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25 November 2011

Copyright investigations (manual article tagging)
In addition to the identified source ( [1]), I've found content copied from [2] and [3]. No way to determine if any of the content is free for our use. No rewrite proposed. -- Moonriddengirl (talk) 00:47, 5 December 2011 (UTC) reply
  • Article cleaned by investigator or others. No remaining infringement. -- Mkativerata ( talk) 22:16, 2 December 2011 (UTC) reply
You are suggesting that "nominally PD" is not PD? The webpage is in the public domain, on a U.S. government webpage, within a system of webpages for which it is stated that material is PD unless indicated otherwise (and this webpage does not indicate otherwise). Just because in this case it is possible to deduce that the writing is composed from selections from other documents that are not themselves clearly in the public domain, does not mean that this is not PD. There are in fact many thousands of U.S. government webpages in the public domain where it would be possible to deduce that the U.S. government editor drew from other materials. It is presented by the U.S. government as being in the public domain, and we can rely upon that. If an original author wished to protect copyright on a phrase that was selected by the U.S. government editor, then that original author should sue the U.S. government. They have not done so, of course, and in fact it is far more reasonable to understand that the U.S. government editor has full permission to put into the public domain, rather than assuming they are violating the confidence of other authors. Presuming conflict between other authors and the U.S. government, and presuming other authors would prevail in a copyright dispute with the U.S. government, is beyond us to assume. It is PD and there is no need for any further investigation, IMHO. -- do ncr am 16:19, 25 November 2011 (UTC) reply
It's not in the public domain just because it's on an NPS website. The disclaimer states "Not all information on this website has been created or is owned by the NPS. If you wish to use any non-NPS material, you must seek permission directly from the owning (or holding) sources."-- SarekOfVulcan (talk) 17:55, 25 November 2011 (UTC) reply
There are photos in the NPS website for which there are attached credits to other parties, clarifying that those are not U.S. government copyright materials. And there are PDF documents which are identified as having different authors, which can be accessed through the NPS website. But this is a webpage of the NPS itself, with no mention of other author; it is presented by the NPS as being an NPS work. Do you seriously think that the NPS or anyone is trying to establish and protect copyright on that? I actually don't really believe you are serious. Is your pressing a claim here just a frivolity. -- do ncr am 21:38, 25 November 2011 (UTC) reply
I'm quite serious. If someone had posted that summary here without it being posted on the NPS site first, it would have been quickly blanked as a copyvio. It doesn't become magically not-a-copyvio just because someone at the NPS was lazy. -- SarekOfVulcan (talk) 21:42, 25 November 2011 (UTC) reply

We'll let some other administrator close this after the week or more of its listing, but I'll reproduce my opinion here from my talk page:

:I think we can't risk it. The NPS has created a derivative work, which may have its own copyright, but it does not affect the protection of the original. We do not know what kind of license the NPS may have had to use the application in preparing their summary, but we do know that those applications are not released into public domain. We wrote them some time ago and their reply is documented in OTRS. I don't have time right now to search the system (which takes for freaking ever now, as I'm sure you know :P), but I know it's in there because I wrote them and put it there myself. :) Unfortunately, their copyright statement is vague: "Information created or owned by the NPS and presented on this website, unless otherwise indicated, is considered in the public domain." [4] If they simply wrote, "Content of this website, unless otherwise indicated, is considered in the public domain" then we could presume that they had license to release it. They don't; they specific that it must be "information created or owned by the NPS". In the absence of evidence otherwise, I would assume that anything we find on their website is public domain, but in this case we do have evidence that the "information" was not "created" by the NPS.

Personally, I suspect that some employee of the NPS has used the application document without giving a thought to the copyright status of the original, but we don't have any way of determining it without writing to them. Is it possible to use brief quotes and summary written by us, maybe based on the original instead of the derivative work? -- Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:38, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Digging up the OTRS ticket, now that I am back at my home computer. May take some time. -- Moonriddengirl (talk) 23:15, 26 November 2011 (UTC) reply

Took me half an hour to find it! Stupid slow system. :/ Ticket:2011012910008184 is an email in the Wikimedia Foundation's mailing system from the Archivist, National Register of Historic Places, confirming that the text in nomination forms is copyrighted and that their use of text from nomination forms "falls under the same fair use category as the photographs, etc as described on the content and copyright page" ( [5]). They indicate that to obtain permission to use the text we would need to contact the person who prepared the nomination, often someone representing a State Historic Preservation Office ( [6]), for license. -- Moonriddengirl (talk) 23:51, 26 November 2011 (UTC) reply
Thanks Moonriddengirl for doing that research. However, I think your conclusion "we can't risk it" is incorrect, being unduly conservative. I don't see what possibly could be a risk to Wikipedia. What we have is the NPS itself editing text and presenting it without qualification, under what you describe as their fair use of the material in the original nomination document. If we did exactly the same, I would think that would also be fair use of the material in the original nomination document. I would, myself, tend to be more conservative and not make such a long pastiche of material from the original nomination document. But this is not our making such a pastiche from a nom document, it is our quoting, exactly, from the NPS page that presents the NPS reasoning for making a property the "featured listing" of the week. If a copyright-holder to the original document felt there was a problem, they should and would take that up with the NPS. I doubt there has been any dispute with the NPS since July 2008 when the weekly featured listing program began. There is no instance, ever, AFAIK, of a copyright-holder disputing any use by wikipedia of material from any NRHP nomination document. There is no "risk" whatsoever of any kind, for us to rely upon the NPS's judgment of what is fair use, and for us to explicitly quote them. Is there? Could you clarify what risk you think there is? That someone would sue wikipedia for damages of what kind?
This "issue" comes up because SarekOfVulcan is stalking my contributions and seemingly seeking to find fault. I think S believes, or could believe, that I would be a plagiarist and copyright violator based on various slander directed my way over the last year or two. I believe he knows nothing of my role in past cases involving copyright and plagiarism, and related policy-setting regarding NPS material. I have been in general a force for restraint against excessive use of NPS materials including NRHP nomination document materials. I assisted in clarifying for multiple new NRHP editors that nom docs cannot be relied upon as being PD, gently where possible and with some rancor at other times. I don't know for sure if I was involved in discussions leading to the particular OTRS case you reference, but expect that I was, and I was certainly involved in other clarifications. These included clarifying, on the conservative side, that webpages of the Maryland Historic Trust documents were probably not in the PD despite a Maryland Historic Trust official's view otherwise, and in restraining use of numerous images from NPS NHL webpages where a source is identified (but allowing use of similar images where no source credit is given), and many other cases. I am aware that other editors (not myself) have simply pasted from NHL webpages, because those have been felt clearly to be PD. I have the impression that SarekOfVulcan's source of belief of there being wrongdoing has somewhat tainted this discussion already, both in how SarekOfVulcan brought up the issue to you (MRG) and how he has followed up at your Talk page. I personally resent and feel insulted by the implications. I do ask you (MRG) and any other readers here to tread carefully and consider the facts available, trying to set aside whatever emotion attaches here. There is no allegation by any outside party that anything has been done wrong; this is IMHO a manufactured issue.
Anyhow, this is not something to decide lightly. There are many thousands of NPS webpages that your negative, conservative view could affect, which wikipedia has already relied upon, including a series of "NHL summaries", a series of NHL webpages, and more than 150 pages of other weekly "featured properties" listings since July 2008. If you seriously think all of these are unacceptable to rely upon as being in the public domain, that would be a major change and should be clarified by contacting the NPS archivist again, about this different question (very different than asking if we could rely upon the nom docs as being PD). However, I think that it is unduly negative to assume that (contacting the NPS) is even necessary. I don't think just one person, possibly being conservative, should make a decision like this, and definitely not without further reason than stated so far. -- do ncr am 01:21, 27 November 2011 (UTC) reply
The "risk" is that we put ourselves or our content reusers (some of whom are commercial) in danger of copyright infringement. Potential legal fallout for Wikipedia is only one factor of our consideration here; if we were not concerned with content reusers, we would accept material licensed for non-commercial use, for instance; we don't.
We cannot rely on the NPS's assessment that their use is "fair" to assume that our use would also be fair. The assessment of whether or not use is "fair" is based on complex factors, and Wikipedia is conservative on that question, deliberately so. Wikipedia:Non-free content criteria explains that "to minimize legal exposure" we use "more narrowly defined criteria than apply under United States fair use law."
I'll be happy to write to the archivist again, if you like, but it is not custom to retain content while copyright status is verified. It is typically removed. If their copyright disclaimer positively asserted that the content was public domain, that would be one thing. However, it doesn't.
Out of curiosity, for what reason should Wikipedia's editors not be able to write about these properties in their own words, using brief quotations, as they must do on other subjects? (eta: I'm not sure what's objectionable about the presentation of the issue at my talk page. It seems pretty neutral to me.) -- Moonriddengirl (talk) 01:41, 27 November 2011 (UTC) reply
By the way, Doncram, you could have rewritten that paragraph from Barrio Santa Rosa (Tucson, Arizona) (  | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) in your own words in less time than it took to write the three huge paragraphs above, defending your copy/paste editing. And even if that text was in the public domain, totally and completely free to use, copying it verbatim is still a slapdash form of writing. My composition teachers in school would write in red pen, "Use your own words here!" whenever I'd copy a whole paragraph into a theme, even if I gave the correct attribution. Oh, and for the other admins here, I'm already on Doncram's enemies list. -- Elkman (Elkspeak) 01:52, 27 November 2011 (UTC) reply
Certainly we don't want to put copywritten information on WP and copying info verbatim is just plain bad practice anyway but I think that assuming that the info presented on a government site is copywritten is a pretty far stretch. The disclaimer that is quoted above a couple times that says essentially "Material on this website could or is copywritten and cannot be copied" or words to that effect are on every single website including almost every single government website. For that matter, we have even determined that information from Wikilinks is allowable even though this material is still considered Secret by the government and not allowed to be viewed by government employees, implying a certain level of copyvio. With respect to teh OTRS Email one would assume that whomever submitted the documentation to add a site to the NRHP would also allow that documentation to be used. Aside from all that, I reviewed a couple dozen of them and there seems to be a recurring trend of submitters. I imagine if we do a little work we could contact the majority of submitters and get the permission to use the information. I DO NOT think we need a mass deletion campaign such as I have seen in the past. -- Kumioko ( talk) 01:56, 27 November 2011 (UTC) reply
The secrecy of leaked documents has nothing to do with their copyright status. These are entirely different laws. In regards to your statement that "With respect to teh OTRS Email one would assume that whomever submitted the documentation to add a site to the NRHP would also allow that documentation to be used", we cannot assume that NRHP submitters would also allow that documentation to be used on Wikipedia - where it serves an entirely different purpose - or certainly by our content reusers, some of whom are commercial. Our terms of use require license from the copyright holder, to whom the NRHP has also directed us to ask permission. The copyright holder is generally going to be the person who prepared the document, and they can be asked to license their material just as other copyright holders are with contacts such as those at Wikipedia:Requesting copyright permission. The primary consideration here is not what inconvenience it may be to ask our editors to write material in their own words, but rather whether or not we can legally use the words published by others. -- Moonriddengirl (talk) 02:05, 27 November 2011 (UTC) reply
So we are willing to assume that the submitters DID NOT understand or agree that the information they were submitting to a government organization but not that the submitters would know and understand that information displayed on 99% of all government websites is free domain. I agree we shouldn't be quoting large swaths of text without attribution but since the info is coming from a government source, as I mentioned above, seems to be a slippery slope since nearly all websites including government ones, state something to the effect of not all info is free just as a matter of practice. -- Kumioko ( talk) 02:12, 27 November 2011 (UTC) reply
BTW, I've been in touch by email with the author of the nomination doc in question, who says that he wrote it as work-for-hire for the City of Tucson, which does not apparently release its work into the public domain. -- SarekOfVulcan (talk) 02:15, 27 November 2011 (UTC) reply
Your right there, typically work done by City and State governments does not meet the same free use criteria as Federal work. It would seem that in this case there is little argument or excuse and the information should be removed or the article deleted. Good research. -- Kumioko ( talk) 02:22, 27 November 2011 (UTC) reply
I want to be sure here that we're not conflating the issues. :) With regards to the nomination statements, these are unquestionably protected by copyright to the full extent of the law. The US government is able to receive and publish material submitted by others that retain their copyright status. The letter that the NRHP archivist wrote that is in the records of the Wikimedia Foundation is not a blanket assertion of copyright, but very specific to the question of the text in these documents. If the government does not require a release from the copyright holders, they do not receive authority to license the text.

What the US government cannot protect is material that was written by a Federal employee in the scope of his work. (Most state agencies do retain copyright, by contrast.) The question here concerns a summary written presumably by a Federal employee taking content from a copyrighted document submitted to the agency by somebody else. We know that the NRHP relies on "fair use" in its reproduction of images and other media of these properties, and we know that the NRHP has asserted that they also use the text under the allowances of "fair use." What must be determined is how much of this summary can be used, given that information. We can use it all if (given Sarek's research) the City of Tucson is willing to permit it. Otherwise, in my opinion, our use needs to accord with our own "fair use" policies as set out at WP:NFC. This would suggest that we should paraphrase what we can and use brief quotations where we cannot. -- Moonriddengirl (talk) 02:22, 27 November 2011 (UTC) reply
I guess in the context of this article that makes sense and I would agree. I would argue that if the summary is written by a federal employee in the course of their duties that should be fair use even if the documentation verbiage is not. However since we likely cannot prove that a federal employee wrote it versus someone else we probably can't use it. Hopefully, the City of Tucson will be willing to release it since the property in most cases will probably be viewed more times on here than by folks in person but well see what they say.-- Kumioko ( talk) 02:34, 27 November 2011 (UTC) reply
There's no way to ensure that the summary is completely written by a federal employee. I've always considered all text from the National Register to be a derivative and not in the Public Domain. Just because the content is on a U.S. federal website doesn't automatically make it PD. Royal broil 15:50, 27 November 2011 (UTC) reply

Much concern about PD vs. copyrighted status has to do with Wikipedia using material to directly incorporate into articles without explicit quoting. For example there are many U.S. wp:SHIPS articles formed from DANFS text. And many U.S. courthouse articles formed from, such as Santiago E. Campos United States Courthouse. That includes templated statement {{ GSA building}} to the effect that "Material on this page was initially produced by the U.S. General Services Administration, an agency of the United States government, ..." and stating further that explicit permission was obtained. If material directly incorporated that way is not PD or very similar, and is not clearly attributed, then I agree there is some "risk". Namely to Wikipedia's reputation, for our editors having implicitly claimed credit for work of others (plagiarism) or for our pages being in actual copyright violation, and for then possibly causing others to believe that the material could be copied under CC or GFDL when that should not be relied upon. Many newly arrived Wikipedia editors have wanted to use NRHP nomination document text in that way, to paste in and then mash up. I think previous OTRS inquiries to the NPS were responding to that.

To be clear, the disputed version of Barrio Santa Rosa (Tucson, Arizona) is NOT that. It explicitly quotes from a NPS webpage and gives completely clear attribution of that, including link to the webpage. What risk for wikipedia is in that? I see no risk to Wikipedia's reputation. We are absolutely clearly giving attribution and not claiming credit for wording. The NPS could conceivably have a derivative copyright to the text that it assembled and edited into that form, but that derivative copyright is in the public domain (as work of Federal employees on a Federal website). The NPS clearly believes it has "fair use" of the material in that way, and believes the passages it incorporates from the NRHP nomination document are not too long. Our quoting them is our quoting their assertion of what is fair use. I think it is very subtle to argue that conceivably the NRHP nom doc copyright holder could accept NPS's usage but wish to dispute Wikipedia's usage (in quoted form) as not fair use. Or that the copyright holder would blame wikipedia later for someone else taking material from Wikipedia and using it in some other way. It is too clever to argue that there is any hypothetical risk here.

Why not ask NPS for blanket explicit permission to use their webpages? Well, I wouldn't ask further, as their policy is clear enough, as they have positive disinterest in responding to such questions, and as it is a benefit we have already, now, legally, to use the material. If you ask a lawyer a question they will hedge and not give a clear answer, as apparently happened before, and you could seem to lose the use of the material. As a cover-your-ass type lawyer move, at most I would say we might notify the NPS that we do use material from their webpages where we do not see, there, explicit crediting to another source. (We do scrupulously avoid use of images on NPS pages that state private party credits for those images. And we could tell them they should notify us if they see any particular problems. But to assume we have a burden to look for privately copyrighted materials that the NPS editor might have drawn from, is preposterous. It is quite possible that you could find predecessor documents that DANFS material or U.S. General Services Administration webpages is based upon, too, and you could argue that maybe then a private party could sue them and us for copyvio so we should expunge all DANFS and GSA material from wikipedia because it might not be "safe". But no one, really, is going to sue the GSA or NPS or wikipedia for us explicitly quoting from any of their pages.

I think our quoting from NPS pages that give no restriction is fine. If and when any case comes up of a copyright holder objecting, then we could revisit that. And I would help in a cleanup campaign. To be clear I don't want to incorporate and mash up the NPS text. I just have explicitly quoted from it, in a longish quote that could possibly go beyond fair use if the material was copyrighted. To self-censor in advance, and deny use of long explicit quotes from this pretty clearly fair use / PD material would be the wrong policy to adopt here. -- do ncr am 17:54, 29 November 2011 (UTC) reply

Doncram, I'm not sure why you're trying to make this a general principal that restricting government sites is bad. This is a particular case where we can see that the government site is quoting directly from a copyrighted work. Therefore, they didn't create it. Therefore, not PD.-- SarekOfVulcan (talk) 18:40, 29 November 2011 (UTC) reply
Indeed, it is clear that the NRHP nomination documents are not PD, and brief blurbs written by NPS staff based on those documents do not convert the words taken from the documents into PD. Furthermore, consistent with what Elkman has said above, it isn't hard to render most of the content of these nomination documents in one's own words. The reason that some of us (including SarekOfVulcan) have harped on this point with Doncram, seemingly ad infinitum if not also ad nauseam, is not that we are obsessively persistent about copyright, but that he is obsessively persistent about assembling articles that consist of little more than direct quotations from the NRHP nomination forms. -- Orlady ( talk) 21:45, 29 November 2011 (UTC) reply
If I remember rightly, by submitting the nominations to the NPS, the author grants them the right to copy and use the nomination as they see fit (that's why they're allowed to put it on Focus or photocopy it to mail to us), but that's far from granting them the right to put it into the public domain. Nyttend ( talk) 01:33, 1 December 2011 (UTC) reply
  • Article cleaned by investigator or others. No remaining infringement. I have no doubt that the controversy here far outweighs both the extent to which the violation exposes wikipedia to risk and the time it could have taken to just re-write the relevant part of the article. But on balance, the evidence establishes that the relevant material is copyrighted such that its extensive quotation breaches our non-free content requirements. I would have thought in any case that regardless of whether material is in the public domain, the practice of good encyclopaedic writing ought to compel us not to copy it, but that's a debate for another day. -- Mkativerata ( talk) 01:39, 5 December 2011 (UTC) reply
Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Wikipedia:Copyright_problems/2011_November_25&oldid=1074281945"
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

25 November 2011

Copyright investigations (manual article tagging)
In addition to the identified source ( [1]), I've found content copied from [2] and [3]. No way to determine if any of the content is free for our use. No rewrite proposed. -- Moonriddengirl (talk) 00:47, 5 December 2011 (UTC) reply
  • Article cleaned by investigator or others. No remaining infringement. -- Mkativerata ( talk) 22:16, 2 December 2011 (UTC) reply
You are suggesting that "nominally PD" is not PD? The webpage is in the public domain, on a U.S. government webpage, within a system of webpages for which it is stated that material is PD unless indicated otherwise (and this webpage does not indicate otherwise). Just because in this case it is possible to deduce that the writing is composed from selections from other documents that are not themselves clearly in the public domain, does not mean that this is not PD. There are in fact many thousands of U.S. government webpages in the public domain where it would be possible to deduce that the U.S. government editor drew from other materials. It is presented by the U.S. government as being in the public domain, and we can rely upon that. If an original author wished to protect copyright on a phrase that was selected by the U.S. government editor, then that original author should sue the U.S. government. They have not done so, of course, and in fact it is far more reasonable to understand that the U.S. government editor has full permission to put into the public domain, rather than assuming they are violating the confidence of other authors. Presuming conflict between other authors and the U.S. government, and presuming other authors would prevail in a copyright dispute with the U.S. government, is beyond us to assume. It is PD and there is no need for any further investigation, IMHO. -- do ncr am 16:19, 25 November 2011 (UTC) reply
It's not in the public domain just because it's on an NPS website. The disclaimer states "Not all information on this website has been created or is owned by the NPS. If you wish to use any non-NPS material, you must seek permission directly from the owning (or holding) sources."-- SarekOfVulcan (talk) 17:55, 25 November 2011 (UTC) reply
There are photos in the NPS website for which there are attached credits to other parties, clarifying that those are not U.S. government copyright materials. And there are PDF documents which are identified as having different authors, which can be accessed through the NPS website. But this is a webpage of the NPS itself, with no mention of other author; it is presented by the NPS as being an NPS work. Do you seriously think that the NPS or anyone is trying to establish and protect copyright on that? I actually don't really believe you are serious. Is your pressing a claim here just a frivolity. -- do ncr am 21:38, 25 November 2011 (UTC) reply
I'm quite serious. If someone had posted that summary here without it being posted on the NPS site first, it would have been quickly blanked as a copyvio. It doesn't become magically not-a-copyvio just because someone at the NPS was lazy. -- SarekOfVulcan (talk) 21:42, 25 November 2011 (UTC) reply

We'll let some other administrator close this after the week or more of its listing, but I'll reproduce my opinion here from my talk page:

:I think we can't risk it. The NPS has created a derivative work, which may have its own copyright, but it does not affect the protection of the original. We do not know what kind of license the NPS may have had to use the application in preparing their summary, but we do know that those applications are not released into public domain. We wrote them some time ago and their reply is documented in OTRS. I don't have time right now to search the system (which takes for freaking ever now, as I'm sure you know :P), but I know it's in there because I wrote them and put it there myself. :) Unfortunately, their copyright statement is vague: "Information created or owned by the NPS and presented on this website, unless otherwise indicated, is considered in the public domain." [4] If they simply wrote, "Content of this website, unless otherwise indicated, is considered in the public domain" then we could presume that they had license to release it. They don't; they specific that it must be "information created or owned by the NPS". In the absence of evidence otherwise, I would assume that anything we find on their website is public domain, but in this case we do have evidence that the "information" was not "created" by the NPS.

Personally, I suspect that some employee of the NPS has used the application document without giving a thought to the copyright status of the original, but we don't have any way of determining it without writing to them. Is it possible to use brief quotes and summary written by us, maybe based on the original instead of the derivative work? -- Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:38, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Digging up the OTRS ticket, now that I am back at my home computer. May take some time. -- Moonriddengirl (talk) 23:15, 26 November 2011 (UTC) reply

Took me half an hour to find it! Stupid slow system. :/ Ticket:2011012910008184 is an email in the Wikimedia Foundation's mailing system from the Archivist, National Register of Historic Places, confirming that the text in nomination forms is copyrighted and that their use of text from nomination forms "falls under the same fair use category as the photographs, etc as described on the content and copyright page" ( [5]). They indicate that to obtain permission to use the text we would need to contact the person who prepared the nomination, often someone representing a State Historic Preservation Office ( [6]), for license. -- Moonriddengirl (talk) 23:51, 26 November 2011 (UTC) reply
Thanks Moonriddengirl for doing that research. However, I think your conclusion "we can't risk it" is incorrect, being unduly conservative. I don't see what possibly could be a risk to Wikipedia. What we have is the NPS itself editing text and presenting it without qualification, under what you describe as their fair use of the material in the original nomination document. If we did exactly the same, I would think that would also be fair use of the material in the original nomination document. I would, myself, tend to be more conservative and not make such a long pastiche of material from the original nomination document. But this is not our making such a pastiche from a nom document, it is our quoting, exactly, from the NPS page that presents the NPS reasoning for making a property the "featured listing" of the week. If a copyright-holder to the original document felt there was a problem, they should and would take that up with the NPS. I doubt there has been any dispute with the NPS since July 2008 when the weekly featured listing program began. There is no instance, ever, AFAIK, of a copyright-holder disputing any use by wikipedia of material from any NRHP nomination document. There is no "risk" whatsoever of any kind, for us to rely upon the NPS's judgment of what is fair use, and for us to explicitly quote them. Is there? Could you clarify what risk you think there is? That someone would sue wikipedia for damages of what kind?
This "issue" comes up because SarekOfVulcan is stalking my contributions and seemingly seeking to find fault. I think S believes, or could believe, that I would be a plagiarist and copyright violator based on various slander directed my way over the last year or two. I believe he knows nothing of my role in past cases involving copyright and plagiarism, and related policy-setting regarding NPS material. I have been in general a force for restraint against excessive use of NPS materials including NRHP nomination document materials. I assisted in clarifying for multiple new NRHP editors that nom docs cannot be relied upon as being PD, gently where possible and with some rancor at other times. I don't know for sure if I was involved in discussions leading to the particular OTRS case you reference, but expect that I was, and I was certainly involved in other clarifications. These included clarifying, on the conservative side, that webpages of the Maryland Historic Trust documents were probably not in the PD despite a Maryland Historic Trust official's view otherwise, and in restraining use of numerous images from NPS NHL webpages where a source is identified (but allowing use of similar images where no source credit is given), and many other cases. I am aware that other editors (not myself) have simply pasted from NHL webpages, because those have been felt clearly to be PD. I have the impression that SarekOfVulcan's source of belief of there being wrongdoing has somewhat tainted this discussion already, both in how SarekOfVulcan brought up the issue to you (MRG) and how he has followed up at your Talk page. I personally resent and feel insulted by the implications. I do ask you (MRG) and any other readers here to tread carefully and consider the facts available, trying to set aside whatever emotion attaches here. There is no allegation by any outside party that anything has been done wrong; this is IMHO a manufactured issue.
Anyhow, this is not something to decide lightly. There are many thousands of NPS webpages that your negative, conservative view could affect, which wikipedia has already relied upon, including a series of "NHL summaries", a series of NHL webpages, and more than 150 pages of other weekly "featured properties" listings since July 2008. If you seriously think all of these are unacceptable to rely upon as being in the public domain, that would be a major change and should be clarified by contacting the NPS archivist again, about this different question (very different than asking if we could rely upon the nom docs as being PD). However, I think that it is unduly negative to assume that (contacting the NPS) is even necessary. I don't think just one person, possibly being conservative, should make a decision like this, and definitely not without further reason than stated so far. -- do ncr am 01:21, 27 November 2011 (UTC) reply
The "risk" is that we put ourselves or our content reusers (some of whom are commercial) in danger of copyright infringement. Potential legal fallout for Wikipedia is only one factor of our consideration here; if we were not concerned with content reusers, we would accept material licensed for non-commercial use, for instance; we don't.
We cannot rely on the NPS's assessment that their use is "fair" to assume that our use would also be fair. The assessment of whether or not use is "fair" is based on complex factors, and Wikipedia is conservative on that question, deliberately so. Wikipedia:Non-free content criteria explains that "to minimize legal exposure" we use "more narrowly defined criteria than apply under United States fair use law."
I'll be happy to write to the archivist again, if you like, but it is not custom to retain content while copyright status is verified. It is typically removed. If their copyright disclaimer positively asserted that the content was public domain, that would be one thing. However, it doesn't.
Out of curiosity, for what reason should Wikipedia's editors not be able to write about these properties in their own words, using brief quotations, as they must do on other subjects? (eta: I'm not sure what's objectionable about the presentation of the issue at my talk page. It seems pretty neutral to me.) -- Moonriddengirl (talk) 01:41, 27 November 2011 (UTC) reply
By the way, Doncram, you could have rewritten that paragraph from Barrio Santa Rosa (Tucson, Arizona) (  | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) in your own words in less time than it took to write the three huge paragraphs above, defending your copy/paste editing. And even if that text was in the public domain, totally and completely free to use, copying it verbatim is still a slapdash form of writing. My composition teachers in school would write in red pen, "Use your own words here!" whenever I'd copy a whole paragraph into a theme, even if I gave the correct attribution. Oh, and for the other admins here, I'm already on Doncram's enemies list. -- Elkman (Elkspeak) 01:52, 27 November 2011 (UTC) reply
Certainly we don't want to put copywritten information on WP and copying info verbatim is just plain bad practice anyway but I think that assuming that the info presented on a government site is copywritten is a pretty far stretch. The disclaimer that is quoted above a couple times that says essentially "Material on this website could or is copywritten and cannot be copied" or words to that effect are on every single website including almost every single government website. For that matter, we have even determined that information from Wikilinks is allowable even though this material is still considered Secret by the government and not allowed to be viewed by government employees, implying a certain level of copyvio. With respect to teh OTRS Email one would assume that whomever submitted the documentation to add a site to the NRHP would also allow that documentation to be used. Aside from all that, I reviewed a couple dozen of them and there seems to be a recurring trend of submitters. I imagine if we do a little work we could contact the majority of submitters and get the permission to use the information. I DO NOT think we need a mass deletion campaign such as I have seen in the past. -- Kumioko ( talk) 01:56, 27 November 2011 (UTC) reply
The secrecy of leaked documents has nothing to do with their copyright status. These are entirely different laws. In regards to your statement that "With respect to teh OTRS Email one would assume that whomever submitted the documentation to add a site to the NRHP would also allow that documentation to be used", we cannot assume that NRHP submitters would also allow that documentation to be used on Wikipedia - where it serves an entirely different purpose - or certainly by our content reusers, some of whom are commercial. Our terms of use require license from the copyright holder, to whom the NRHP has also directed us to ask permission. The copyright holder is generally going to be the person who prepared the document, and they can be asked to license their material just as other copyright holders are with contacts such as those at Wikipedia:Requesting copyright permission. The primary consideration here is not what inconvenience it may be to ask our editors to write material in their own words, but rather whether or not we can legally use the words published by others. -- Moonriddengirl (talk) 02:05, 27 November 2011 (UTC) reply
So we are willing to assume that the submitters DID NOT understand or agree that the information they were submitting to a government organization but not that the submitters would know and understand that information displayed on 99% of all government websites is free domain. I agree we shouldn't be quoting large swaths of text without attribution but since the info is coming from a government source, as I mentioned above, seems to be a slippery slope since nearly all websites including government ones, state something to the effect of not all info is free just as a matter of practice. -- Kumioko ( talk) 02:12, 27 November 2011 (UTC) reply
BTW, I've been in touch by email with the author of the nomination doc in question, who says that he wrote it as work-for-hire for the City of Tucson, which does not apparently release its work into the public domain. -- SarekOfVulcan (talk) 02:15, 27 November 2011 (UTC) reply
Your right there, typically work done by City and State governments does not meet the same free use criteria as Federal work. It would seem that in this case there is little argument or excuse and the information should be removed or the article deleted. Good research. -- Kumioko ( talk) 02:22, 27 November 2011 (UTC) reply
I want to be sure here that we're not conflating the issues. :) With regards to the nomination statements, these are unquestionably protected by copyright to the full extent of the law. The US government is able to receive and publish material submitted by others that retain their copyright status. The letter that the NRHP archivist wrote that is in the records of the Wikimedia Foundation is not a blanket assertion of copyright, but very specific to the question of the text in these documents. If the government does not require a release from the copyright holders, they do not receive authority to license the text.

What the US government cannot protect is material that was written by a Federal employee in the scope of his work. (Most state agencies do retain copyright, by contrast.) The question here concerns a summary written presumably by a Federal employee taking content from a copyrighted document submitted to the agency by somebody else. We know that the NRHP relies on "fair use" in its reproduction of images and other media of these properties, and we know that the NRHP has asserted that they also use the text under the allowances of "fair use." What must be determined is how much of this summary can be used, given that information. We can use it all if (given Sarek's research) the City of Tucson is willing to permit it. Otherwise, in my opinion, our use needs to accord with our own "fair use" policies as set out at WP:NFC. This would suggest that we should paraphrase what we can and use brief quotations where we cannot. -- Moonriddengirl (talk) 02:22, 27 November 2011 (UTC) reply
I guess in the context of this article that makes sense and I would agree. I would argue that if the summary is written by a federal employee in the course of their duties that should be fair use even if the documentation verbiage is not. However since we likely cannot prove that a federal employee wrote it versus someone else we probably can't use it. Hopefully, the City of Tucson will be willing to release it since the property in most cases will probably be viewed more times on here than by folks in person but well see what they say.-- Kumioko ( talk) 02:34, 27 November 2011 (UTC) reply
There's no way to ensure that the summary is completely written by a federal employee. I've always considered all text from the National Register to be a derivative and not in the Public Domain. Just because the content is on a U.S. federal website doesn't automatically make it PD. Royal broil 15:50, 27 November 2011 (UTC) reply

Much concern about PD vs. copyrighted status has to do with Wikipedia using material to directly incorporate into articles without explicit quoting. For example there are many U.S. wp:SHIPS articles formed from DANFS text. And many U.S. courthouse articles formed from, such as Santiago E. Campos United States Courthouse. That includes templated statement {{ GSA building}} to the effect that "Material on this page was initially produced by the U.S. General Services Administration, an agency of the United States government, ..." and stating further that explicit permission was obtained. If material directly incorporated that way is not PD or very similar, and is not clearly attributed, then I agree there is some "risk". Namely to Wikipedia's reputation, for our editors having implicitly claimed credit for work of others (plagiarism) or for our pages being in actual copyright violation, and for then possibly causing others to believe that the material could be copied under CC or GFDL when that should not be relied upon. Many newly arrived Wikipedia editors have wanted to use NRHP nomination document text in that way, to paste in and then mash up. I think previous OTRS inquiries to the NPS were responding to that.

To be clear, the disputed version of Barrio Santa Rosa (Tucson, Arizona) is NOT that. It explicitly quotes from a NPS webpage and gives completely clear attribution of that, including link to the webpage. What risk for wikipedia is in that? I see no risk to Wikipedia's reputation. We are absolutely clearly giving attribution and not claiming credit for wording. The NPS could conceivably have a derivative copyright to the text that it assembled and edited into that form, but that derivative copyright is in the public domain (as work of Federal employees on a Federal website). The NPS clearly believes it has "fair use" of the material in that way, and believes the passages it incorporates from the NRHP nomination document are not too long. Our quoting them is our quoting their assertion of what is fair use. I think it is very subtle to argue that conceivably the NRHP nom doc copyright holder could accept NPS's usage but wish to dispute Wikipedia's usage (in quoted form) as not fair use. Or that the copyright holder would blame wikipedia later for someone else taking material from Wikipedia and using it in some other way. It is too clever to argue that there is any hypothetical risk here.

Why not ask NPS for blanket explicit permission to use their webpages? Well, I wouldn't ask further, as their policy is clear enough, as they have positive disinterest in responding to such questions, and as it is a benefit we have already, now, legally, to use the material. If you ask a lawyer a question they will hedge and not give a clear answer, as apparently happened before, and you could seem to lose the use of the material. As a cover-your-ass type lawyer move, at most I would say we might notify the NPS that we do use material from their webpages where we do not see, there, explicit crediting to another source. (We do scrupulously avoid use of images on NPS pages that state private party credits for those images. And we could tell them they should notify us if they see any particular problems. But to assume we have a burden to look for privately copyrighted materials that the NPS editor might have drawn from, is preposterous. It is quite possible that you could find predecessor documents that DANFS material or U.S. General Services Administration webpages is based upon, too, and you could argue that maybe then a private party could sue them and us for copyvio so we should expunge all DANFS and GSA material from wikipedia because it might not be "safe". But no one, really, is going to sue the GSA or NPS or wikipedia for us explicitly quoting from any of their pages.

I think our quoting from NPS pages that give no restriction is fine. If and when any case comes up of a copyright holder objecting, then we could revisit that. And I would help in a cleanup campaign. To be clear I don't want to incorporate and mash up the NPS text. I just have explicitly quoted from it, in a longish quote that could possibly go beyond fair use if the material was copyrighted. To self-censor in advance, and deny use of long explicit quotes from this pretty clearly fair use / PD material would be the wrong policy to adopt here. -- do ncr am 17:54, 29 November 2011 (UTC) reply

Doncram, I'm not sure why you're trying to make this a general principal that restricting government sites is bad. This is a particular case where we can see that the government site is quoting directly from a copyrighted work. Therefore, they didn't create it. Therefore, not PD.-- SarekOfVulcan (talk) 18:40, 29 November 2011 (UTC) reply
Indeed, it is clear that the NRHP nomination documents are not PD, and brief blurbs written by NPS staff based on those documents do not convert the words taken from the documents into PD. Furthermore, consistent with what Elkman has said above, it isn't hard to render most of the content of these nomination documents in one's own words. The reason that some of us (including SarekOfVulcan) have harped on this point with Doncram, seemingly ad infinitum if not also ad nauseam, is not that we are obsessively persistent about copyright, but that he is obsessively persistent about assembling articles that consist of little more than direct quotations from the NRHP nomination forms. -- Orlady ( talk) 21:45, 29 November 2011 (UTC) reply
If I remember rightly, by submitting the nominations to the NPS, the author grants them the right to copy and use the nomination as they see fit (that's why they're allowed to put it on Focus or photocopy it to mail to us), but that's far from granting them the right to put it into the public domain. Nyttend ( talk) 01:33, 1 December 2011 (UTC) reply
  • Article cleaned by investigator or others. No remaining infringement. I have no doubt that the controversy here far outweighs both the extent to which the violation exposes wikipedia to risk and the time it could have taken to just re-write the relevant part of the article. But on balance, the evidence establishes that the relevant material is copyrighted such that its extensive quotation breaches our non-free content requirements. I would have thought in any case that regardless of whether material is in the public domain, the practice of good encyclopaedic writing ought to compel us not to copy it, but that's a debate for another day. -- Mkativerata ( talk) 01:39, 5 December 2011 (UTC) reply
Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Wikipedia:Copyright_problems/2011_November_25&oldid=1074281945"

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