User talk:CopoCop/Copyrights

Comments

In no particular order:

• Essay might be better than "policy, guideline or process" - you're not actually specifying any actions.
• Actually, quite a few policies are buried in technical detail. That's an essay in itself.
• The "Inserting text" section is both vague and soon to be out-of-date:
  • "allows an editor to insert material" - do you mean "directly copy unquoted text"?
  • and whilst you're right today about one acceptable case being a GFDL release, it seems that's all about to change very very soon. We're going over to dual GFDL and CC-BY licensing, so GFDL-only will soon be a thing of the past. Read up at Wikipedia:Transition to Creative Commons licensing, and be prepared to follow a few interwiki links to track it all down. ;)
• I'd suggest you drop the whole "fair-use" bit:
  • You're showing a possibly unconscious bias when you say "copyright law" when you actually mean "US copyright law"
  • And that whole fair-use thing has tripped up so many people over time here, it's likely best to only discuss WP:NFC. Otherwise people get the idea that they're vested with various constitutional rights here, when the only right they really possess is the right to switch off their computer.
• And since the license terms are in transition just now, and I'm not personally sure what exactly you're trying to achieve with this, moving it into your userspace and mulling it for a month or so while we wait to see how the WMF board rolls out the new licensing might not be a bad idea anyway.

Nice effort though, it's always good to see people trying to outline concepts rather than just reacting to events! Franamax (talk) 00:44, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

I think Franamax's comments are generally good (here and elsewhere :D). I like the idea of a brief essay helping to clarify matter, but it's very unlikely that another copyright policy would pass the consensus process, particularly since what you are offering is a "nutshell" version of existing policies. But I'd agree that wading through our copyright policy can be difficult for new contributors.

With your fair use section (and I agree that talking about it in terms of WP:NFC is better), you should also note that there are recommended situations for quoting text: to illustrate a point, establish context, or attribute a point of view or idea. The purpose of that is to note that use of copyrighted material must be transformative. We need to bring something new to the table, not simply supersede the old. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:14, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

These are very good points. Thank you both! What do I want to achieve with this? Well, I certainly don't want to propose new policy. I would simply like there to exist a simple information page about text-based copyright. (I noticed that there actually exists a tag for an information page!) I would like something more authoritative than an essay: a summary where people like you, who deal with copyright issues, have had a significant hand in writing and checking that it is adequate. I have to think about the other points about the content.

1. How much does the transition to CC-BY-SA actually impact what an editor can enter into Wikipedia without violating the copyright policy? Is there any way one could formulate the key ideas without the particulars of the license? Maybe using more generic terms like free content or permissive license? Or stating what is not sufficient, e.g., free for non-commercial use.
2. Dropping the mention of "fair use". I agree that the emphasis needs to be radically shifted, but something should be said explicitly about fair use precisely because it is confusing and often claimed for no other reason (apparent to me) than to avoid having to do the hard work of formulating one's own sentences.

In any case, thanks for the feedback. If you think this will not be helpful to other editors, well, I'm not on a crusade, but I felt the need for a simple explanation of copyright. I probably misused what proposals are for. I will change some templates, but I still have to think about where to move it and what to call it. :) CopoCop (talk) 22:10, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

I tweaked it a bit, you can see how every helpful addition will just make things longer, which is probably not your aim.

Maybe you can reword so that fair use is just a bullet point saying "hey dude, no such thing on this wiki, we do NFC!"? That's where people get tripped up.

And I do like the idea of a very simple outline that's within people's attention-span. The trick is to keep it that simple. If done right, it could be a useful bullet point on the new user help template. Franamax (talk) 09:31, 30 May 2009 (UTC)