Plagiarism and Original Research Options

[Ottava]

I have posted this before, but I think it is necessary. Many people say that it is only plagiarism or original research, and that "summaries" are plagiarism. I will put forth my rule of thumb that ensures that both plagiarism and original research can't happen, then explain why people don't follow this.

When I talk to people, I tell them that, at the minimum, to summarize 10 sentences from a source with one sentence (when not directly quoting). Realistically, 1 sentence in an article should be a summary of 1 page in a book.

By summarizing that much into one sentence, you are forced to condense the language and ideas. You get rid of the flak, get more to the point, and it shows that your topic is more notable.

But why don't people do this? Many reasons:

1. Notability - most articles are on non-notable topics. People desperate to promote their favorite thing want to make a large article even though there are few sources. So, they take one sentence to make one sentence. Such was the case of Samus Aran, which ended up lifting passages from video game sites on game mechanics. Such clearly were not needed. However, there were no "books" on the topic so the writer wanting to make the topic seem great had to scrap the bottom of the barrel.

2. Laziness - some people don't want to go to a library, find books, and do research. Instead, they click google, type in some stuff, and start pulling stuff over. Since it takes work to summarize, they just don't. This was what Rlevse did and what Carcharoth would do.

3. Uncreative - summarizing takes thought and some people just can't think.

4. Trying to "win" - contests like WikiCup pit obviously skilled writers versus those that aren't. So, what happens when someone wants to win and lacks any ability? They cheat. It happens in any sport. Does that make the sport wrong? No. But sports should ban such people. Roger Davies and Carcharoth both were taking material from sites or books whole sale to produce pages faster for various contests. After all, contests give points and points are how you win the Wiki.



By summarizing a lot into a little, that isn't plagiarism. Plagiarism is taking someone else's words and saying they are your own. Original Research is making claims without any credible source to back them up, thus making you the authority (and no, you aren't an authority).

[jayvdb]

..

When I talk to people, I tell them that, at the minimum, to summarize 10 sentences from a source with one sentence (when not directly quoting). Realistically, 1 sentence in an article should be a summary of 1 page in a book.

By summarizing that much into one sentence, you are forced to condense the language and ideas. You get rid of the flak, get more to the point, and it shows that your topic is more notable.

But why don't people do this? Many reasons:

1. Notability - ...

2. Laziness - some people don't want to go to a library, find books, and do research. Instead, they click google, type in some stuff, and start pulling stuff over. Since it takes work to summarize, they just don't. This was what Rlevse did and what Carcharoth would do.

3. Uncreative - ...

4. Trying to "win" - contests like WikiCup pit obviously skilled writers versus those that aren't. So, what happens when someone wants to win and lacks any ability? They cheat. It happens in any sport. Does that make the sport wrong? No. But sports should ban such people. Roger Davies and Carcharoth both were taking material from sites or books whole sale to produce pages faster for various contests. After all, contests give points and points are how you win the Wiki.

By summarizing a lot into a little, that isn't plagiarism. Plagiarism is taking someone else's words and saying they are your own. Original Research is making claims without any credible source to back them up, thus making you the authority (and no, you aren't an authority).

This is a good rule of thumb. In regards to 'winning' and laziness, I'm guessing that DYK is a big cause of this. Article creators want to pad out the article with as much detail as possible in order to qualify for DYK. I know I have done it.

Why are you mentioning Carcharoth here, based on what he 'would do'? That sounds very odd. He isn't the best distiller of information that I've come across but he isn't lazy wrt doing research.

[Milton Roe]

By summarizing a lot into a little, that isn't plagiarism. Plagiarism is taking someone else's words and saying they are your own. Original Research is making claims without any credible source to back them up, thus making you the authority (and no, you aren't an authority).

I hate to say this, but you're right.

I should add that the problem is that that WP officially isn't just out to summarize and compress the world's knowledge, but to completely digest and re-present it in full form, hyperlinked, details and all. According officially to Jimbo. So, they have an intractable problem.

Even compression is an intractable problem, since, as you point out, it can't be done without original thought and synthesis. Try getting a machine to do it.

[Ottava]

Even compression is an intractable problem, since, as you point out, it can't be done without original thought and synthesis. Try getting a machine to do it.

I wouldn't say original "thought" but more of creativity. Creativity is the ability to take what is already present and rework it. It is the use of the imaginative function (ala Hume) combined with deductive reasoning to fill in the blanks. In this case, taking what is big and shrinking it to what is small. Think of fractals, where the tiny aspects are the same as the large but much smaller.

There is definitely an end result based on a previous matter. Does it look different? Sure. Is there some resemblance to the original? Yah. I prefer to think of Dr Evil and Mini Me.

As for what Jimbo wants, feh, who cares. This is just what I want. Me me me me me.




Jayvdb

Why are you mentioning Carcharoth here, based on what he 'would do'?

Go back to January/February where it was revealed that Carcharoth's submissions for the WikiCup had many instances of plagiarism. He then went about cleaning them up.

[Malleus]

Even compression is an intractable problem, since, as you point out, it can't be done without original thought and synthesis. Try getting a machine to do it.

So your premise is that because a machine can't do something then it's impossible? How bizarre.

[Milton Roe]

Even compression is an intractable problem, since, as you point out, it can't be done without original thought and synthesis. Try getting a machine to do it.

So your premise is that because a machine can't do something then it's impossible? How bizarre.

No, I'm merely pointing out that abstracting a work and writing a good summary is a fairly high-level mental task, requiring sentience and sapience. We have computers that can drive a car or play expert chess, but we're not even close to having a computer that can read a book and spit out a book report, let alone a good Cliff's Notes. The basic reason is that it requires some creativity and originality to abstract meaning, express it, and order it according to importance. It requires synthesis of the sort that is forbidden by WP:SYNTH.

As has been pointed out, only a small fraction of people can do this. It's something that not even good fraction of literate people can do.

No, I'm not selling it as the ultimate level of intellect. It's not as hard as being able to (say) read a science journal article and be able to write a decent article abstract or review paper (and yet we'd like Wikipedians who can do that, too!). And this, in turn, is not as hard as actually doing the creative thinking that goes into writing the primary publishable work (whether novel or science paper).

So don't misunderstand me. I don't expect computers to do it for a long, long time. And even when they can, the novelists, engineers, and scientists still won't be out of jobs. Legal secretaries-- maybe. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/wink.gif)

[Ottava]

he basic reason is that it requires some creativity and originality to abstract meaning, express it, and order it according to importance. It requires synthesis of the sort that is forbidden by WP:SYNTH.

SYNTH isn't summarizing one source and doesn't exist until you use two sources. In essence, WP:SYNTH bans a situation where you have source A saying "Miltons like chocolate" and source B saying "liberals like chocolate" then adding to John Milton's biography "Milton was a liberal because he liked chocolate" and then adding both articles as the ref.

Sure, the conclusion -may- be true, but it probably isn't and if it was you would only need one source to say it. Multiple refs should only be used to verify a claim that is equally present in them all and to ensure that controversial material is shown to be widely reported.

That doesn't always happen.

[Collect]

Nope. Plagiarism is taking another person's original idea and passing it off as your own. Rewording an original idea is still plagiarism if one does not attribute the idea.

Facts, dry facts, are another matter. The simpler the wording the better. Facts can not be "original ideas" and US courts have held that facts can not even be copyrighted.

Wikipedia is in the conundrum now of saying that exact quotes are bad, and paraphrases are bad (as the original source rarely coincides with the paraphrase). The conumdrum is self-made.

WP should admit that facts, qua facts, are not plagiarism, and that "original idea" copying is plagiarism, even if paraphrased or reworded.

This would even make the whole muddy business comprehensible to outsiders.

I have posted this before, but I think it is necessary. Many people say that it is only plagiarism or original research, and that "summaries" are plagiarism. I will put forth my rule of thumb that ensures that both plagiarism and original research can't happen, then explain why people don't follow this.

When I talk to people, I tell them that, at the minimum, to summarize 10 sentences from a source with one sentence (when not directly quoting). Realistically, 1 sentence in an article should be a summary of 1 page in a book.

By summarizing that much into one sentence, you are forced to condense the language and ideas. You get rid of the flak, get more to the point, and it shows that your topic is more notable.

But why don't people do this? Many reasons:

1. Notability - most articles are on non-notable topics. People desperate to promote their favorite thing want to make a large article even though there are few sources. So, they take one sentence to make one sentence. Such was the case of Samus Aran, which ended up lifting passages from video game sites on game mechanics. Such clearly were not needed. However, there were no "books" on the topic so the writer wanting to make the topic seem great had to scrap the bottom of the barrel.

2. Laziness - some people don't want to go to a library, find books, and do research. Instead, they click google, type in some stuff, and start pulling stuff over. Since it takes work to summarize, they just don't. This was what Rlevse did and what Carcharoth would do.

3. Uncreative - summarizing takes thought and some people just can't think.

4. Trying to "win" - contests like WikiCup pit obviously skilled writers versus those that aren't. So, what happens when someone wants to win and lacks any ability? They cheat. It happens in any sport. Does that make the sport wrong? No. But sports should ban such people. Roger Davies and Carcharoth both were taking material from sites or books whole sale to produce pages faster for various contests. After all, contests give points and points are how you win the Wiki.



By summarizing a lot into a little, that isn't plagiarism. Plagiarism is taking someone else's words and saying they are your own. Original Research is making claims without any credible source to back them up, thus making you the authority (and no, you aren't an authority).

[lilburne]

he basic reason is that it requires some creativity and originality to abstract meaning, express it, and order it according to importance. It requires synthesis of the sort that is forbidden by WP:SYNTH.

SYNTH isn't summarizing one source and doesn't exist until you use two sources. In essence, WP:SYNTH bans a situation where you have source A saying "Miltons like chocolate" and source B saying "liberals like chocolate" then adding to John Milton's biography "Milton was a liberal because he liked chocolate" and then adding both articles as the ref.

BTWI love what they did on Chocolate:

Before long, the Spanish began growing cacao beans on plantations, and using an African workforce to help manage them.

European colonial landowners turned to Africa to supply them with the necessary labor. For over two centuries, a combination of millions of wage laborers and enslaved peoples were used to create a large workforce.
http://www.fieldmuseum.org/Chocolate/history_european8.html

As Mr Punch would say "That's the way to do it, that's the way to do it."

[jayvdb]

Nope. Plagiarism is taking another person's original idea and passing it off as your own. Rewording an original idea is still plagiarism if one does not attribute the idea.

Facts, dry facts, are another matter. The simpler the wording the better. Facts can not be "original ideas" and US courts have held that facts can not even be copyrighted.

Wikipedia is in the conundrum now of saying that exact quotes are bad, and paraphrases are bad (as the original source rarely coincides with the paraphrase). The conumdrum is self-made.

WP should admit that facts, qua facts, are not plagiarism, and that "original idea" copying is plagiarism, even if paraphrased or reworded.

This would even make the whole muddy business comprehensible to outsiders.

Facts are facts. Embellish them with prose and they are not just facts anymore - they become a stream of facts, ordered in a chosen way to (hopefully) be easy to follow and comprehend.
When someone adds raw facts to Wikipedia, there is very little need to use other peoples sentence structures.

A similar 'problem' applies to free software, whose creators mostly believe that algorithms shouldn't be able to be patented, and often say that algorithms can only be written one way. Rather than ignore copyright concerns in these cases, their founders recommended that creators went out of their way to end up with unmistakably different, and consequently free, source code. GNU took a lot longer than Wikipedia, but their product isn't riddled with copyright problems in their archives.

Quotes and Paraphrasing are useful tools; I don't know why you think they are bad.
It is possible to distill the 'available knowledge' without ending up lost in WP:OR/WP:SYNTH territory.

[SB_Johnny]

SYNTH isn't summarizing one source and doesn't exist until you use two sources. In essence, WP:SYNTH bans a situation where you have source A saying "Miltons like chocolate" and source B saying "liberals like chocolate" then adding to John Milton's biography "Milton was a liberal because he liked chocolate" and then adding both articles as the ref.

Sure, the conclusion -may- be true, but it probably isn't and if it was you would only need one source to say it. Multiple refs should only be used to verify a claim that is equally present in them all and to ensure that controversial material is shown to be widely reported.

That doesn't always happen.

Not that I disagree with what you're saying here, but George W Bush, Republicans, Lincoln, Log Cabins, and homosexuality (among other Ottavalogical leaps) come to mind when you in particular say it. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/dry.gif)

[Ottava]

Nope. Plagiarism is taking another person's original idea and passing it off as your own. Rewording an original idea is still plagiarism if one does not attribute the idea.

No.

That is intellectual theft.

Plagiarism is not taking another's ideas. It is taking another's words. You can have words for an unoriginal idea. After all, history books are about things that aren't original.

Facts can not be "original ideas" and US courts have held that facts can not even be copyrighted.

Facts can't, but you can't just list facts. Listing facts would be something like:

* Born -
* Parents -

etc.

Those are called "infoboxes". They don't make good articles. Britannica is copyrighted and if we started copying and pasting their "facts", we would be penalized.

[Milton Roe]

he basic reason is that it requires some creativity and originality to abstract meaning, express it, and order it according to importance. It requires synthesis of the sort that is forbidden by WP:SYNTH.

SYNTH isn't summarizing one source and doesn't exist until you use two sources. In essence, WP:SYNTH bans a situation where you have source A saying "Miltons like chocolate" and source B saying "liberals like chocolate" then adding to John Milton's biography "Milton was a liberal because he liked chocolate" and then adding both articles as the ref.

BTWI love what they did on Chocolate:

Before long, the Spanish began growing cacao beans on plantations, and using an African workforce to help manage them.

European colonial landowners turned to Africa to supply them with the necessary labor. For over two centuries, a combination of millions of wage laborers and enslaved peoples were used to create a large workforce.
http://www.fieldmuseum.org/Chocolate/history_european8.html

As Mr Punch would say "That's the way to do it, that's the way to do it."

Yes, lovely example. Now, chocolate becomes more and more colored with the issue of European misuses of other human beings. Sources for all of it. And who are you to say that the emphasis is not proper? Is this not part of the righteous history of chocolate?

There are a million gradations here, also. Why write "wage laborers" instead of "employees"? And is the proper ordering "wage laborers and enslaved peoples" or "enslaved peoples and wage laborers"? Is a ratio of one to the other needed or helpful? If it is historically mostly one over the other (and you found the cites), should the "mostly" go in? How about if we put "enslaved peoples living under high-mortality conditions [ref]."? By the time the writers are done, it's an article from the leftist perspective that should be titled blood chocolate, but of course isn't.

[lilburne]

he basic reason is that it requires some creativity and originality to abstract meaning, express it, and order it according to importance. It requires synthesis of the sort that is forbidden by WP:SYNTH.

SYNTH isn't summarizing one source and doesn't exist until you use two sources. In essence, WP:SYNTH bans a situation where you have source A saying "Miltons like chocolate" and source B saying "liberals like chocolate" then adding to John Milton's biography "Milton was a liberal because he liked chocolate" and then adding both articles as the ref.

BTWI love what they did on Chocolate:

Before long, the Spanish began growing cacao beans on plantations, and using an African workforce to help manage them.

European colonial landowners turned to Africa to supply them with the necessary labor. For over two centuries, a combination of millions of wage laborers and enslaved peoples were used to create a large workforce.
http://www.fieldmuseum.org/Chocolate/history_european8.html

As Mr Punch would say "That's the way to do it, that's the way to do it."

Yes, lovely example. Now, chocolate becomes more and more colored with the issue of European misuses of other human beings. Sources for all of it. And who are you to say that the emphasis is not proper? Is this not part of the righteous history of chocolate?

There are a million gradations here, also. Why write "wage laborers" instead of "employees"? And is the proper ordering "wage laborers and enslaved peoples" or "enslaved peoples and wage laborers"? Is a ratio of one to the other needed or helpful? If it is historically mostly one over the other (and you found the cites), should the "mostly" go in? How about if we put "enslaved peoples living under high-mortality conditions [ref]."? By the time the writers are done, it's an article from the leftist perspective that should be titled blood chocolate, but of course isn't.

Well it is the wikipedians that have removed the "wage laborers and enslaved peoples" and replacing it with "an African workforce to help manage". Probably someone had read Nozick.

[Abd]

Nope. Plagiarism is taking another person's original idea and passing it off as your own. Rewording an original idea is still plagiarism if one does not attribute the idea.

No.

That is intellectual theft.

It's also plagiarism. For an actual academic definition of plagiarism, see this pamphlet from Indiana University. If Ottava would like to be perceived as an academic, this is a shocking error, a fundamental one, and I'd recommend he fall all over himself to correct it ASAP. He mostly doesn't take my advice, but he might consider it, specially, in this case.

Facts can not be "original ideas" and US courts have held that facts can not even be copyrighted.

Facts can't, but you can't just list facts. Listing facts would be something like:

* Born -
* Parents -

etc.

Those are called "infoboxes". They don't make good articles. Britannica is copyrighted and if we started copying and pasting their "facts", we would be penalized.

Weird. Several ideas are collapsed here. First of all, very difficult to "penalize" a nonprofit site. A takedown notice would be about the extent of it, it would take egregious and willful copyright violation, provable, to do more than that.

Secondly, every fact in Brittanica, almost without exception, can be found somewhere else. If, however, an article contained fifty facts, and a Wikipedia article, some version, contained the same fifty facts, it is conceivable that copyright violation could be asserted. It is the collection of the facts that can be copyrighted. Maybe. This gets so esoteric that legally it means practically nothing unless someone does it on a large scale from a single source or some other way to make it worth the insane effort to prosecute.

Ottava is dead wrong about "plagiarism," as interpreted in academia, which is where the concern arises. Plagiarism and copyright violation are not the same, though there is a great deal of overlap.

As the pamphlet notes, rewording is not sufficient to avoid plagiarism, it simply makes it more difficult to detect. Plagiarism is defined in the pamphlet as

... using others’ ideas and words without clearly acknowledging the source of that information.

Rlevse clearly plagiarized, but ... so do many, many editors, probably including many of those applying the tar and feathers.

As to "copyvio," fair use probably covers almost all copying on Wikipedia that would otherwise be copyvio. Wikipedia is largely immune to prosecution for this, either as a civil or criminal matter, if it promptly responds to a take-down notice.

In other words, for the community to spend substantial effort trying to enforce complete freedom from copyvio is probably a huge waste of time. Bad idea. There is a potential down side, as well. If a site really does take responsibility for content, as an organization, it is no longer merely an ISP, and not protected as ISPs are protected.

I know of an on-line publication that posts copies of copyrighted articles, for the purpose of criticism and review. They have been doing this for years, but they are non-profit. Sometimes the articles disappear, with only a link to the original publisher present (who is always credited in any case, and "fair use" is explicitly asserted.) My guess is that they simply take the material down if the publisher objects.

I've seen people assert that this is some kind of scuzzy behavior, but

*It's legal.
*It does serve the public.

Wikipedia, in theory, decided not to go this route, but, in one way, went way overboard, and in another, completely ignored plagiarism of the paraphrase kind, that is still potentially copyright violation.

It went way overboard in using copyright violation, for one example, to impugn and impeach and blacklist web sites that may have had occasional "violations" of the "no explicit permission from the publisher" kind, this was one of the excuses used for the blacklisting of lenr-canr.org, though no actual proven case of true violation was asserted, merely assumptions.

Example of that: the site puts up nothing without the author actually providing it (the site doesn't scrape content from elsewhere) and giving permission. Legally, this may or may not be enough, i.e., in some cases, the publisher has granted permission to the author to, for example, put up preprints that are identical to the published material, -- except for page formatting and certain other details -- or the publisher may have some special arrangement with an author, and it is practically impossible for the site manager to verify and check this.

I was able to figure out what the web site operator actually does, almost certainly. When the publisher permission is not clear to him, but the author has given permission, he does not badger the author to prove permission, rather he notifies the publisher of the hosting and requests formal permission. He reports that publishers almost never respond at all to these requests. Why should they? They gain nothing at all from wasting time even reading it! If they decide they don't like what the web site is doing, they can easily stop it, and, apparently -- rarely -- they do. It would take them a minute. And so what's crucial for protection is take-down process.

Avoiding all possible copyright violation is useless effort, and where does the labor come from for that?

Of course, the barn door that is left open is that paraphrase is not enough. It is still plagiarism and can still be copyright violation if all that has been done is to shove words around and substitute synonyms, etc., and, as the pamphlet points out, it is likewise still plagiarism. It is not plagiarism if it is attributed and exact quotations are shown as such, typically using quotation marks, but it might still be copyright violation.

Strictly speaking, there is no violation of copyright law if a nonprofit site hosts a "copyvio," which, then, means something that legally must be taken down upon request, or it [i]becomes[/] a violation. A for-profit site can be held to a much higher standard.

Most of what is hosted on Wikipedia, though, would not represent the kind of copyright violation that represents a "loss" for an original publisher. Commons, however, could be an exception, if the image hosted is substantially as useful as the original.... But Wikipedia is still protected as a nonprofit.

This post has been edited by Abd:

[lilburne]

I know of an on-line publication that posts copies of copyrighted articles, for the purpose of criticism and review. They have been doing this for years, but they are non-profit. Sometimes the articles disappear, with only a link to the original publisher present (who is always credited in any case, and "fair use" is explicitly asserted.) My guess is that they simply take the material down if the publisher objects.

I've seen people assert that this is some kind of scuzzy behavior, but

*It's legal.
*It does serve the public.

Well it is scuzzy and it isn't legal.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L.A._Times_v._Free_Republic

Daily kos banned and deleted loads of users content back in 2006 over cut&pasting entire articles.
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/1/3/19928/53458

[lilburne]

Strictly speaking, there is no violation of copyright law if a nonprofit site hosts a "copyvio,"

That is so wrong. Just because one is a non-profit does not give you immunity from copyright sanctions. Lets face it Thomas-Rasset just got hit for $1.5 million. Even if you have legal status as a non-profit organisation you still won't get away with copyright violation.

[Ottava]

It's also plagiarism. For an actual academic definition of plagiarism, see this pamphlet from Indiana University.

Before you act snide, please read what the pamphlet even says:

"# How to Recognize Unacceptable and Acceptable Paraphrases

* An Unacceptable Paraphrase
* An Acceptable Paraphrase
* Another Acceptable Paraphrase"

The problem with that policy is they call it "Plagiarism" when most Universities call it "Academic Dishonesty". Intellectual Theft, Plagiarism, Copyright Infringement, and other problems that Wiki has, along with cheating, all fall under the heading.

By taking it as you took it, you enter into a silly bit of over literalism. An example: "To avoid plagiarism, you must give credit whenever you use". In using Mathematical formulae, this isn't always necessary. I can use a^2+b^2=c^2 without having to have a footnote saying "Pythagoras" behind it.

First of all, very difficult to "penalize" a nonprofit site.

Non-profits can be sued and fined. Wikipedia has a lot of money and would be destroyed if it was sued for 20 million dollars.

This gets so esoteric that legally it means practically nothing unless someone does it on a large scale from a single source or some other way to make it worth the insane effort to prosecute.

A woman is jailed for stealing 23 songs. It doesn't take much in terms of copyright.

As the pamphlet notes, rewording is not sufficient to avoid plagiarism, it simply makes it more difficult to detect.

You are confusing paraphrasing with "rewording". "Rewording" is also called "close-paraphrasing" which isn't paraphrasing at all.

As to "copyvio," fair use probably covers almost all copying on Wikipedia that would otherwise be copyvio. Wikipedia is largely immune to prosecution for this, either as a civil or criminal matter, if it promptly responds to a take-down notice.

You were already severely pwned on this above with reference to the Freeper matter.


Sigh.

[Abd]

This is worth looking at, because, among other things, it shows the shallow understanding of some editors and, in particular, "lilburn," aka Nastytroll (T-C-L-K-R-D) . If it were just this idiot, I wouldn't bother, but I've seen this same argument from other editors. In fact, maybe Nastytroll is really one of them!

I know of an on-line publication that posts copies of copyrighted articles, for the purpose of criticism and review. They have been doing this for years, but they are non-profit. Sometimes the articles disappear, with only a link to the original publisher present (who is always credited in any case, and "fair use" is explicitly asserted.) My guess is that they simply take the material down if the publisher objects.

I've seen people assert that this is some kind of scuzzy behavior, but

*It's legal.
*It does serve the public.

Well it is scuzzy and it isn't legal.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L.A._Times_v._Free_Republic

Daily kos banned and deleted loads of users content back in 2006 over cut&pasting entire articles.
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/1/3/19928/53458

"Scuzzy" implies a moral judgment. What's the standard? The behavior described does little or no harm, ordinarily, and the one harmed, if they judge that they are harmed, can stop it immediately with practically no effort. They don't need to spend money, hire a lawyer, all they need to do is send a take-down notice.

There is no criminal offense involved, unless perhaps the claim of "fair use" was totally preposterous and there was intentional harm. Notice the U.S. Copyright Office's document on fair use. I will point out that it notes that "fair use" is complicated. It then gives advice. That advice is not a moral imperative. However, if we look at the standards of fair use, they all protect Wikipedia. It's worth quoting them:

1. The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes
2. The nature of the copyrighted work
3. The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole
4. The effect of the use upon the potential market for, or value of, the copyrighted work

Wikipedia articles almost always do not copy sufficient material to cause factors 3 or 4 to fail. Images in some cases may fail test 4, but notice that low-res images are often allowed at Commons, because these can be adequate for articles (educational purpose) and the market for an image is far more likely to be for the high-res form. The high-res image may be the protected work "as a whole," or close to it.

To be "illegal," an action, by itself, must violate a law, not merely a civil or commercial right (which may be established by law, but the law will specify what are criminal acts and the penalties therefor, and what merely establish legal rights, perhaps for civil recovery. An act with no penalty is not "illegal." If it harms someone, they may have rights under the law to stop the behavior, and if it causes them harm, they may be able to recover damages, but that does not make the act "illegal." It makes it actionable, something quite different.

We have some lawyers who read Wikipedia Review, and I am not a lawyer, and I can get it wrong. On the other hand, I've written briefs or suggested approaches that were used by lawyers in guiding their own research and action, where I happened to have sufficient knowledge of a narrow area. On copyright, I have only some background and a little reading and some understanding of common law. Copyright law changed over the last decades, and copyright is not common-law, it is a creation of statute, it can be utterly arbitrary, which makes it tougher to understand and predict.

Now, about that Free Republic case. From the Wikipedia article:

In December 1997, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, and other newspapers sent cease-and-desist letters by certified mail to Free Republic and to Robinson demanding that they stop republishing and archiving full-text articles of copyrighted materials. Robinson defiantly refused, saying that before he would agree to excerpt and link—that is, to post only excerpts of articles and use hyperlinks to the original source for the full text—the newspapers would have to "rip the keyboard from his cold dead fingers" (a reference to the famous statement, "I'll give you my gun when you take it from my cold, dead hands").

Ahem. One element in the case against Free Republic is that they did not respond to a cease-and-desist order. Further, note, the full-text articles were published, not merely quotations or excerpts. In addition, the plaintiffs asserted -- and included in the suit -- a business owned by Robinson which advertised on Free Republic, which would benefit from Free Republic traffic. So they were asserting a commercial purpose.

This case makes for bad precedent because it was not adequately defended or appealed. Read the effing article. However, my own opinion is that Free Republic screwed up, royally. Now, how does this relate to Wikipedia or to a nonprofit educational corporation, and that immediately responds to take-down requests?

As to the Daily Kos example asserted, the link is to the site policy, which prohibits the copying of entire articles. It allows "fair use," but provides, as usual, an unclear definition, because "fair use" has no clear definition. That's one of the reasons why, generally, an assertion of fair use is protective if it is not preposterous. The key is how one behaves if the "fair use" defense is challenged, i.e., the copyright owner complains. One can assert that a "fair use" claim was considered reasonable, but once one has refused to take the material down, causing the copyright owner to have to take expensive legal action to protect the owner's rights, the courts will look at the fair use claim with a jaundiced eye.

If the use is actually fair, the copyright owner has no right to order takedown. However, the owner will then have a prima facie case of copyright violation to file, and it could be very expensive to be right.

I'm not aware of any claimed example of "copyvio" as to article text on Wikipedia where the use was not actually "fair." In other words, Wikipedia is triply protected:

*The WMF does not routinely monitor content to insure freedom from copyright violation. This is a community function and is not under the control of the corporation. Nevertheless, the community does look for obvious copyvio, and interprets it very, very conservatively. I'm arguing that the response to Rlevse was a bit hysterical, but ... it may have been fair if Rlevse himself applied strict standards to others.
*The WMF orders takedown upon claim, if I'm correct. They don't argue about it, generally, if there is any apparent basis for the claim. If this got serious, it would go to counsel for review, I'm sure. They do not depend on volunteers for this, I'm sure.
*If nevertheless a case was filed, it would be defensible under fair use as defined above. And this would be so obvious that it's possible the WMF could win attorney's fees due to a frivolous lawsuit. Ask a lawyer about that!

As an additional point, Free Republic was presented with a civil lawsuit. There was no criminal prosecution, as one would presumably have seen if what they did was "illegal."

But some people use "illegal" to mean "could get you sued." It's sloppy. Lots of things can get you sued! The relationship of copyright law to the Free Republic case is that the law established certain rights for the newspapers; and Free Republic injured the newspapers, and managed to trash their own protections by how they conducted themselves.

[GlassBeadGame]

Nope. Plagiarism is taking another person's original idea and passing it off as your own. Rewording an original idea is still plagiarism if one does not attribute the idea.

This gets at the underlying harm that is sought to be avoided even if it is not accepted everywhere as the actual definition of plagiarism. It cannot be addressed by mechanical fixes such as paraphrasing or "restating." This is an offense of deception that could have been cured with given credit where due.

[Ottava]

There is no criminal offense involved, unless perhaps the claim of "fair use" was totally preposterous and there was intentional harm. Notice the U.S. Copyright Office's document on fair use. I will point out that it notes that "fair use" is complicated. It then gives advice. That advice is not a moral imperative. However, if we look at the standards of fair use, they all protect Wikipedia. It's worth quoting them:

1. The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes
2. The nature of the copyrighted work
3. The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole
4. The effect of the use upon the potential market for, or value of, the copyrighted work

Wikipedia articles almost always do not copy sufficient material to cause factors 3 or 4 to fail. Images in some cases may fail test 4, but notice that low-res images are often allowed at Commons, because these can be adequate for articles (educational purpose) and the market for an image is far more likely to be for the high-res form. The high-res image may be the protected work "as a whole," or close to it.

Many, many problems in the above. Wikipedia has stolen full pages of other people's material, which is a major violation. Furthermore, fair use based on Supreme Court rulings requires a lack of infringement of the original source to make money - i.e. releasing even one page of the Harry Potter books would do just that.

The low-rest images are only used when there is no possible replacement and they are not, NOT, allowed on Commons.

To be "illegal," an action, by itself, must violate a law, not merely a civil or commercial right (which may be established by law, but the law will specify what are criminal acts and the penalties therefor, and what merely establish legal rights, perhaps for civil recovery. An act with no penalty is not "illegal." If it harms someone, they may have rights under the law to stop the behavior, and if it causes them harm, they may be able to recover damages, but that does not make the act "illegal." It makes it actionable, something quite different.

Yes, it does make it illegal. You have to options - press charges or sue. Most companies prefer to sue but in the case of the woman downloading music she was sent to jail.

This case makes for bad precedent because it was not adequately defended or appealed. Read the effing article. However, my own opinion is that Free Republic screwed up, royally. Now, how does this relate to Wikipedia or to a nonprofit educational corporation, and that immediately responds to take-down requests?

I was a Freeper at the time. It was adequately defended. What they were doing was indefensible - full out copying. That is exactly what Wikipedia has done before. What the Freepers did was just like the stealing of pages from the Banglapedia.



In short, I hope no one tries to follow your advice because you don't know what you are talking about.

[HRIP7]

Facts are facts. Embellish them with prose and they are not just facts anymore - they become a stream of facts, ordered in a chosen way to (hopefully) be easy to follow and comprehend.
When someone adds raw facts to Wikipedia, there is very little need to use other peoples sentence structures.

Facts are facts, and facts are not copyrightable, even if they are only reported in a single source.

If the facts are

"John Doe died of food poisoning in July 2010. He was working on a book titled 'Good Food' at the time of his death."

then it's very hard to report those facts without sounding similar to the source. However, it's neither plagiarism nor a copyright violation.

[Milton Roe]

Nope. Plagiarism is taking another person's original idea and passing it off as your own. Rewording an original idea is still plagiarism if one does not attribute the idea.

This gets at the underlying harm that is sought to be avoided even if it is not accepted everywhere as the actual definition of plagiarism. It cannot be addressed by mechanical fixes such as paraphrasing or "restating." This is an offense of deception that could have been cured with given credit where due.

At what point do ideas pass into common domain and no longer need be attributed? For example, if I speak of artillery shrapnel,* am I required to note credit for the idea in a footnote? Most of my knowledge is not original, but neither can I give you an original source for much of it, either. Originality is the art of concealing your sources.** If you know them.

MR

* Due to Major-General Henry Shrapnel (1761–1842)
** Ben Franklin

[HRIP7]

Nope. Plagiarism is taking another person's original idea and passing it off as your own. Rewording an original idea is still plagiarism if one does not attribute the idea.

This gets at the underlying harm that is sought to be avoided even if it is not accepted everywhere as the actual definition of plagiarism. It cannot be addressed by mechanical fixes such as paraphrasing or "restating." This is an offense of deception that could have been cured with given credit where due.

At what point do ideas pass into common domain and no longer need be attributed? For example, if I speak of artillery shrapnel,* am I required to note credit for the idea in a footnote? Most of my knowledge is not original, but neither can I give you an original source for much of it, either. Originality is the art of concealing your sources.** If you know them.

MR

* Due to Major-General Henry Shrapnel (1761–1842)
** Ben Franklin

Ideas are not copyrightable either. Only their creative, original expression is protected by copyright.

[Abd]

Well, he didn't listen. Ottava remains Ottava, impervious to any sort of course-correction, supremely confident in his own superior wisdom. Even with people two or three times his age, with extensive experience, etc., etc. This does not bode well for his future, he will careen from one disaster to another, in his personal, academic, and social relationships, always blaming others.

He will imagine that I'm just wanting to be right, myself, that this is an attack, as he has taken every warning to him that I've seen from anyone.

I've called this the "paranoid mind-set," and it can always invent arguments to justify itself, ignoring the substance, always seeking some flaw in the expression of others, never trying to actually understand.

If we are sane, and we see someone like Ottava, we should be quite worried that this is us. After all, how would we know?

It's also plagiarism. For an actual academic definition of plagiarism, see this pamphlet from Indiana University.

Before you act snide, please read what the pamphlet even says:

Uh, Ottava, do you imagine that I'd send readers to the pamphlet without having read it?

"# How to Recognize Unacceptable and Acceptable Paraphrases

* An Unacceptable Paraphrase
* An Acceptable Paraphrase
* Another Acceptable Paraphrase"

This is ripped out of context. Ottava is placing this in opposition to my comment "it's also plagiarism," when the pamphlet clearly covers the behavior that Ottava claimed was not plagiarism. This is plagiarism, according to the pamphlet:

To avoid plagiarism, you must give credit whenever you use

* another person’s idea, opinion, or theory;
* any facts, statistics, graphs, drawings—any pieces of information—that are not common knowledge;
* quotations of another person’s actual spoken or written words; or
* paraphrase of another person’s spoken or written words.

The key word here is "credit." "Acceptable paraphrase," among other traits, gives credit to the source. It just doesn't use exact quotation. Ottava is using this to imply that copying "ideas" is not plagiarism. That is a very poor use of a source, the pamphlet, and if he did things like this with articles, he is a danger to the project, one of the worst kinds, under some conditions.

The problem with that policy is they call it "Plagiarism" when most Universities call it "Academic Dishonesty".

Source for that claim? "Academic dishonesty," I'd think, would be even broader. How about making up sources? Not plagiarism, but certainly dishonest! Not that it is necessarily a reliable source, Academic dishonesty includes plagiarism as a specific type, which is clearly correct.

Now, what about the academic dishonesty involved in beating a dead horse? In pretending that you have the clear "victory" when you have not a leg to stand on? (below, you used "pwned" with respect to the Free Republic case, when that case didn't apply at all. Granted, this may not be, exactly, "academic dishonesty," but rather total incompetence, and the dishonesty is involved would be in pretending academic status and respectability.

And if you do have academic status, Ottava, shame on the institution, or I hope you are paying them instead of the reverse. Still, if you don't become teachable, you would be wasting your money -- or someone else's.

Intellectual Theft, Plagiarism, Copyright Infringement, and other problems that Wiki has, along with cheating, all fall under the heading.

What heading? Copyright infringement is not necessarily "academic dishonesty," so that couldn't be it. Perhaps it is crazy for me to expect what you write to make sense.

By taking it as you took it, you enter into a silly bit of over literalism. An example: "To avoid plagiarism, you must give credit whenever you use". In using Mathematical formulae, this isn't always necessary. I can use a^2+b^2=c^2 without having to have a footnote saying "Pythagoras" behind it.

Straw man argument. I didn't say that. It's a fragment taken out of context from the pamphlet. And, in fact, it would be a "silly literalism" to deny a general statement because there are exceptions. "Whenever you use" what? By leaving that part out, the application was not specified, making the statement look incomplete. I.e., as if one had said "whenever you use anything that was used by anyone else." Or something silly like that.

Ottava, the short of it: you have, for quite some time, been behaving as a Compleat Idiot.

I thought that this example might be clear enough for you to see, that, "Er, I was wrong about that." Do you know that the ability to be wrong is essential to learning? Do you know that the ability to admit error is essential to functional human relationships?

Do you ever make mistakes, Ottava?

First of all, very difficult to "penalize" a nonprofit site.

Non-profits can be sued and fined. Wikipedia has a lot of money and would be destroyed if it was sued for 20 million dollars.

Ottava, you don't know how to write accurately. You mean "successfully sued, winning a judgment of $20 million." Wikipedia would not be destroyed merely because it was sued, and if if, somehow, it screwed up so royally that it suffered a judgment of $20 million, do you know what would happen? Hint: it doesn't involve the project shutting down, unless somehow the lawsuit required that (in which case it would definitely not be about copyright violation.)

You have utterly no foundation or relevant experience in real life on which to base your judgments.

And what does this have to do with copyvio? What action of the WMF would make it liable for a sum like that?

Being nonprofit contributes to the fair use defense, and I documented that above, and, in addition, being a nonprofit corporation. That was the context of my comment about "very difficult to penalize a nonprofit site," which was incompletely expressed, and if you want to ding me for incomplete expression, realize that this would require that I write even heavier tomes.

This gets so esoteric that legally it means practically nothing unless someone does it on a large scale from a single source or some other way to make it worth the insane effort to prosecute.

A woman is jailed for stealing 23 songs. It doesn't take much in terms of copyright.

Ah, the RIAA, which is cutting off its own nose to spite its face. Cite the case, and make the parallel. You didn't provide enough information to find the case. But I did find this case. She didn't just "steal" 23 songs. In fact, she didn't steal anything. What she did was to make about 1700 files available with Kazaa. It was 24 songs that were specifically proven, that's all. And the RIAA was trying to make a point. And there are other factors that make this not an applicable precedent at all. By the way, this particular case moves on....

If this is the case Ottava had in mind, he was very much mistaken. No jail. This was a civil case, where the standard of proof is only "preponderance of the evidence." This wasn't a criminal matter.

The very use of the word "stealing" for this fries me, because theft is a common-law offense, with ancient roots and heavy and clear moral issues involved, and "copyright violation," i.e., "pirating music," is a creation of statute, statutes which serve, as much as anything else, large corporate interests. Complicated issue, and I'm not pretending that justice is all on one side ... but I do see that people get completely insane about this, perhaps because of the huge volume of propaganda paid for, over the last few years, by those same corporate interests....

For the first time, it became possible to "steal" something without depriving anyone else of anything. Now, if she copied those songs and sold them, bingo! That was a kind of theft, and there may have been actual harm. Was she profiting from the activity? I really should look up the law, it's been some time, and some of these things have shifted over the years.

As the pamphlet notes, rewording is not sufficient to avoid plagiarism, it simply makes it more difficult to detect.

You are confusing paraphrasing with "rewording". "Rewording" is also called "close-paraphrasing" which isn't paraphrasing at all.

This pedantic detail is relevant? Close-paraphrasing isn't paraphrasing? Weird language, English, eh?

As to "copyvio," fair use probably covers almost all copying on Wikipedia that would otherwise be copyvio. Wikipedia is largely immune to prosecution for this, either as a civil or criminal matter, if it promptly responds to a take-down notice.

You were already severely pwned on this above with reference to the Freeper matter.

Sigh.

Indeed, sigh. Enjoy it while you can. Pwned? Ottava, I have well over twenty years of experience on-line, including the W.E.L.L., Usenet, and forums of all kinds. You are a kid who imagines that the little knowledge he has is superior to the extensive knowledge and experience of others, and who stubbornly asserts it, and is completely closed to learning more. You are far more like Krunchlolee than you'd like to admit, you are merely higher-functioning, he is almost completely off the deep end. Or is purely a troll, hard to tell for sure.

[jayvdb]

Facts are facts. Embellish them with prose and they are not just facts anymore - they become a stream of facts, ordered in a chosen way to (hopefully) be easy to follow and comprehend.
When someone adds raw facts to Wikipedia, there is very little need to use other peoples sentence structures.

Facts are facts, and facts are not copyrightable, even if they are only reported in a single source.

If the facts are

"John Doe died of food poisoning in July 2010. He was working on a book titled 'Good Food' at the time of his death."

then it's very hard to report those facts without sounding similar to the source. However, it's neither plagiarism nor a copyright violation.

poppycock. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/yecch.gif)

[GlassBeadGame]

Nope. Plagiarism is taking another person's original idea and passing it off as your own. Rewording an original idea is still plagiarism if one does not attribute the idea.

This gets at the underlying harm that is sought to be avoided even if it is not accepted everywhere as the actual definition of plagiarism. It cannot be addressed by mechanical fixes such as paraphrasing or "restating." This is an offense of deception that could have been cured with given credit where due.

At what point do ideas pass into common domain and no longer need be attributed? For example, if I speak of artillery shrapnel,* am I required to note credit for the idea in a footnote? Most of my knowledge is not original, but neither can I give you an original source for much of it, either. Originality is the art of concealing your sources.** If you know them.

MR

* Due to Major-General Henry Shrapnel (1761–1842)
** Ben Franklin

Ideas are not copyrightable either. Only their creative, original expression is protected by copyright.

Don't conflate copyright and plagiarism. Time never cures plagiarism. If you appropriate the ideas of another person without attribution it is plagiarism. This ought to be a serous burden to any encyclopedia. A whole lot of what happens on WP is that someone turns to someone else's summary of a topic, or maybe more than one, cites the underlying references, rework the wording and give no credit to the authors of the summaries. This is plagiarism or something very like it.

If you turned to Franklin or Shrapnel for your source you need to credit them.

[lilburne]

A take down removes the immediate harm and a service provider that does so expediently retains their safe-harbour status. Whether a take down is sufficient for a copyright violation is something the holder will have to decide as to whether they are going to go after the uploader. Minimum charge $750 but may be as high as $150,000 depending on wilfulness per work infringed plus legal fees.

Also 'illegal' is simply contrary to law it isn't some fancy synonym for criminal.

Fair-use is basically what a judge a trial says it is, that said it is fairly limited you may want to take a look at this from Stanford:
http://fairuse.stanford.edu/Copyright_and_...apter9/9-b.html

BTW: The fourth factor is only applied in relation to the other 3 factor. It will sway the fair-use case but it won't turn a marginally unfair use into a fair one, nor will it turn an otherwise fair use into an unfair use.

What will hit WP or at least the editors on copyright is going to be the images. Particularly when they are re-licenced as CC-BY-SA or CC-BY. Don't be mistaken in thinking that small resolution images aren't commercial because they are. Newspaper will use 500px images in stories. Last year a local newspaper wanted to use some bug photos of mine. I pointed them to a flickr set with 1200px images, told them to let me know what they wanted and I'd give them the full rez. There response was that the 1200px images were huge. I've just been sent a children's picture book which used some images at 1/4 page size. They never asked for the full sizes. Same with two University text books that will be coming out next year one on evolution and medical text book with a section on urticating hairs.

A 640px images is perfectly good enough of greeting cards. You can use it to create CD and DVD artwork. There are no end of commercial uses. The only times recently I've been asked for high rez images was when a Catholic Diocese wanted to use the image as a poster, and the Natural History Museum of Venice's use in a multimedia exhibition.

A 3000px image will easily print a 24x30 poster.

[jayvdb]

Don't conflate copyright and plagiarism. Time never cures plagiarism. If you appropriate the ideas of another person without attribution it is plagiarism. This ought to be a serous burden to any encyclopedia. A whole lot of what happens on WP is that someone turns to someone else's summary of a topic, or maybe more than one, cites the underlying references, rework the wording and give no credit to the authors of the summaries. This is plagiarism or something very like it.

If you turned to Franklin or Shrapnel for your source you need to credit them.

What bugs me most about the ongoing discussions about EB1911 is that everyone says 'but it is attributed', yet not once is the author of the EB1911 articles mentioned even though the EB1911 included the initials of the author at the end of almost every article, and these were removed when the articles were slurped into WP. Attribution is not merely pointing to where the text can be found - it requires that the author is credited for their work.

[Abd]

There is no criminal offense involved, unless perhaps the claim of "fair use" was totally preposterous and there was intentional harm. Notice the U.S. Copyright Office's document on fair use. I will point out that it notes that "fair use" is complicated. It then gives advice. That advice is not a moral imperative. However, if we look at the standards of fair use, they all protect Wikipedia. It's worth quoting them:

1. The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes
2. The nature of the copyrighted work
3. The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole
4. The effect of the use upon the potential market for, or value of, the copyrighted work

Wikipedia articles almost always do not copy sufficient material to cause factors 3 or 4 to fail. Images in some cases may fail test 4, but notice that low-res images are often allowed at Commons, because these can be adequate for articles (educational purpose) and the market for an image is far more likely to be for the high-res form. The high-res image may be the protected work "as a whole," or close to it.

Many, many problems in the above.

No, many, many problems in how Ottava thinks. Conclusions first, arguments and facts later. The underlying conclusion, always assumed: Ottava is right.

Wikipedia has stolen full pages of other people's material, which is a major violation.

"Wikipedia" has done none of this unless it became legally aware and allowed a violation to continue. ("Wikipedia" is not a legal entity. Individual editors are, and the WMF is.) A "full page" may or may not be a "major violation." WTF is a "page" on Wikipedia, anyway? A stub is a "page," but is unlikely to be a major part of a source that suffers injury from the quotation.

Furthermore, fair use based on Supreme Court rulings requires a lack of infringement of the original source to make money - i.e. releasing even one page of the Harry Potter books would do just that.

From what I've seen, I can't believe a word you say that isn't sourced. I think you just totally misunderstood fair use. [i]One factor[/] in fair use is a lack of commercial motive on the part of the one claiming fair use. As to the other side of this, the motive of the source, that would factor into damages, not infringement, per se.
The low-rest images are only used when there is no possible replacement and they are not, NOT, allowed on Commons.Ottava is correct about Commons, and it's an important point, for those who upload images. Commons is designed for images to be freely shared, that's why fair use images are not allowed there. But they may be used on Wikipedia, hosted there under fair use.

To be "illegal," an action, by itself, must violate a law, not merely a civil or commercial right (which may be established by law, but the law will specify what are criminal acts and the penalties therefor, and what merely establish legal rights, perhaps for civil recovery. An act with no penalty is not "illegal." If it harms someone, they may have rights under the law to stop the behavior, and if it causes them harm, they may be able to recover damages, but that does not make the act "illegal." It makes it actionable, something quite different.

Yes, it does make it illegal. You have to options - press charges or sue. Most companies prefer to sue but in the case of the woman downloading music she was sent to jail.

Ottava doesn't understand legal generalities. He's assuming particular circumstances which were not stated, and then contradicting his own imagination. It's one of the pitfalls that paranoid thinkers fall into.

This case makes for bad precedent because it was not adequately defended or appealed. Read the effing article. However, my own opinion is that Free Republic screwed up, royally. Now, how does this relate to Wikipedia or to a nonprofit educational corporation, and that immediately responds to take-down requests?

I was a Freeper at the time. It was adequately defended. What they were doing was indefensible - full out copying. That is exactly what Wikipedia has done before. What the Freepers did was just like the stealing of pages from the Banglapedia.

I based my comment on information in the article which I cited. Ottava just writes off the top of his head, and assumes that his own knowledge is complete and balanced. The case was not adequately defended, the defendant substituted other attorneys during the appeal -- as I recall -- and the defendant abandoned defense on a number of critical points, but that was actually the least important part of my comment. This was not an appellate decision that was defended adequately on appeal, it isn't a decent precedent, it is merely well-known among internet habitues, like Ottava, who was certainly interested. However, I don't see that, given the poor response of the defendant to the cease-and-desist order, a better defense would have been worth the effort. This was a very poor case to cite regarding what we've been discussing. It does not bear on it at all. For two major reasons which I stated, and which were ignored. Typical.

In short, I hope no one tries to follow your advice because you don't know what you are talking about.

What advice? I made some general comments about law and common law. Legal advice would have to do with specific situations.

It is always possible that my knowledge is incomplete or that something I think I know is not a fact, or is obsolete. But I'm not seeing correction coming from anyone who knows the law or the facts, except on one minor point: I did get confused about the difference between Commons and Wikipedia as to "fair use," I'd forgotten about that. This is important for Commons because Commons would not have a fair use defense, since the purpose of Commons is not "educational," per se. It is to provide images for free use; hence Commons must be much more careful than Wikipedia. Or the on-line publication I mentioned.

They are not hosting full papers by my advice! Rather, I believe that they obtained legal advice that they could do this, provided that they promptly took the papers down if asked to do so. Or the editor decided that the value was worth the (small) risk. (There are not large numbers of papers like this hosted, and numbers do count, and the value of what is hosted, i.e., what it would cost to buy it.)

If I were going to do this myself, I'd ask an attorney! A specialist, not just any attorney. And the answer you'll get from such a one sometimes depends on the questions.

(This, by the way, is not lenr-canr.org. They host documents by permission, and if there are any exceptions, they are few; and for Wikipedia, occasional copyvios on a site is not a reason not to link to the site, and I've seen a lot of ignorance about this one, also. It is only linking to *known copyvio* that creates a -- small -- risk. The only case that's been cited on this was a massive attempt to defeat copyright, egregious.)

This post has been edited by Abd:

[lilburne]

Being nonprofit contributes to the fair use defense

No it does not. Wikipedia cannot simple copy whole chunks of stuff that a commercial entity cannot copy, simple because it is a non-profit. Here again is advice to teachers:
http://www.utsystem.edu/OGC/intellectualPr...ty/clasguid.htm

you'll notice that WP) fails on nearly all of those guidelines.

[HRIP7]

Nope. Plagiarism is taking another person's original idea and passing it off as your own. Rewording an original idea is still plagiarism if one does not attribute the idea.

This gets at the underlying harm that is sought to be avoided even if it is not accepted everywhere as the actual definition of plagiarism. It cannot be addressed by mechanical fixes such as paraphrasing or "restating." This is an offense of deception that could have been cured with given credit where due.

At what point do ideas pass into common domain and no longer need be attributed? For example, if I speak of artillery shrapnel,* am I required to note credit for the idea in a footnote? Most of my knowledge is not original, but neither can I give you an original source for much of it, either. Originality is the art of concealing your sources.** If you know them.

MR

* Due to Major-General Henry Shrapnel (1761–1842)
** Ben Franklin

Ideas are not copyrightable either. Only their creative, original expression is protected by copyright.

Don't conflate copyright and plagiarism. Time never cures plagiarism. If you appropriate the ideas of another person without attribution it is plagiarism. This ought to be a serous burden to any encyclopedia. A whole lot of what happens on WP is that someone turns to someone else's summary of a topic, or maybe more than one, cites the underlying references, rework the wording and give no credit to the authors of the summaries. This is plagiarism or something very like it.

If you turned to Franklin or Shrapnel for your source you need to credit them.

You're right there; the one has nothing to do with the other.

Facts are facts. Embellish them with prose and they are not just facts anymore - they become a stream of facts, ordered in a chosen way to (hopefully) be easy to follow and comprehend.
When someone adds raw facts to Wikipedia, there is very little need to use other peoples sentence structures.

Facts are facts, and facts are not copyrightable, even if they are only reported in a single source.

If the facts are

"John Doe died of food poisoning in July 2010. He was working on a book titled 'Good Food' at the time of his death."

then it's very hard to report those facts without sounding similar to the source. However, it's neither plagiarism nor a copyright violation.

poppycock. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/yecch.gif)

You have to distinguish between presenting the same facts and copying a creative expression. Expressions like "food poisoning" are not creative.

You could write,

"Towards the end of his life, Doe worked on a book to be published under the title "Good Food". The book was left uncompleted; Doe died of food poisoning in July 2010.

I don't think that would infringe the source's copyright, but it's still recognisably similar.

This post has been edited by HRIP7:

[Jon Awbrey]

Yet Another Wouldbe Instructor Makes Ottava Waste Endless Hours



YAWIMOWEH YAWIMOWEH YAWIMOWEH YAWIMOWEH YAWIMOWEH YAWIMOWEH YAWIMOWEH YAWIMOWEH YAWIMOWEH YAWIMOWEH YAWIMOWEH YAWIMOWEH YAWIMOWEH YAWIMOWEH YAWIMOWEH YAWIMOWEH YAWIMOWEH YAWIMOWEH YAWIMOWEH YAWIMOWEH YAWIMOWEH YAWIMOWEH YAWIMOWEH YAWIMOWEH YAWIMOWEH YAWIMOWEH YAWIMOWEH YAWIMOWEH YAWIMOWEH YAWIMOWEH YAWIMOWEH YAWIMOWEH YAWIMOWEH YAWIMOWEH YAWIMOWEH YAWIMOWEH YAWIMOWEH YAWIMOWEH YAWIMOWEH YAWIMOWEH YAWIMOWEH YAWIMOWEH YAWIMOWEH YAWIMOWEH YAWIMOWEH YAWIMOWEH YAWIMOWEH YAWIMOWEH YAWIMOWEH

Jon (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/tongue.gif)

[Abd]

Being nonprofit contributes to the fair use defense

No it does not.

That is a very simple and sober statement of fact. Read the material cited from the Copyright Office. (I'm not familiar with copyright law in other countries than the U.S., but it is this law that applies to Wikipedia.)

Wikipedia cannot simple copy whole chunks of stuff that a commercial entity cannot copy, simple because it is a non-profit. Here again is advice to teachers:
http://www.utsystem.edu/OGC/intellectualPr...ty/clasguid.htm

you'll notice that WP) fails on nearly all of those guidelines.

What lilburne ignores is that, first of all, nonprofit purpose does contribute to defense. That's plainly obvious. "contributes to defense" does not mean " makes completely permissible and unchallengeable." But that is how this editor has responded, as if that had been said.

Typical Wikipediot problem: unable to think clearly. combined with a straw man argument based on being unable to understand what others have written.

As to the source cited, it is highly permissive, I'm surprised that this would be given as evidence for a tight interpretation of fair use.

Again, if this editor used a source to back a claim in an article, comparable to the source cited above, claiming that it backed up what was written, no wonder this person was blocked (and was probably socking with the last account.)

Most of that source simply does not apply, so what "guidelines" the editor was applying are completely unclear. That source allows quite massive copying! (With many subtle points covered, that are clear when one understands copyright law and issues around fair use.)

This post has been edited by Abd:

[jayvdb]

You have to distinguish between presenting the same facts and copying a creative expression. Expressions like "food poisoning" are not creative.

"food poisoning" is not an expression; it is a technical term without any context, and it appears in dictionaries as such.

[HRIP7]

You have to distinguish between presenting the same facts and copying a creative expression. Expressions like "food poisoning" are not creative.

"food poisoning" is not an expression; it is a technical term without any context, and it appears in dictionaries as such.

Well, what is your point? I say it is not a creative expression, and you say it is not an expression. Where are we disagreeing?

[Abd]

A take down removes the immediate harm and a service provider that does so expediently retains their safe-harbour status. Whether a take down is sufficient for a copyright violation is something the holder will have to decide as to whether they are going to go after the uploader. Minimum charge $750 but may be as high as $150,000 depending on wilfulness per work infringed plus legal fees.

Okay, lilburne is earning some credibility here. "Minimum charge," though, isn't exactly that. It's a substitute for actual damages that a copyright owner may claim if liability is found. $150,000 (is that in the law? Or is that a maximum actual penalty assessed somewhere?) isn't any kind of "minimum charge," so I think that wording was accidentally incorrect.

Also 'illegal' is simply contrary to law it isn't some fancy synonym for criminal.

"Contrary to law" and "illegal" are close synonyms. Civil copyright violation is not "contrary to law." But that's a point for legal theorists. If the law establishes a right of recovery for damages for an action, colloquially we might say that the action is "contrary to law." In some cases, though, all that does is establish a "price" for the action.

If you rent property, and you damage the walls, you are, by law (common law and statutory law), liable for the cost of repair. But only when you vacate the premises. I actually was involved in litigation over this. What if you like the wall with that paint on it? If you did not have permission to paint it, fine. You must, if the landlord insists, when you vacate, repaint it to make it like it was, and if you do not do so, the landlord can recover the cost of repainting. Was it "against the law" for you to, without permission, paint the walls? Of course not! It may or may not have been against your rental contract.

Fair-use is basically what a judge a trial says it is, that said it is fairly limited you may want to take a look at this from Stanford:
http://fairuse.stanford.edu/Copyright_and_...apter9/9-b.html

BTW: The fourth factor is only applied in relation to the other 3 factor. It will sway the fair-use case but it won't turn a marginally unfair use into a fair one, nor will it turn an otherwise fair use into an unfair use.

The first statement is correct. And that kind of vagueness is a very Bad Idea in law. It leads to unpredictability, and the whole purpose of rule-of-law is predictability.

However, this document, which more or less repeats what I quoted before from the Copyright Office, does bring up a possible defense for Wikipedia: claim that the entire site is a parody of all human knowledge....

What will hit WP or at least the editors on copyright is going to be the images. Particularly when they are re-licenced as CC-BY-SA or CC-BY. Don't be mistaken in thinking that small resolution images aren't commercial because they are. Newspaper will use 500px images in stories. Last year a local newspaper wanted to use some bug photos of mine. I pointed them to a flickr set with 1200px images, told them to let me know what they wanted and I'd give them the full rez. There response was that the 1200px images were huge. I've just been sent a children's picture book which used some images at 1/4 page size. They never asked for the full sizes. Same with two University text books that will be coming out next year one on evolution and medical text book with a section on urticating hairs.

A 640px images is perfectly good enough of greeting cards. You can use it to create CD and DVD artwork. There are no end of commercial uses. The only times recently I've been asked for high rez images was when a Catholic Diocese wanted to use the image as a poster, and the Natural History Museum of Venice's use in a multimedia exhibition.

A 3000px image will easily print a 24x30 poster.

I doubt that this will "hit" WP, because of the multiple layers of defense. This is an argument for lower-res images, though. 640 isn't quite "low res" as I was thinking.

But there are some interesting issues raised here about images.

[Ottava]

Abd is randomly quoting people and going back to previous things and it is all out of order.

Most of it is rubbish, but it is so confused as rubbish that you can't even reply to it.

My favorite part is how he tries to say that age is somehow greater, as if being wrong for 60 years makes you better than someone who was right for one. o.O



Is Abd insane? Does he come up with a new persona, ramble on and on, and then think he is right? There seems to be no other explanation. Like his response to me is almost 100% jibber jabber. Could he have been drunk when coming up with it? I mean, seriously, I hope he sobers up and realizes how nonsensical his reply even was.

[lilburne]

Fair-use has nothing to do with the nature of the user, it is concerned with the nature of the use. Read the link \from the University of Texas:
http://www.utsystem.edu/OGC/intellectualPr...ty/clasguid.htm

pay attention to 'Spontaneity and 'Cumulative Effect' and the 'Prohibitions'. Now you'd think that the UT and others would know enough about the law and how to stay on the right side of fair-use would you not?

Remember that they are dealing with educational matters, which are directly specified in the 4 fair-use criteria, whilst non-profit is not.

Also if the nature of the user is taken into account, perhaps you can explain why the McCain campaign lost the Jackson Browne copyright case, and why DeVore lost his case too?

One further point if civil copyright violation isn't 'contrary to law' why are the Judges explaining what "authorized by law" means in DMCA case?
http://www.eff.org/files/filenode/lenz_v_u...order082008.pdf

This post has been edited by lilburne:

[Abd]

Warning: this is long, and could be considered "rambling." If you find reading my comments a waste of time, be my guest and don't read them. It is almost never obligatory. (My apologies to moderators who believe they must read everything, that is an exception that I always worry about.)

Abd is randomly quoting people and going back to previous things and it is all out of order.

I don't think so, but the WR user interface is horrible when dealing with quotation formatting errors, and I often have to cut sections to figure out where the error is, and when I put them back, it's possible that this happens out of sequence, though I do take care not to do that. So far, in this thread, all -- or almost all -- have been two level, i.e., I'm quoting a writer, like Ottava, and sometimes those quotes includes his quotation of me. It should be pretty easy to interpret. Unless I made a mistake. I make mistakes, unlike Ottava.

Most of it is rubbish, but it is so confused as rubbish that you can't even reply to it.

But he replies anyway.

My favorite part is how he tries to say that age is somehow greater, as if being wrong for 60 years makes you better than someone who was right for one. o.O

Rootless youth and disrespectful youth are condemned to repeat the history that they have contempt for. There is a certain level of rebellion and recognition that elders can be wrong, but assuming that this is the norm is extraordinarily foolish. Test it. Check it out. Try to understand it. See if you can express what elders are telling you in such a way that they will say, Yeah, you got it. Then you can truly criticize it. Until then you are merely callow and shallow, and probably lazy.

Is Abd insane? Does he come up with a new persona, ramble on and on, and then think he is right? There seems to be no other explanation. Like his response to me is almost 100% jibber jabber. Could he have been drunk when coming up with it? I mean, seriously, I hope he sobers up and realizes how nonsensical his reply even was.

I say tit, he says tat, a child's game. It is what we expect from the immature. Some learn, some never do.

You want to find someone who's really smart? Look for someone who was wrong for 60 years and then learned and correct the error. Want to find someone really stupid? Look for someone who is always right.

Drunk? Ahem. Muslim, Ottava, get a clue. However, insane, yes, wasting my time imagining that Ottava will actually listen to some advice that might change his life, way for the better. I periodically try. Is that insane or is that validating course, allowing for possible correction? I'd say it was insane yesterday, I wasted way too much time. On the other hand, I learned a lot about copyright. I learn by writing, it is how I've become world-class in a few narrow subjects. Copyright is not one of them, but I now know much more than I did when I started. I wonder if Ottava has learned anything here?

Do I think I'm right? Right about what? Be specific. Most of the time, Ottava, indeed, you don't understand what's being said to you. You respond to your own imagination. Suit yourself, shadow box, but it irritates certain people, irritate them enough and you are history in this forum. I don't care that much, myself.

There is some real discussion going on here, but it's not with Ottava. It's about copyright and fair use, and how Wikipedia commonly allows and even encourages plagiarism, but is mostly protected against liability if it responds to takedown notices. Which will be rare if the plagiarism isn't extensive and damaging to the copyright owner.

There is a handy proof: Wikipedia has assets, it is not judgment-proof. It is highly visible, it will show up on searches, at or near the top. How many lawsuits have been filed for copyright violation against Wikipedia? (It's a question, I don't know, but my suspicion is, none.) How many have been successful, resulting in an actual judgment, as opposed, say, to a simple consent to take the material down?

Lenr-canr.org, by the way, is also highly visible. Search for a published paper that they host, and they often come up top. Rothwell has never been sued for copyright violation. Apparently, take-down notices are rare, and he simply takes the document down if he finds out that the author misrepresented permission.

Researching this copyright stuff, I came across academic opposition to the 1997 copyright law tightening. I don't wonder! Copyright was originally intended to provide a restricted period for authors to profit from their work. I was involved in a publishing activity that reprinted a book that had been publishing in, I think, about 1920. We thought, from the way the law had been (and I was working with someone who had been a publisher for maybe twenty years, Walter Bowart) that the copyright had expired. But the law had changed, many copyrights, expected to expire, were extended. Major windfall for companies that owned lucrative properties.... and some benefit for a few authors. We got a cease-and-desist order. Checking the law, we stopped. I don't know details beyond that, there may have been some settlement. They were not after blood! And that's the norm. Things have gotten crazy recently with the RIAA crackdown, etc.

To certain Wikipedia know-it-alls, copyright is simple. The reality is that it's a complex field, and it is very easy to make oversimplified statements that are misunderstandings or that don't apply to the situation being discussed, that happened numerous times in this discussion. The law and interpretation of fair use is still in flux, see this recent news from the EFF.

See also the EFF discussion of Viacom vs. YouTube.. Summary judgment. In short, that's grim for the plaintiff, the court considered the matter open and shut based on the filings of both parties, there was no fact needing to be determined by a trial. I was wondering about YouTube, reading the strict interpretations and warnings of risks here.

On point here is this analysis of the YouTube case. It mentions Wikipedia.

An issue we have not covered: what about a user who infringes copyright on Wikipedia? My opinion, the user is far more liable, but, as I mentioned, rarely would what Wikipedia loosely calls "copyvio" be of sufficient harm to a publisher to motivate the publisher to act. It is mostly covered by fair use, but details may be important.

As has been noted in some of the material I read on copyright violation, publishers tolerate "fan fiction," which are derivative works that are covered by copyright on the original works, because it helps maintain or amplify the market for the original works. But it's up to them if they want to shoot themselves in the foot, which they sometimes do by going after fans.

Ironically, parody is protected, as is, generally, commentary. An email is protected, but if I quote the email for the purpose of commentary, it may or may not be fair use. Generally, it's going to be seen as fair use, but this gets really complicated. My advice: life is full of risks, and if you attempt to avoid all of them, you may live a boring and unfruitful life. And a risk that you didn't manage to avoid gets you.....

The most present and real risks re copyright violation, the most common one now, would probably be people who "freely" share music files through some service like Kazaa or its equivalents or descendants. It really ought to be obvious that this is very risky, and the risks can be huge, as the case that I think Ottava was referring to shows. $2 million dollar judgment for a single mother with no money. On the other hand, when she looks back at her life, she might find that this improved her position! Depends on how she "processes" it. If you do something that is going to piss off people with the resources to sue you, don't be surprised if they respond as you might expect, and don't depend on "anonymity" to protect you. That veil can be pierced.

By the way, some of the commentary on that case thought that the jury found against her because they believed she was lying when she said she was innocent. Lots of people think that they will be protected by rules against self-incrimination. They do not understand that in a civil case, the rules are quite different from a criminal one. There is no rule against self-incrimination, and the plaintiff doesn't have to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt. The rule is preponderance of the evidence, i.e., the jury decided in her case that it was more likely she infringed the copyright than not. And since she was dealing with a mass distribution of a great deal of material, she broke all the small-scale protections she might otherwise have had. Sharing an MP3 with a friend? The risk is practically zero. Don't worry about it.

But running what is effectively a server distributing copyrighted material. Worry a great deal, you'd better make sure you are within the protections provided in the DCMA, and don't screw around with it. Wikipedia is in this category, and they do make sure. The most important factor is how they respond to a take-down notice, AFAIK.

This post has been edited by Abd: