Commons talk:Reusing content outside Wikimedia

From Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository

Contents 1 Origins 2 Disclaimer text and link to this project page? 3 encourage reuse 4 Wikimedia Project Logo Usage 5 Query sent to FSF on GFDL reuse 5.1 Moved text 6 Hotlinking 7 Scope and content of the page 8 Europass 9 Reuse abuse?

[edit] Origins

I started this page after answering one too many reuse queries to wp@davidgerard.co.uk, which is supposed to be my email address for press queries. OTRS have boilerplate for this sort of thing as well. That is, it's common enough that we do need a page on the subject.

There exist Commons:Licensing, which is for people wanting to add stuff to Commons, and Commons:First steps/Reuse, which isn't actually very helpful.

The idea is something that says "this is what is reusable, this is where you look to see what license, this is what you do to obey the license." Note intro stressing that this is not only not legal advice, but we take no responsibility for the listed licenses being accurate.

Any ideas welcomed - David Gerard 15:36, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Disclaimer text and link to this project page?

It seems to me that it couldn't hurt if our templates carried the disclaimer. EG:

This photographic image was published before December 31st 1956 or photographed before 1946 and not published for 10 years thereafter under jurisdiction of the Government of Japan. Thus this photographic image is considered to be public domain according to article Foo of old copyright law of Japan and article Bar of supplemental provision of copyright law of Japan. This applies world wide. Please note: Neither the Wikimedia Foundation nor the editors of content on Wikimedia sites provide legal advice. It is your responsibility to determine how the licenses apply to your intended uses — or indeed that the content is in fact under the license stated. More info here.

Disregarding the license text of this particular template, is the disclaimer text, format and redirection to the "Reusing content outside Wikimedia" page acceptable? (Note I changed authors of pages to "editors of content" with the intention of broadening the coverage of cases.) -Mak 17:42, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

OMG, what is wrong with the "Disclaimer" at the bottom of every page?

Fred Chess 18:19, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Well ok, point taken. Folks using content off the web in a commercial venture would be silly and irresponsible to neglect an independent verification of PD claims. Still, a friendly reminder can't hurt. Ok, how so how about,

"Please be aware of this important information before reusing content outside of Wikipedia." Or-

"Want to re-use Wikimedia content? Read this first."

On the other hand, maybe 28 point blinking red text with Caution/Warning etc is in order. -Mak 21:44, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Is your idea to add this to the foot of the page, or to every template? / Fred Chess 12:04, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

The PD-Templates because of user context. The simple thought when I read David's bolded disclaimer text was- any visitors interested in the PD templates would probably be interested in this statement. They might not like it, but if they are unaware of their responsibilities, a reminder wouldn't hurt. -Mak 16:49, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] encourage reuse

Most people don't understand the notion of 'free content'. The first thing they assume is that permission must be asked. Of course in some cases for some uses permission from the original author is still required, as the first 5 paragraphs of the current faq explain.

However. We should be emphasizing clearly, before issuing all kinds of warnings covering those corner cases, that almost all Wikimedia content and media are available for immediate reuse, modification, and republication without waiting to receive specific permission. A few super-short bullet points, one per exception, could follow such a statement. Each could then link to a section later down the page with details of that exception and how to deal with such a case. +sj + 06:31, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

I wouldn't emphasize that. It seems to me that people thinks that Internet content can be freely used. We all know how many headaches it gives us. Then there will be people copying copyvios (like there is people giving imageshack as a source), not keeping author althoug atributtion is required. I prefer them calmed. They ask for permission? Nice, give it. If they read the texts they will learn, and also all exceptions, requirements, etc.

It's worse having to deal with people thinking this is free, it's from english wikipedia or i can use this, i took from another wikipedia, and uploading fair use, giving source: en.wikipedia.org and translating the name so you can't check source...

Platonides 14:24, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikimedia Project Logo Usage

I would like to suggest that the section on the usage of WMF-owned logos needs to be expanded somewhat, even though it appears as though Brad and the WMF board are trying to avoid addressing this issue and have reacted in a rather draconian fashion that IMHO is beyond the scope of copyright and trademark law.

First, and foremost, a contact point needs to be mentioned for whom to ask for legal permissions, particularly for uses that go beyond a journalistic nature. Explicitly, I would like to see addressed here and in similar pages how Wikimedia content can be reused in terms of granting acknowledgement to the Wikimedia Foundation and the respective project (such as Commons here) that the content was originally developed and organized at.

From earlier e-mails I wrote on Foundation-l, there was a general sense that it was (in the opinion of Brad and others supposedly in the know) against Wikimedia policy to allow usage of logos or even project names in any way shape or form, even as a credit by-line or in a reference bibliography (I am not kidding here!). It was suggested that even project page names (such as image names in commons) were considered unregistered trademarks protected and owned by the WMF, or book titles from Wikibooks and Wikisource. This is where I think it absurd, particularly when the WMF won't even disclose what it considers to be protected logos or trademarks.

For particularly commercial entities who reproduce Wikimedia project content in formats other than web pages, the WMF position on acceptable use is so ambiguous that it makes a complete mockery of the GFDL that essentially all content on Wikimedia projects is considered under a propritary license. You can get a much more clear view of content usage from people like Microsoft or commercial publishers like Prentiss-Hall, and certainly reasonable contact information for reuse.

Sorry to vent my spleen here, but this is an issue that won't go away. I'm not asking for every possible use of this content to be fully explained, but I think it is completely unreasonable to presume that this content won't be made into dead-tree type books or CD-ROM collections, and that permission from the WMF board must be obtained each time you want to make such a publication. The GFDL was written explicitly so you didn't have to make such formal requests, but that seems to be put on its head right now. --RHorning 17:36, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Article names, or the names of the books of wikibooks can't be protected by WMF. They are not works of the WMF, so they can't register them. If there were such trademark, it would be owned by the author anyway, not the WMF.

No matter 'Wikipedia' being a trademark, i think anyone could distribute a Wikipedia copy saying 'it comes from Wikipedia'. What wouldn't be so acceptable, could be saying it on big letters, like it was produced by the board, or a use of the wikipedia logo on it.

I do agree with you that a contact point for the matter is needed.

Platonides 18:57, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

I would have to agree with your interpretation, but based on previous discussions on Foundation-l, not all members of the WMF board of trustees have this viewpoint, or indeed any of them at all. For myself, I view the WMF as being a "trustee" for and in behalf of the Wikimedia "community" that has been developing Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, and protecting the Wikipedia trademark for that community. The problem comes when some certain members of the "Foundation" (there is also some attempt to distance the activities of the foundation from the editors and contributors of Wikimedia projects) want to leverage WMF trademarks for either personal pet projects, often under the guise of "fundraising activities". In fact, many of these ideas are good and useful, but I think some of the board members doing this have the ownership issues reversed. The WMF did not invent or create the logos and trademarks asserted by the WMF and the Wikimedia community is using them under license. Instead they recieved them from the Wikimedia community as a freely given gift. Anything on this page should reflect that attitude. The trademark usage policies don't seem to reflect this concept at all. --RHorning 17:35, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Query sent to FSF on GFDL reuse

I emailed FSF licensing queries about how to reuse a GFDLed image. I cc'd it to commons-l - David Gerard 21:16, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Moved text

I moved this text from the GFDL section:

"(someone please fill in this bit with precisely how this works both per the FSF and in actual case law - whole book? chapter? section? This is plainly wrong except for the case where the image is used as part of another image.)"

If I understand correctly, licensing under GFDL does indeed mean that any document the file is used in must also be released under the GFDL (which is why some people insist on using this license). --SB_Johnny | ^PA! 09:00, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Reading the GFDL, it looks like derivative work (that based on the figure or text) must be also released under the same licence (i.e., made free). However, according to the 'Aggregation with independent works' section, it seems to me that if you are placing an image/text in a work that is independent of the image (e.g. a book), the free licence does not apply to the independent work (i.e., the rest of the book does not then have to be made free).

Yes. The difference is in what is considered derivative and what aggregation. Fsf thinks placing an image in a text creates a derivative work, while Creative Commons treats that as aggregation... Platonides 21:31, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Hotlinking

The current hotlinking section does not seem to address w:Hotlinking, i.e., w:Inline linking, at least not in clear English. Jidanni 21:28, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Yes it veers into redirected search queries rather abruptly... the cliff's notes version is, "don't do it". :) --pfctdayelise (说什么?) 08:44, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Scope and content of the page

The suggestion has been made to merge this with m:How to use or reuse our content.

1. I propose that this page (Commons:Reusing content outside Wikimedia) be changed to focus solely on media files on Commons, and the discussion of other Wikimedia projects be sent to Meta (or wherever), because...

• People arriving at this page likely came from somewhere on Commons, or (more likely) from an image description page on one of the Wikipedias, in which case they'll probably be interested in reusing that particular image.
• It's a lot easier to use files on Commons than to use content from e.g. Wikipedia (since files on Commons typically have a single author and/or a more permissive license than the GFDL, such as CC-BY).

With increasing frequencey, I see images from Commons being used as stock images on websites (commercial or not), which is great, except that they don't always follow the license (I've seen images credited to "Wikimedia Commons"). I assume this is due to the dearth of information on reusing Commons images.

2. I propose that this page should contain clear and simple recommendations on how to reuse content in the common cases (maybe with a big legal disclaimer).

This is a problem for GFDL licensed content, since nobody apparently knows exactly where to draw the line between a combination and a collection. E.g. including a GFDL image in an article on a website: Does this require a) only the image, b) the article text and all images in it, or c) the entire webpage, to be licensed under the GFDL? We don't know, and apparently, neither does the FSF.

The same problem exists in the "legal code" of the CC ShareAlike licenses, although the "human code" makes it appear that it should apply only for modifications to the work, not for having the work embedded in/used together with another work. Have anyone contacted CC.org for input?

But at least we can spell out how to use the thousands of files licensed under plain CC-BY, BSD/MIT, etc.

— Kwi (talk) 02:44, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Reusing a CC-BY image from Commons on a website (example)

• You must credit the author.
• You must include a link to the license (or include the license in its entirety). Be sure to link to/include the correct version, as specified on the file description page.
• You must honour any further terms specified by the author. For instance, some authors ask to be credited with a link to their web site.
• You are encouraged (but not required) to include a link to the original image on Wikimedia Commons.

This all sounds eminently sensible. --MichaelMaggs 08:52, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

please remove the picture of (As yuo said)muhammad!!

[edit] Europass

la Société Vip Europe SARL a crée ce mot Europass bien avant pour servir comme sa marque.

[edit] Reuse abuse?

What to do when a commercial publication has published an image from Commons and only cited the source as "Wikipedia.org" and not the proper author of the image and license? What if the [reputable] publication has several such images around its site? -194.204.29.131 10:36, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

They should be approached by the athors requesting to be acknowledged. Platonides (talk) 22:19, 26 July 2008 (UTC)