IFWiki talk:Copyright discussions

General

I have pieced together everything I could find on the wiki about copyright on the IFWiki:Copyright discussions page. It looks from the 2005 debates and the 2007 copyright page that the "public domain" argument won, and that all content on the wiki is public domain, at least from 21 February 2007, with two exceptions being the FAQ page (CC-SA 2.0 licence) and Andrew Plotkin's postcard (CC-SA 3.0 licence). Until I've read the 2005 debates I'll just observe that the easiest option is not to change anything... Jonathan (talk) 23:53, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

I've read the old discussions and my instinct is still to keep everything public domain. We can't change that for the old material anyway. The big difference isn't how we use other people's information (they decide on that) but on what other people can do with ours. There hasn't been a problem with that in over a decade, as far as I know. But I see that the IFTF uses CC licences so maybe someone from there could advise on the reasons! Jonathan (talk) 14:57, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

There's a comment on the CC site saying "the laws of some jurisdictions don’t allow authors and copyright owners to waive all of their own rights, such as moral rights". They offer a "CC0" license (https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/CC0_FAQ) which is intended to be "as public domain as legally possible". Zarf

I propose that we change the copyright notice to remove the option of anything other than public domain. No non-PD page has been added since the FAQ in 2005. The notice could say something like: "All text on IFWiki is public domain. By placing your content on IFWiki, you place your work in the public domain and so give irrevocable permission for your material to be published. **DO NOT SUBMIT COPYRIGHTED WORK WITHOUT PERMISSION!**". I don't propose we add anything about CC0 as we couldn't change things retrospectively, it would mean two separate situations for different and intermingled text on the same pages across time, and in practice I don't think it is necessary here. Jonathan (talk) 12:18, 23 September 2022 (UTC)

On the flipside, sticking with just the Public Domain dedication would mean that anyone from such a country (such as myself) would retain full copyrights to their contributions (since the PD dedication is null and void as far as they are concerned), and a malicious actor could later sue IFWiki/IFTF for copyright infringement. Heck, I'm not even sure I can legally read the wiki, since presumably everyone elses' PD dedications are also invalid to me (since I, the reader, am under a jurisdiction that doesn't recognize them). I would definitely prefer using an existing license text where someone knowledgeable has maneuvered around those pitfalls, rather than falling into them ourselves. --Ardi (talk) 12:44, 23 September 2022 (UTC)

Cover art

Jonathan, when you say "all content on the wiki is public domain," are you including the image files? I doubt most people think of their cover art as being public domain. Maybe this is something that could be clarified, somewhere? On the disclaimers page? bg (talk) 14:21, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

I wasn't thinking of them, to be honest. They seem to be included under the "nobody will mind" section of the Ways and Means Act :-) Maybe it's fair use - I don't know. For comparison, on the IFDB page it says: "Cover art" images (in game listings) and personal profile images have individual copyrights that are indicated in the full-size view of each image. When not otherwise specified, these images are copyrighted by their respective authors. Jonathan (talk) 23:24, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

FAQ byline

The FAQ page has a separate license, and now has Nick Montfort's name on it, which I moved there from the front page of the wiki. With all the copyright discussion, I'm now wondering if the byline was intentionally left off the FAQ article for some reason. Did Nick not want a byline on the actual article? bg (talk) 19:08, 15 December 2021 (UTC)