Forum:Old Community Portal: Copyrights

Copyrights?
I'm starting to see more and more articles that are copies from the Gateworld's Omnipedia (Martouf, Za'tarc, Beliskner, to name a few). It's my understanding that this wiki should be unique and not a copy from something else. Besides Gateworld has a very clear guideline: ''This material may not be reprinted without written consent from GateWorld. ''

What are we going to do with those articles? Rewrite, delete, or just blank them?

If we have consent to copy the omnipedia then forget that I've said anything, but I can hardly imagine that. --Patricia 16:24, 30 Oct 2005 (UTC)


 * I have seen quite a few of those as well. My meaning is that we have to rewrite those. We must fill with more material that is known. Material can we get elsewhere as well, for example from the episodes transcripts that are to be found on some places on the Internet. I suggest that you make a template called Template:rewrite with a category tied to that template called "Category:Rewrite"or something like that, and then we can mark every page we find with  . With that possibility, we can make it to a project to find and rewrite every page that is in fact stolen. What do you think? Peter R 21:03, 30 Oct 2005 (UTC)
 * I think it's a good idea. This way we don't have to throw away articles, but we can try to rewrite/improve them. When I get back from work I'll create the template and category. I'll put the category in the SGCommand:Projects page. After that I'll start searching this wiki for stolen articles. --Patricia 09:35, 31 Oct 2005 (UTC)
 * Great! Thanks for your efforts. You and the others that has come here during the last week are really improving things around here. I'm quite busy at the swedish Memory Alpha, because I'm the only one working there, so I do appreciate everything you are doing! Peter R 14:24, 31 Oct 2005 (UTC) (who's been around here a few months)


 * Well I'm done. I named the template and the category a little different. I made a Template:Copyright infringement and a Category:Copyright infringement. I've put the category on the projects page. I would appreciate it if you would read them through for me, and correct any mistakes that I've made.


 * I know what it's like to work on MA all by yourself. I've done that for a long time on the Dutch version. Thank god Eelco came along and lend me a hand. But know we're turning our attention to Stargate Command. Believe me, even Star Trek gets boring after a while. Good luck with the Swedish version though. I noticed that you already have 782 articles there. Good work! --Patricia 19:19, 31 Oct 2005 (UTC)


 * It looks quite good, I must say. A note: You say on the page Category:Copyright infringement that "The next step is to place the article in this category by adding:  " That would not be necessary, since you already noted that category within the template   . I therefore removed that sentence. Otherwise, very good looking, I must say! Thanks for the MA boost! I need that! Peter R 21:25, 31 Oct 2005 (UTC)


 * Every (Yes every!) article ever created by Knightmare has been stolen. Most of them are from Gateworld, others come from answers.com, wiki, etc. Just look at[. I've started at the bottom of his list and I've only gotten to 23 jun 2005 02:57 (hist) (wijz) NID so far. There are still about 500 edits I haven't looked through... We already have 57 articles in the [[:Category:Copyright infringement]].


 * Which idiot was stupid enough to make this guy an administrator? I really can't believe this! Someone really wasn't paying attention. I can imagine that one article gets unnoticed, but all of them? He kept making new articles in one row, minute after minute he made a new article. Copy and paste perhaps??!!


 * I really liked working on this wiki, but I've totally lost interest now. I hope you guys can fix up what he has done in the past year (!). Maybe you guys will see me again in the future, maybe not... I don't know yet.


 * To all of you who have worked on Stargate Command with your best efforts (Peter, GingerM, ..., I wish you good luck in the future.


 * Greetings,


 * --Patricia 21:37, 1 Nov 2005 (UTC)


 * Please, stay! I'm begging you! I will start to fix the copyright infringement pages very soon, and together we will fix this quickly. Please, anything you can contribute in new articles would be greatly accepted and gladly embraced. So please, don't walk away! Peter R 07:27, 2 Nov 2005 (UTC)


 * How can I leave after such an uplifting response? :) Even before I read your response I decided to clean this wiki up. I liked working on this wiki and wanted to contribute in the future. The truth is that I can't be angry for more then a few hours. Even if it turns out that there are about 200 articles stolen (my rough estimate since I'm not even halfway with Knightmare's contributions), I'll try to make this wiki as succesful as Memory Alpha English is. Offcourse any help with this is very much appreciated.


 * Even Knightmare is welcome if he wants to make right what he has done wrong. But I don't want him to be an administrator anymore. We're setting the wrong example by having an administrator that in fact is a thief. I hope someone will take the administrator rights away from him.


 * I wanted to finish going through his contributions list tonight. If anyone else finds copyright infringement articles in the meantime just slap the template on that page. Then we'll have an idea how much work there is for us.


 * --Patricia 09:57, 2 Nov 2005 (UTC)

I will deal with him next Monday SGCommand


 * Why wait? This needs to be solved rather quickly, because bad mood on the wiki tends to be very bad for the community as a whole. I have made an entry at his talk page, pointing him here. I'm not comfortable with blocking him at this point, but that could be a way out. But, of course, he can't participate in this discussion either in that case. No, blocking him is not a solution, talking is! Peter R 10:53, 2 Nov 2005 (UTC)

Rewriting copyright infringement articles
I agree that blocking him is not the way it should be, let him explain what has happened and eventually take actions after that. By the way, what should we do with the copyrighted articles? Just rewriting articles is that another way of just putting the sentences or some words in another order or just start new from scrap and actually deleting the entire article? --TalShiar 12:18, 2 Nov 2005 (UTC)


 * To rewrite means in my head that the text must be totally changed. Of course, we do keep a word here and there, but it must be the words you should have used yourselves. I wouldn't say crappy, for instance, but maybe I instead would write it in my own english vocabulary. In that case, it gets personalized and maybe even better. After that is said, I must also always think of getting information från other places. As I said above, I think that the episode transcripts available around the net, is a good source in actually getting exactly what happened in the episode. Example: In the article called Sodan I first looked at the transcripts and found the exact words used about the Sodan's history. I used these words and transplanted them into the article. Sometimes I had to rewrite, but sometimes I used the text right off. In that case, the episode transcripts is exactly as the words said in the episode, so I could have got that information directly from the episode instead. Therefore, I firmly believe that it is OK just to take the information in episode transcripts right off. In other cases it is not. Peter R 12:53, 2 Nov 2005 (UTC)


 * I see now that also some of my created articles has been noted in the "refrigerator" category (I call it that, because this infredg.., enfrih..., that word you know - it is too difficult to write). I will make some huge efforts in fixing this. A note to us all: When we do rewrite - try to find episode sources! See a previous discussion here above. Peter R 18:36, 2 Nov 2005 (UTC)

in defense...
In defense of Knightmare, he participated and added content when there weren't many people here, and it was slow and heavy going. As most of you probably know, I feel strongly about respecting copyrights and acknowledging where we are building on other's work. However, I believe that many of Knightmare's earlier contributions were original writing. And when asked, he went and got permission from one of the sites where he got many of the images we use. To resolve this, the articles that are copyright infringements should be completely rewritten (in my opinion). Just paraphrasing (rearranging the words, but taking the ideas) is still plagerism. Since we watch the show, we can summarize the episodes in our own words. We can find out information about the actors from the fan sites, press releases and other sources, put that information in our own words and include references (for example links to those fan sites). Not only is this the right thing to do legally and morally, but it will make the wiki better. If we are just a copy of other sites, why bother? (Personally, I'd like to see more opinions here.  Unlike the Wikipedia, we do not have to aim for npov (neutral point of view).  So, we could have votes for favorite episodes, characters...) I quit being as active earlier this summer mostly because I was so busy, but also because I was tired of feeling like the copyright police. So, I appreciate the fact that others are also concerned about this issue. I hope we can clean-up the site, but let's not attack the people who unintentionally violate copyright. We need a few good articles about what is and is not acceptable, and we need to consistently point people to them. Thanks for reading. --CocoaZen 05:19, 4 Nov 2005 (UTC)


 * I hope I haven't been too hard. I also believe that Knigtmare's help has been invaluable to this wiki, and we wouldn't be where we are today if it wasn't for him. The fault on the copyright articles lies as well on me and on the other archivists, because we haven't seen or stopped something that went wrong. If I didn't get a note from someone saying that I should change something, I would probably not change... How could I? Peter R 05:54, 4 Nov 2005 (UTC)


 * I'm sorry to say this but this kind of weak response is exactly the reason why we now have 185 articles that are copyrighted. You say that Knightmare's first writings were original writings. You are wrong about this because the very first pages he created are now in our copyright category. Perhaps there are 20 articles that he has written himself. Most of which are short stub articles.
 * Since you are the one that made him an administrator I understand that you want to defend him. Especially since you are the one that claims to be so considerated about copyrights. You let him upload copryrighted articles and rewarded him by making him an administrator. Peter is right on this: How could he change?
 * There was one other thing that I didn't agree with in your defense. You say that he did this unintentionally. I find this very hard to believe. Every thief knows when he is stealing something. So does he.
 * I really can't say that I find Knightmare's work invaluable to this wiki. How do you think people will respond when they come here for the first time? Most of the articles they will be looking for will have a tag with copyright infringement. Articles like Teal'c, Elizabeth Weir and John Sheppard are high priority because most people would want to read those.
 * Although I don't want to be the bitch around here, you can count on it that I never, I say never, will thank Knightmare for the work he has done here. I'm used to high standards on Wiki because of my previous work on Memory Alpha. I understand that we need to work together on fixing this problem (CocoaZen, Peter, GingerM, TalShiar, ..). I hope everything will be rather quickly resolved. After that we can start looking into the future and improve Stargate Command greatly.
 * --Patricia 09:56, 4 Nov 2005 (UTC)


 * I understand your onjections, Patricia, and I will not force you to apologize. However, now is the time to go forward, especially when we have so much work at our hands, so I have fixed the Elizabeth Weir article. I suggest that we all, when we find any information on any article, puts that in the respective article and that we continue to expand our knowledge. We don't have to write the whole article on the spot, it's better that we take it bit by bit. I suggest that we remove everything that we know are copyrighted, when we make it to those articles. I don't suggest that we go through them all in a row and remove the text, but that we take it article by article. There are now 185 articles. I suggest that our goal is to totally rewrite 35 of those within two weeks. Are we up to the challenge? Read more at the project's page where we can keep on updating our progress. Peter R 11:09, 4 Nov 2005 (UTC)

Using screencaps on Stargate Command
On my talkpage CocoaZen raised the doubt if you could use screencaps on Stargate Command in the same manner as for example on Memory Alpha. I never really looked at this aspect because MA uses fair use guideline. I always assumed that every wiki operates on the same guideline. But we don't have this guideline set in place yet on SGC.

The fair use guideline means that you can use screencaps as long as you add the following to the image description (the following is taken from Memory Alpha):


 * credit for the original author of the image or other media file (if the file is a fan-created work) including a link where the original author may be contacted, or
 * the original source of the image or other media file (if the file is derived from an official Star Trek work, e.g. screenshots and sound bytes).

You must also include information about:


 * whether the file is uploaded to Memory Alpha with express permission of the author, or under fair use rules, and
 * the source of the file, being a specific episode, movie, book, other official work, a website, or any other medium.

''For example: Mount Rushmore National Memorial in 2287. (Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, deleted scene)

''The copyright of this image belongs to Paramount Pictures. Its use is contended to be consistent with fair use rules under United States copyright law. See Copyrights.''
 * (source:http://www.memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Memory_Alpha:Copyrights)

You can read more info on the wikipage http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use

If we want to uphold our high standards on copyright infringements we should make sure that every image description has included the above.

I've gone through some other wiki's and most of them use the same standard. I've used Memory Alpha's copyright template as a start. For Stargate Command the following template could apply:

''Description of image. (Screencap, Image, ... from ...:"Episode")

''The copyright of this image belongs to MGM Television Entertainment. Its use is contended to be consistent with fair use rules under United States copyright law. See Copyrights.''

I would like to hear your opinions about this. --Patricia 10:11, 3 Nov 2005 (UTC)


 * I think the template is a good design, it gives people the information they need on the copyrights and that we should start using screenshots under the Fair Use rules so we won't be questioned on our copyright status. As long as the template is clear and easy to read, we've got no problem.--GingerM 15:31, 3 Nov 2005 (UTC)


 * Patricia - I'm aware of the claim that Memory Alpha makes about this being "fair use". I'm also aware that there is some question about this really falls under "fair use".  So far I haven't been able to find any one (or any legal site or citation) who is really familiar with copyright or intellectual property laws and who says whether this is or is not legal.  The uninformed opinion of a bunch of Wikizens (including me) doesn't settle the matter either way.  :-(  I've seen the same thing claimed for copying entire text articles, and as you noted above, that really isn't legit.
 * Copying for entertainment purposes does not fall under "fair use." For example, sampling from music recordings is not fair use.  So, is "sampling" from a video?  Wikicities are not primarily educational or non-profit (I think).  See the checklist that the Wikicities article refers to for some other criteria to determine whether something is fair use.
 * I think it's a good idea and would make sense to have templates regarding the rules under which we are posting things. If we can find something from a legal expert saying that the screen caps fall under some rule that makes them legal, we would still need to acknowledge the copyright owners.
 * I like having pictures on the site, but I would like them to be legal and to acknowledge the work of the people who created the show. (I think we're doing a pretty good job of acknowledging that work, and I thank you for helping make sure that we do this.)  I would be very happy, if someone could point me to an expert opinion or legal ruling that says screen caps are ok (even if it is is by a different method than "fair use").
 * Sorry if I sound like a broken record about this, but I keep seeing people using others' work without fair acknowledgement or an understanding of intellectual property rights. Unfortunately, plagerism and related activities are so common on the Web that many people think that makes it ok. --CocoaZen 04:45, 4 Nov 2005 (UTC)


 * In Sweden, we don't have this "fair use" but I've studied it at some some time. I must say, that I am not an expert, just interested... I believe that MA uses the "fair use" contingencies in a correct way. Paramount (and in our case, MGM) is very interested in that people gets to know their show, so they will benefit for it, when we are showing their pictures. However, if we do a lousy job here (and I don't think we do that, absolutely no one here!) and for example not showing where the pictures are from, in that case we are not using the "fair use" rules as they are meant. Fair use, as I understand it, can be used if you actually are promoting the picture in a good way, and at the same time publically acknowledging who is the owner of the picture. Peter R 05:50, 4 Nov 2005 (UTC)

Changed Humans --> Tau´ri
I've just made almost a hundred minor changes. I've changed the humans of Earth, to be categorized under Category:Tau'ri instead of under Category:Humans. Tau'ri are then in turn categorized under Humans, just like any other human population from other planets. In time, I will move other persons from other planets to a unique category, but I will take it one step in a time... Peter R 16:04, 5 Nov 2005 (UTC)

Knightmare Response
Yes, While many of the articles that I posted were from gateworld and others. I was adding them as filler until we had a chance to write our own versions. With me being gone (and still gone) with my military unit I have not had the chance to start to go through the articles I posted and re-write them for our use. It is a Sad fact that my service is going on so long but that must come first before any project that I place myself into. Also as many of you know this is a wiki page which means that anyone who would like to take the ambition and time may go through and re-write it. By the way little nasty thoughts about me all I have to say is .... I DON'T CARE .... also like the boss man said many of the articles that I wrote when I had the time are origanal writtings. Patrica if you have a problem please feel free to contact me and I will respond when i get the chance. Pete thanks for you defence in my absence and when I return from serving my country I will be more than happy to oversee the re-write project, and would thank anyone whould would like to contribute to the project in my absence. I also think copyright infringment is distasteful but as I said it was intended as filler until we had time. Now you have my point of view and please feel free to contact me. If it is not enough let me know and remove me from the admin list I have no problem with not staying where I am wanted. User:Knightmare 17:40, 5 Nov 2005 (UTC)
 * First of all thanks for your response. I appreciate it that you admit that you've taken articles from Gateworld and other sites. I still don't like the fact that you felt the need to steal texts from other sites and place them here. You must have known that your service was going to take a while. If not, you could have just posted a message on every page you created to let us now that others need to rewrite them. And if you think copyright infringment is distasteful you could have placed the following text on the bottom: This article was originallyposted on Gateworld.


 * This sentence is just ridiculous: also like the boss man said many of the articles that I wrote when I had the time are origanal writtings.  You know this is cr*p! There are about 20 articles that you have written yourself.


 * As you might have noticed I'm not as easily persuaded by a: I was trying to do the right thing- speech. I still vote for removing you from the admin list. You've made a serious mistake by uploading almost 190 articles that are copyrighted. We would be setting the wrong example if you remain administrator.
 * --Patricia 22:33, 6 Nov 2005 (UTC)


 * @Knightmare, can you please tell me what is the use of "filler" material if you have to rewrite it later? I better prefer a wiki with a few articles than a wiki with a lot of articles that need to be rewritten later. By the way, removing you from the adminlist doesn't have to mean that you have to quit contributing to this wiki. If you have a look on the Dutch Memory Alpha, then you can see that a lot of major/important articles are still missing, wich is better than copying them just right of another site, but that's my opinion. This is the last I will say about this, from now on I will focus myself on the episode articles wich need a lot of info to be added. --TalShiar 23:24, 6 Nov 2005 (UTC)


 * Knightmare, if you were just copying the articles and using them as "fillers", don't you think you could have at least told/asked one of the admins if they thought it was a good idea, instead of just going ahead and stealing almost 190 copyrighted articles from Gateworld?
 * --GingerM 08:51, 7 Nov 2005 (UTC)


 * GingerM - Knightmare is an administrator and at the time he copied most of those articles, there weren't other active participants to ask or to notice.
 * I granted administrative rights to Knightmare because he was doing so much of the work. And, early on his articles were original, and he helped fix problems that others caused regarding copyright and vandalism.
 * At the time Knightmare was one of the few people doing any work on this wiki. It's hard when there is no one around to help.  I wish I had known that his articles were copied early on, so I could have said something then, but I didn't.  And no one else did either.  Unfortunately this allowed what should have been a minor problem, if caught early, to grow.
 * Ok, so it's done. I don't think the articles should have been copied, and I am grateful that people noticed and are working are repairs.
 * Knightmare did not continue to post copied articles after it became clear that this is unacceptable. Being in the military, he probably didn't have a choice about when he was deployed, so he may not have the time to repair things himself.
 * I don't think there's a need to change his rights to this wiki unless there is a further problem.
 * I propose that we move on. Knightmare keeps his administrative rights, unless he continues to copy copyrighted work.  And we all keep working at making this one of the best Wikicities we've ever participated in.  For me, part of that is a welcoming atmostphere.  We all make mistakes, and I hope we're all willing to do our best to correct them.
 * --CocoaZen 00:56, 8 Nov 2005 (UTC)
 * Okay, let me be blunt. You are an idiot, CocoaZen! You fix all the stuff around here yourself! When your buddy Knightmare comes along you can keep on working to destroy this wiki even further. If you would have taken the time to take one look in his contributions list you would have known that he was lying about his original articles. Allowing him to be an administrator even one day longer is unacceptable.


 * I hope you realise that by losing me on this wiki, you are also losing one other member...That's what you get when two people that are engaged to get married work on the same wiki...


 * Peter, GingerM: I wish you the best. Goodbye.
 * --Patricia 07:01, 8 Nov 2005 (UTC)