Forum:Creating a Formal Copyright Policy

Forums: Index > The Wizengamot > Creating a Formal Copyright Policy

HPW:POLICY currently stipulates the following regarding the use of copyrighted material on this wiki: "All the content in this wiki (i.e. text, images, music) must be in the public domain; unless you have obtained permission to use them publicly, copyrighted files will be removed, no matter how nicely written or beautifully shot."

This conflicts profoundly with actual practice on this wiki. We use many images from the books, films, and video games on fair use grounds, in order to supplement and reference text within articles.

I'm proposing that we update HPW:POLICY to bring it into line with current practice where the use of copyrighted material is concerned, or else create another, new policy to deal specifically the use of copyrighted material. It could also contain provisions for dealing with requests to remove copyrighted material (I raised this issue previously). ★ Starstuff ^{(Owl me!)} 23:50, May 17, 2016 (UTC)

If it's already contradicting policy, the contradictory statement (the one you quoted) should be removed. Personally don't feel this should be discussed, just remove the obviously bogus statement and the problem will be solved ;)

A whole policy on copyright would be needless, as most copyright issues are covered by image policy anyway. --Sajuuk 09:33, May 18, 2016 (UTC)

Agreed with SuperSajuuk unless there are copyright issues beyond images that need discussing or if the image policy needs revising. I would like to see some clarity on the Image source tag and whether it should include the intermediate steps to find a source (from url, a scan or pic of bookX) or if you just list bookX.--Ironyak1 (talk) 15:00, May 18, 2016 (UTC)

I do think the "Information" template could be cleaned up, as well as the presentation of the image summary section in general. Something like this would be better:

== Summary ==
{{Information
|description = What is the image depicting?
|source = Where does it come from? (if it's from the film or games, just a link to the article, but if not from these areas, link to source)
|purpose = What is the point of the image?
|resolution = Resolution of the file (Low, Medium, High, 720p, 1080p)
|replaceability = Can this file be replaced if a better quality image can be found? (mostly should just read "Only by a similar image with the same license status and of better quality.")
|other information = Anything else that's of use (defaults to "''Harry Potter'' series by [[J.K. Rowling]])
}}

== Licensing ==
appropriate license template here (mostly {{Fairuse}})

<!-- All image categories here -->

Additionally, the image categories need to be sorted out. There's way too many of them, it should be simplified. --Sajuuk 16:14, May 18, 2016 (UTC)

It's fine to make minor tweaks to policy pages at one's own discretion, so long as these changes simply serve to clarify existing policy or to refine its wording, and do not alter the substance of the policy in any way. But, since my proposal involves completely throwing out the existing policy on the use of copyrighted material, I wasn't comfortable with implementing it without first presenting it to the community and obtaining approval.

Wookieepedia has a copyright policy. I think it would be ideal to craft our own copyright policy, instead of having our copyright-related policies scattered across several different policy pages, or, worse, unwritten. This policy could also be used to provide instructions on how to select a license and fill out the {{Information}} template.

The image policy also needs to be updated, as it is not in keeping with current practice.

I don't see any issue with the current image categorization system. It could perhaps be better organized, but the number and variety of categories isn't a problem. Quite the opposite, in fact. Reducing the number and/or variety of image categories would make it more difficult to locate images by source or subject, and thus decrease the overall usefulness of the image categorization system. ★ Starstuff ^{(Owl me!)} 21:48, May 18, 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification. Obviously requiring PD on everything is overly restrictive (although it does help explain the glut of "PD" images that we're cleaning up), and having a default "request CC-BY-SA by boiler-plate" approach like Wookieepedia also seems unwieldly. While not my area of expertise by any means, it seems like focusing on Fairuse is the most productive method with an emphasis here on providing commentary, research, and scholarship as the site's purpose and as a clear example of Fairuse. Does Wikia provide any guidance on this issue as it's their bread-and-butter?

As for categories, I think this is a separate discussion but worth having and making some choices how best to to use categories either as a tagging system or as a hierarchical tree organization. The current mixed approach has some mind-bending consequences as previously noted in categories like Category:Creatures --Ironyak1 (talk) 09:00, May 19, 2016 (UTC)

There is no benefit at all to a copyright policy. The only content on here that is copyrighted are images and videos, both of which are covered by the image policy.

The copyright policy you've linked has very little to do with the uploading of content to the Wookieepedia, but about the reuse of content of the wiki itself, which is entirely pointless given that all wiki's on Wikia (with a few notable exceptions) are licensed under the CC-BY-SA license, which permits users to reuse whatever they want from a wiki, as long as they reference that they sourced the information from a Wikia wiki (and a link to the specific revision used). The little that has to do with image uploads is just the usual legal-mumble-jumble: all of which can be put on the image policy.

As for image categories, there are indeed far too many, despite the assertion that there is "no issue" (probably the user hasn't actually examined the huge number of image categories). Loads of the categories that exist on images don't even exist. Images should be easy to find, but the current system is just a mess to navigate (and most likely is impossible to find pictures). There are better ways we can go about image categorisation, but that's a topic for another day. --Sajuuk 10:35, May 19, 2016 (UTC)