give the original authors control over derived works by allowing invariant sections. I have seen mention of one document where the author has specified the whole of the document as an invariant section (I'll try to find a link). This makes a nonsense of any supposed ability to create derived or improved works. It seems that Wikibooks has made a deliberate attempt avoid this by stating that there will be no invariant sections, no front matter, etc. This seems to reduce the GFDL to something approaching the GPL so why not use the GPL instead?

I can imagine circumstances where it would be desirable to include some of these books (if any of them ever attain the necessary quality) in Debian. But the GFDL is incompatible with the Debian social contract (as interpreted by Debian) so it can't be done; see http://people.debian.org/~srivasta/Position_Statement.html.


 * It would have been nice for you to sign this statement with a ~ (four tildas) to let us know who you are and your opinion here. See the editing help page on Meta for more details.  Going through the history log I can also find this information, but by omitting the sig, it seems as a random comment and hard to seperate out from other content.


 * I for one agree that the GFDL does have problems that need to be resolved, and is in need of some major overhaul...much more than the GPL. If you go to the Free Software Foundation website you can find some discussion about this issue as well, and be able to help change the GFDL to overcome some of the objections you are talking about.  I will say also, however, that the GPL is missing some key components for textual literary works that are not needed for computer source code or binary distribution, so the GPL is also insufficient to cover everything that you need for a literary work.  Wikibooks, and indeed all Wikimedia Foundation projects actually use a specific subset of the GFDL that cover the GFDL with "with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts."  This is a key distinction that avoid many of the common objections, but there are others to worry about as well, as you've pointed out. BTW, you might want to do a very careful read of version 1.2 of the GFDL to see that some of the objections have also been dealt with.  It appears as though the Debian position statement was for the GFDL version 1.0, which is different from the 1.2 version (although not apparent from the discussion).  Of particular note is that the transparent vs. opaque discussion IMHO is totally wrong.  Opaque copies  are the literary version of binary distribution.  PDF files are a good example, although this is primarily concerned with printed copies that don't even require computer technology to be able to "read" them.  The attempt in this section is to encourage people recieving printed works that they don't have to go through a Distributed Proofreaders type of OCR conversion (with editing rounds) just to have the ability to reprint the book they are reading.  If you have ever read a manual that was a 6th or 10th generation photocopy of some other document, I hope you appreciate what having the original "source material" as a machine readable text can mean.  The GPL has similar requirement for binary distribution together with the source, and as a matter of policy myself when distributing software (I am a software engineer who has also used the GPL for some projects) I include a copy of the source as well... especially at the download site (which is critical).  Unfortuately when you buy a book in a bookstore, the "download site" into your hands to read the book usually does not have a computer network terminal or other convinent means to get the source material.  The same could be said if you bought a CD-ROM with GPL software (I've done that too), but if you abide with the spirt of the GPL, the source would also be included.  Some of this is also derived from the fights over items like Tivo that are reluctant to release source code for GPL'd software modification that consumers are indirectly using.  This makes it clear that you as an end-user should be able to get raw machine readable source material somehow.  I've also been involved with an unscrupilous supervisor who "GPL'd" some software for one day only, and "copyied" the software for his own personal use when he left the company.  A similar issue happened with the Gnutella network software when it was released by Netscape just before the AOL buyout (or was that right afterward?) There are other legal issues that pertain only to literary works that the GFDL attempts to deal with that are not really covered with any other licese, although Creative Commons does try to do a good job.  The GPL/GFDL incompatability issues are a huge deal, and that is something that IMHO the Free Software Foundation can and should deal with (particularly since they wrote both licenses).  In short, if you want to make a copyleft literary work available, what license would you suggest?  Also keep in mind that this issue has been throughally vetted in other forums, including when Wikipedia, Nupedia, and Gnupedia all were started.  These are essentially the same thing...or at least have similar roots and the projects all merged together at some point.  As far as how this affects Wikibooks, on the other hand, is another issue.  We do, however, have to maintain compatability with other Wikimedia projects, and keep in mind that all existing content on all Wikimedia Foundation servers (slightly over 1 TB of data, from what I've seen, and growing at a rate of about 4-7% per month) is already GFDL'd, so changing licenses is going to be a huge deal, not something done as a casual unsigned comment on an obscure page is going to change.  We treat this issue seriously, however, and invite discussion of what changes can be done to help encourage a copyleft distribution of literary content.  At this point, however, the GFDL may have to be changed than for us to change to something other than the GFDL.... and it may be easier to accomplish as well.  --Rob Horning 10:13, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

Sorry about the lack of signature, I'm afraid I'm not very competent at editing yet. kwhitefoot 18:57:43, 2005-08-22 (UTC)

I'm afraid I really don't know what license would be best and I'm not really qualified to pronounce on it anyway. What I want is that any content that I provide be available to anyone to use for whatever purpose they wish and for those who distribute derived works to be required to give the same freedoms to everyone else. Additionally I do not want to burden those who might want to create a derived work from a small part of a document with requirements to attach verbose licences (WikiTravel has a discussion on exactly this point explaining why they rejected the GFDL). Any incompatibility between GPL and GFDL would be especially important to me and to many programmers because we write both code and manuals for that code. A substantial program might also have a textbook associated with it. The point is to encourage the free flow of information. I do understand that there are a lot of documents in these Wiki's now that are covered by GFDL but I can't agree that that is a reasonable argument against change, only against careless change. Circumstances change all the time. Anyway how could you change the licence of existing text? Wouldn't you have to contact all the contributors? I'm aware of the clause in both GPL and GFDL that state that the creator of a derived work can follow the rules in 'any later version' but I wonder how that would stand up to a legal challenge if the terms were to change significantly. Sorry about the mutiple edits, finger trouble on the refresh button. kwhitefoot 09:17:47, 2005-08-23 (UTC)


 * If you want to get a glimpse at the magnitude of your request, see User list, which is a list of all of the registered users here on Wikibooks. And keep in mind that a substantial number of people also contribute "anonymously", so technically you would have to dump the entire database and restart the entire project if you decided to switch licenses.  This is currently under discussion at Wikitree (a genealogical website that wants to become a part of Wikimedia sometime in the future... if possible).  The problem there is that the person who started the site made the license CC-by-SA-NC, which made it incompatable with the GFDL and the GPL in a major way (the non-commercial use only clause).  A debate there over what license should be used is occuring, and they are facing the very real possibility of throwing away their entire database and restarting the project.  It is only a couple of months old, so that may be a real possibility, and they do consider that the project proposal is still in beta.  License issues at the beginning of a project are critical.  This debate is also ongoing at Wikinews, and their "solution" to the problem is to simply make all content put into the public domain (no license at all).  That way it is compabatable with all copyleft licenses until they can come to a decision as to what specific copyleft license that they want to use, even if they have to draft that license themselves.  That also misses the legal protections that a copyright license affords to keep people abusing the "commons", but in the case of Wikinews it was not perceived to be as big of a deal.  The #1 complaint there is the license republishing requirement of the GFDL made it absurd to use GFDL (as would the GPL under similar circumstances) for any short 5-10 paragraph news articles by commercial news outlets (like a small-town newspaper that decided to trash their annual AP wire fee and use Wikinews instead... or even as a suppliment). Particularly so visible of a project like Wikimedia Foundation projects do indeed get notice from the Free Software Foundation, and it is having a major impact in the future of the GFDL.  There are discussions going on right now (on some mailing lists that I don't know the URL for at the moment) about future changes to the GFDL that has included comments from Wikipedia and other Wikimedia users, and taken very seriously.  Particularly when you note that Wikipedia alone is perhaps close to 50% of current content written using the GFDL (or more...but stats like that would be hard to come by).  Both the GPL and the GFDL are due for an update soon and both have been announced by Richard Stallman.  The GPL update is a bigger concern because Linus Torvald got rid of the "or later update" clause in the GPL for the Linux kernel, which "freezes" the GPL at it current version.  Linus did that for a specific legal reason, and debate over that decision can be found elsewhere on the web. Slashdot has done a particularly good job of covering that specific issue (especially within the user comment areas), but you do have to dig real hard. If you do want to get involved with this issue and bring it up to a larger audience that includes people who can make a change (at least within the Wikimedia Foundation) I would suggest that you look at The Wikimedia Foundation mailing list (also refered to commonly as Foundation-l on Wikimedia projects).  There are a couple of hot-button ideas at the moment, but I'm sure you would get a solid reply as to why the GFDL is being used.  You might want to dig through the archives as well if you might be interested.  There are a couple of computer programming Wikibooks where issues of GPL/GFDL compatability are of importance, so there is some reason to try and hit this issue as well.  --Rob Horning 12:24, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

Compatible licences
Is there a list of licences that are compatible with the GFDL?

What I mean is: is there an easy way to discover whether a document or an excerpt from a document can be incorporated in a WikiBook without having to read carefully through all the complicated clauses. For instance, is the OpenOffice Public License compatible (http://www.openoffice.org/licenses/PDL.html).

A concrete example: I would like to take some information from Programming OpenOffice.org with Visual Basic (http://www.kalitech.fr/clients/doc/VB_APIOOo_en.html) but it is under the OO public license which looks to me as though it isn't compatible, but I'm not sure. kwhitefoot 09:03, 17 September 2005 (UTC)


 * I would recommend that you take a look at the GNU License List that compares several licenses to licenses authored by the Free Software Foundation. Look toward the bottom of the page for the GFDL compatable licenses as opposed to the GPL.  There are a couple licenses listed there that are compatable, and this list should be expanded.  If you are interested in researching this topic, it would be a good discussion to add to the Wikimedia Meta Server and adding a list of compatable licenses to the GFDL.  In addition, writing to Richard Stallman or somebody else at the Free Software Foundations with some document licenses that may be compatable with the GFDL would be useful as well.  This is something that Mr. Stallman in particular is interested in and will give you some sort of reply on the matter... especially if the website in incomplete from what you have found out.  I've had contact with Mr. Stallman in the past, and he has been very gracious and reasonable in his replies if you are also reasonable with your request.  --Rob Horning 00:15, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

Orphan works
I have found a number of web pages that would make worthwhile additions to Programming:Visual Basic Classic but have failed to make contact with the copyright holders. It isn't just that the email isn't answered, sometimes it bounces and even Google fails to turn up a plausible alternative address.

I wonder if anyone has any suggestions about how to track down the copyright holders of such orphan works. It seems to me that there is a lot of material on the web that is effectively unuseable because it has neither an explicit license granting free use nor a live contact who can be asked for permission. Sadly academic sites seem to be frequent offenders in this regard, even where they have an email address specifically noted as the one to use regarding copyright the mail often goes unanswered. --kwhitefoot 21:25, 23 September 2005 (UTC)


 * This is an ugly can of worms that you have just opened up. Prior to the "internationalization" of U.S. copyright (at least in the USA) that occured in the mid 1970's, all copyrighted works in the USA were required to file a formal registration with the U.S. Copyright Office, which is a part of the Library of Congress.  As a part of the registration process, you needed to list the address of the publisher and other contact information, as well as the complete names and nationalities of all authors for the copyrighted work.  This registration still occurs, but now it is voluntary and is seldom done except for items that are widely published or for people that don't mind paying the registration fee to do the formal paperwork.  By registering the copyrighted work now, you gain statutory damages of $175,000 or more for a single copyright violation... that is above and beyond actual damages which can also be included.  That copyright damage award can even be assessed against copyleft documents like Wikipedia (if somebody copies Wikipedia content, for example, without including the GFDL fine print or if they in turn claim copyright on the content).  If the stuff you are trying to locate has been registered, you can contact the Library of Congress and get the publisher contact information.  You may even be able to get that information on-line without having to actually talk to somebody.


 * For internet web pages, you can also try to find the domain registration information. For example, you can go to:

http://www.internic.org/whois.html


 * and look up the whois information about the domain. Try to type in wikipedia.org in the domain area as an example to find who "owns" wikipedia.org.  Back in the "good old days" this information was rather accurate, but the U.S. Dept. of Commerce has totally screwed up the internet and this registration is now close to meaningless.  Still, you might get a clue as to who might have set up the internet domain, and sometimes people are honest when filling out these domain registrations.  These addresses are usually Snail-Mail but also include sometimes e-mail addresses as well.  I have seen addresses on Mars or Alpha Centari, so you can take those sort of addresses with a grain of salt.  Better than having no contact information, however.  By going through internic, you may have to do a domain search on a registrar's server, but internic has the names of the secondary registrars that you have to look up the information with, and generally where to go.  The Whois information is supposed to be free to the public, but sometimes a bit of a pain to get to and some registrars don't exactly make it easy to find the "Whois" button on their web page.


 * The Library of Congress just had a symposium on what to do with orphaned works, and I believe is still seeking written comments about changes to copyright law. This issue is also likely to come before some future session of the U.S. Congress in the near future, so make sure you write to your local congressman if you are an American (or even if you aren't but want to weigh in on the issue.)  Orphan works in particular would not be an issue with the old copyright laws, as a copyright which expires in just 20 years would normally be no big deal.  With the current life+75 years, and no legal way to even know when a given author died unless they are incredibly famous, you can consider the current copyright term to be about 200 years.... basically the works of Thomas Jefferson would still be under copyright if the powers that be had their way.


 * In general, unless you have explicit permission in the form of something like the GFDL or something written by the author in your possession, consider most written works to be under copyright and untouchable for the purposes of Wikibooks. If you havn't guessed, I do have some strong political opinions on this subject.--Rob Horning 23:33, 23 September 2005 (UTC)


 * Quote: 'consider most written works to be under copyright and untouchable for the purposes of Wikibooks'. That's pretty much what I concluded.  The contact problem is generally not that I can't find out who is likely to be the copyright holder but that I can't get them to answer email even when I can be certain that they have received it.  In one instance I even got an autoreply which said that the recipient was off work sick and I still didn't get a real reply.  I just can't believe that most people get so much email that they can't afford the time to write one line saying yes or no.  I think that I'll just have to admit that large chunks of the Visual Basic Classic book just won't ever get written because I'm too lazy to write the introductory stuff and have failed to get permission to copy anything else and haven't been able to persuade anyone else to contribute either.  (Insert your favourite swear word here!) :-( --kwhitefoot 17:06, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

Permission Statements
What is the correct procedure when one has obtained permission to incorporate a copyrighted work? Where should that permission be stored? Is there any way of ensuring that the permission is not accidentally or deliberately overwritten or changed? See Programming:Visual Basic Classic/Coding Standards for an example. I placed the permission on the page where the work will eventually be written simply as a placeholder, I want to move it to a more logical place so that it is not in the middle of the actual text, but where? The talk page for that module doesn't seem right to me because modules can be radically changed so that the talk page no longer applies. Neither does the talk page for the main page of the book seem the right place as there is so much else there. Perhaps there should be a specific repository for such things? --kwhitefoot 07:10, 28 September 2005 (UTC)


 * Update: I've added a separate page in the book for such things. --kwhitefoot 10:30, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

Non-commercial only distribution of Wikibooks content
There is a part of the LD wikibook (the CAT method in Appendixes) which may only be distributed freely if it is in its entirety and used non-commercially. Do I put the document (which has no official website) in its own page, so that it will be protected from editing? Do I remove the method? Do I replace it with a link to a forum post where he posted it? Do I contact the copyright holder to ask for a more liberal (yes, POV of me) license? r3m0t (cont) (talk) 16:54, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)


 * I'll try to contact you directly on your use page about this issue, but yes, we need to make sure all content added to Wikibooks follows the terms of the GFDL, including the capability of commercial entities redistributing the content. If there is a non-commercial use only clause, such as the CC-by-SA-NC license, or even explicit non-commercial entities only, it is a copyright violation to have that content on Wikibooks.  There are already several commercial mirrors of Wikibooks, and that is legal to do as long as they abide by the terms of the GFDL.  --Rob Horning 17:47, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Changes to content page
This should start with, which would currently display as "Copyright © 2003 – 2024", so that the year automatically gets updated. – Minh Nguyễn (talk, blog) 22:41, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)


 * Changed - Thanks for pointing this out. --Rob Horning 17:47, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Minor thing: Under Use in hard copies (which is under Publication by third parties), number 5.1 says Provide a floopy disk, which should be changed to Provide a floppy disk 70.59.165.242 15:12, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Fixed, thanks. --Derbeth talk 21:03, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Wikimedia Foundation licensing
I anticipate making a change to the page regarding WMF policy for official trademark and logo licensing agreements consistent with my earlier comments on Foundation-L. I will post the draft langauage here for comment.--BradPatrick 12:01, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
 * It would be nice to know what is a trademark of the WMF (from the viewpoint of the WMF) as well, as the &#153; and &reg; symbols are currently not being used with much of what I would think are legitimate trademarks of the WMF. BTW, thanks for trying to address this issue. --Rob Horning 12:49, 11 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Great. I presume this will apply across-the-board to all WM-wiki content. pfctdayelise 10:08, 12 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I hope you can eventually do the same regarding licensing of any copyrights held by the WMF. -anon

Interwikis
es:Wikilibros:Copyrights

ja:Wikibooks:著作権 --Wikimi-dhiann (talk) 06:19, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Books under alternative licenses
Currently the project page states:
 * All content is considered to be released under the following terms unless otherwise indicated (for example; a clearly-marked quotation);

I find this a little ambiguous. How prominent does the licensing statement have to be? Is a it enough to put it on the main page or does every page need to have it as well? What about talk pages? Would a link suffice or would the statement actually have to be there? --Swift 03:17, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Some additions
I would like to add text to this policy that indicates the following: These two points both follow directly from the GFDL, although many people have not completely read the text of that license and there is some confusion. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 02:09, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
 * 1) Once a license has been granted to Wikibooks for material, an author may not remove or alter that license (follows from Section 9 of the GFDL).
 * 2) That the page histories count as a byline, and serve as legal attribution under the GFDL. Additional lists of authors are completely optional, are not considered "Invariant sections", and are not binding.


 * Support. I didn't see this before but I do not object to either of these changes. I'm not sure what you mean by a byline, I think we can just call it a "history" since the GFDL counts that as a legitimate attribution as well in the "combinations" section. Mattb112885 (talk) 18:01, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Mixed view - while certainly something that can give credit to contributors, the page histories of MediaWiki does not really give enough information to effectively credit authors. I think it is something that can be worked with and derived from most page histories, but we shouldn't be establishing any legally binding opinions here.  Certainly we shouldn't claim that this is legal attribution.  It is a form of attribution that can be used to help determine who the authors really are, and with some work (quite a bit of work, actually) you can obtain the necessary information for proper legal attribution.  I should note that the "invariant sections" of the GFDL is one of those things that causes huge complications when doing legal interpretations of the GFDL, and is one of the more controversial parts of this license.  I could give some suggestions on how to meet the requirements of section 2(b) of the GFDL (author lists), but randomly grabbing five people from the page history is certainly not sufficient.  --Rob Horning 19:19, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
 * It seems to be sufficient for MediaWiki itself ("copyright (C) 2001-2007 Magnus Manske, Brion Vibber, Lee Daniel Crocker, Tim Starling, Erik Möller, Gabriel Wicke, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason, Niklas Laxström, Domas Mituzas, Rob Church and others"), although that is the GPL. Having said that, full history importing will always be the ideal. GarrettTalk 20:03, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Support, this is in agreement with what has been stated on Wikipedia (heck, there they say that even a backlink may be sufficient). If these methods were legally insufficient I'm sure someone would have brought it up by now. GarrettTalk 20:03, 17 March 2007 (UTC)


 * I've gone ahead and added the first point, since it seems to be supported, but I'm not sure how best to address the second point though in the text. --dark lama  23:53, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Interwiki link to Vietnamese Wikibooks
Please add an interwiki link to the Vietnamese version of this page:

vi:Wikibooks:Quyền tác giả

Thanks.

– Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 01:10, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
 * ✅ – Mike.lifeguard  &#124; talk 14:15, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Why is this page linking to a rejected policy?
From Copyrights:
 * In some situations you may encounter material on Wikibooks that has been added according to the Fair Use Policy.

From Fair Use Policy:
 * REDIRECT Fair use policy

From Fair use policy:
 * This page documents a rejected Wikibooks policy or guideline proposal that should not be followed.

Why does this policy incorporate by reference a policy that has been rejected? Why does it not link to Media instead? --Damian Yerrick (talk) 19:31, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Probably because someone forgot to update it when WB:MEDIA was made policy instead of this. --dark lama  19:51, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Should Wikibooks also switch to CC-by-SA
In June 2009, Wikipedia switched to CC-by-SA. . I honestly don't really understand all the implications. Should Wikibooks also switch to CC-by-SA? (a) to maintain compatibility with Wikipedia? (b) for the same reasons, whatever they were, that Wikipedia switched? --DavidCary (talk) 20:13, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
 * You seem to have missed that all Wikimedia projects have made that transition, including Wikibooks. &mdash; Mike.lifeguard &#124; talk 21:26, 28 June 2009 (UTC)


 * According to the history of the Copyrights page, it never mentioned CC-by-SA until the change of 6 July 2009. I am sorry I "missed that" change. To avoid a repeat of this problem, please tell me -- how can I see events that happen over a week in the future? --DavidCary (talk) 19:58, 6 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Let's all keep level heads here. Mike just assumed you saw the sitenotice before promoting the vote on the change to CC-BY-SA. I think there was also a sitenotice announcing the results of the vote as well. Today I've added a new notice reiterating the change. Hopefully now everyone will be aware of the licensing change. -- Adrignola talk contribs 20:22, 6 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I assumed David had read the link he posted, which explains that all Wikimedia projects were moving to CC-by-sa. &mdash; Mike.lifeguard &#124; talk 22:07, 6 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I hope you can understand how my little brain is confused when I hear one thing and see another -- when I hear that "all Wikimedia projects have made that transition", but I see that the edit screen links to Copyrights which had not yet made that transition.
 * Now that we all agree that Wikibooks *has* made that transition, and now that the edit screen links to the new Terms of Use, do we still need the old Copyrights page? Should we make that page merely a redirect to the new terms of use? Or perhaps a subordinate local copy of those terms? --DavidCary (talk) 19:36, 8 July 2009 (UTC)


 * The copyright page has made that transition, if you take a look at the update needed section below. The edit message update reflects what the WMF wanted, so presumably they still see a need for projects to have there own copyright policy. --dark lama  21:33, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Update needed
With the switch to dual licensing between the GFDL and Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License 3.0, this page needs to be updated. -- Adrignola talk contribs 01:53, 6 July 2009 (UTC)


 * I thought that would of been taken care of too when the other things were updated, but I guess not. I used Wikipedia's updated copyright policy to update our own. I think the spirit is still basically the same as before, so it should hopefully not be an issue. I hope it is enough to satisfy any requirements the WMF may have implemented for updating the copyright policy though. --dark lama  11:23, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Update needed: book donations
The " book donations" page currently implies that "All books on Wikibooks must be released under the GFDL." and that using "CC-BY-SA... can be problematic.".

It sounds to me like the "book donations" page was written sometime before Wikibooks switched from GFDL to CC-BY-SA in 2009, and no longer reflects the current situation.

Should I simply delete all the stuff on that page about copyrights and replace it with a link to Copyrights, or would something else be more useful to our readers? --DavidCary (discuss • contribs) 02:03, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

Recipes
Greetings, I would like to update Cookbook:Berbere based upon a recipe published in an actual cookbook (some background, if you're interested). My understanding is that a list of ingredients is not protected by copyright (at least, not in the US), although the preparation steps are protected. I don't think it would be too useful to have one without the other, and I'm not sure it's really possible to reword the preparation and still come up with an original work. I've looked at Cookbook_talk:Table_of_Contents/Archive_6 but it seems inconclusive (while Cookbook_talk:Table_of_Contents/Archive_1 suggests an [external site http://everything2.com/index.pl?node=US%20Copyright%20for%20Recipes] for guidance). Another possible issue, unrelated to copyright, is that the source cookbook is in Amharic, not English (on the other hand I've yet to find an English source that is authoritative). Any general tips on importing (or not importing) cookbook recipes into Wikibooks? Thank you, -- Gyrofrog (discuss • contribs) 18:29, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

Copyright infringement
As far as I can tell, this edit (from 2006) infringes copyright of Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach, 5th Edition, by James F. Kurose and Keith W. Ross, ISBN 0-13-607967-9, pp214-215. (Probably an earlier edition was used, as the 5th edition is copyright 2010.) The book is mentioned as a source but the text, in my opinion, infringes and is in any case not properly attributed. Can anyone advise how to proceed? I know what to do on en.wiki, but not here. Thanks! (PS: courtesy note of any reply on en.wiki, my home wiki, appreciated.) Frank (discuss • contribs) 02:42, 22 June 2011 (UTC)


 * If you can clearly identify something that was a copyright violation, please mark it with the copyvio template. This alerts the site administrators there may be a problem and allows other editors on Wikibooks to try to rework or replace that content.  Copyright violations are usually a high priority item for admins to deal with, and rank pretty close to vandalism in terms of how serious it is treated.  That you found something from an edit several years ago is unfortunate, but I'm glad that you caught it.  Hopefully a current admin will see this comment at some time in the near future.  --Rob Horning (discuss • contribs) 13:41, 23 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I've tagged it and will look at it soon. The section has been extensively edited so it may no longer be a copyright violation or it may be a copyvio of a different version of the book (as Frank notes) QU [[User talk:QuiteUnusual|TalkQu] ]|undefined 14:53, 23 June 2011 (UTC)


 * Was this forgotten ? --Panic (discuss • contribs) 06:30, 7 April 2012 (UTC)
 * I can't remember if I forgot! <font color="#E66C2C">QU <font color="#306754">TalkQu 09:51, 7 April 2012 (UTC)


 * I agree with your initial statement (after taking a closer look). One question remains, since the copyrighted content continues to exist in the revision history. Is it possible to redact it from these logs ? If so, then the copyvio is resolved, as the infringement can no longer be considered to be published (available). --Panic (discuss • contribs) 03:28, 8 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Done. I've deleted all revisions from the history that contain the copyright violation. There are no authors in that history who are not present elsewhere, so there should be no future attribution problem. <font color="#E66C2C">QU <font color="#306754">TalkQu 09:20, 8 April 2012 (UTC)
 * This probably occurs more than we notice. Frank was capable of detecting it because of the source reference and probably by a sprout of activity. People often use copyrighted source material and rewrite it to not only fit their purposes but remove the rights claim and make the content usable, a similar example is when we use wikipedia's content. There we have more content surviving, but wikipedia's articles most of the time go way beyond the simplest encyclopedic format. --Panic (discuss • contribs) 09:47, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

Pls add this interwiki link
ta:விக்கிநூல்கள்:காப்புரிமைகள்
 * ✅ --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 12:07, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

Transcribing Audio Books: Fair Use ?

 * does transcribing Audio Books fall under "Fair Use" ?
 * does translating while transcribing Audio Books fall under "Fair Use" ? --Eternal-Entropy (discuss • contribs) 05:06, 2 September 2012 (UTC)


 * Not a lawyer. Having said that the fair use is not limited by medium, that is you have the same freedom of the use of protected content than for instance using of a text.
 * Translation constitutes a derivation of the original work, it is by itself not related to the fair use. I think you may be confusing fair use with something else, fair use is an exception that permits in some instances the use of part of a protected work.
 * See Fair use for a general overview. --Panic (discuss • contribs) 06:19, 2 September 2012 (UTC)
 * I guess transcribing Audio Books in Full in it's language is not Fair Use. Ok, Let me rephrase the other question...
 * Does Wikibooks allow Audio Books that is translated & transcribed by a Wikibooks editor ? --Eternal-Entropy (discuss • contribs) 07:31, 2 September 2012 (UTC)
 * If the content is right for a textbook and the original is under a license compatible with Wikibooks, yes... --Panic (discuss • contribs) 10:33, 2 September 2012 (UTC)
 * And this is the key point - the copyright exists in the original material. You can't just convert it into another format to avoid the copyright. For example, a DVD doesn't become free to use because you convert it into an MPEG-4 video. If the original audio book is copyrighted, then you can't transcribe it here. <font color="#E66C2C">QU <font color="#306754">TalkQu 18:54, 2 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Ok, thanks --Eternal-Entropy (discuss • contribs) 19:11, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Compatibility of the ETHZ Oberon license with CC-by-SA.
The Oberon license is at ftp://ftp.ethoberon.ethz.ch/ETHOberon/license.txt. In case it is offline, there is a copy at http://easthope.ca/OberonUsage.html; scroll down a little to see it. According my elementary understanding, the Oberon license is compatible with CC-by-SA. Within Wikibooks, is there a formal process to determine compatibility? Can anyone offer an opinion? Thanks, ... PeterEasthope (discuss • contribs) 15:11, 4 October 2016 (UTC)
 * The only process I know is to ask on w:Wikipedia:Media copyright questions. JackPotte (discuss • contribs) 18:35, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

Typo
Change "the GNU Free Documentation License. unversioned, ..." to "the GNU Free Documentation License, unversioned, ...". (This same typo existed on English Wikipedia (and was removed earlier today) and still exists on English Wikispecies currently). --Pokechu22 (discuss • contribs) 18:29, 19 March 2021 (UTC)
 * ✅ Leaderboard (discuss • contribs) 18:45, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

Update to CC 4.0
The license has been already updated from CC 3.0 to 4.0. Could you please update this page? Thanks. cc SCP-2000 (discuss • contribs) 04:13, 19 July 2024 (UTC)
 * ✅ Leaderboard (discuss • contribs) 06:06, 19 July 2024 (UTC)