Wikipedia talk:Copyrights

In the second case, if you incorporate external GFDL materials, you need to acknowledge the authorship and provide a link back to the network location of the original copy. If the original copy required invariant sections, you have to incorporate those into the Wikipedia article.

I'm thinking we should maybe have Wikipedia: GFDL History as a place for people to acknowledge included GFDL contributions. Also, invariant sections are just a big pain, since they then become Wikipedia invariant sections. I'd recommend that we not include stuff from GFDL-ed documents with invariant sections unless we build software that allows them to be automatically handled correctly.

Do you then intend to have a link to Wikipedia:GFDL History in every article that uses external GFDL material? I think it would be easier to instead just attach the attribution notice directly to the article, similar to what we do right now with material from FOLDOC (because that's also what we want people to do who use our material). 63.224.6.62 11:03 Aug 17, 2002 (PDT)

--The Cunctator

I suggest changing the final bullet to:

you must acknowledge the authorship of the article (section 4B), and you must provide access to the "transparent copy" of the material, and to previous versions of the document. (section 4J). (The "transparent copy" of a Wikipedia article is its wiki text.) To fulfil these two obligations you must provide a conspicuous link back to the home of the article here at wikipedia.org.

I suggest this change because under section 4J of the license, users of the material are required to "Preserve the network location ..... for previous versions it was based on". So linking back to Wikipedia isn't optional as a way for crediting history and giving a transparent copy, as the existing wording implies; it is demanded by the license.

Could someone with a good understanding of the license check I have understood this correctly? Enchanter 15:51 Aug 21, 2002 (PDT)

A link back to the article is just one way to fulfill their obligations. For instance, if they produce a printed version of Wikipedia, or a "book on tape" version, they cannot do that. AxelBoldt 16:58 Aug 21, 2002 (PDT)

I think it would be helpful in the apartheid article to include the full text of the definition of apartheid, from Article II of the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid. However, at the bottom of the text of the Convention (at http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/11.htm ), it says © Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Geneva, Switzerland. Does this mean it would be illegal to copy the definition into our article? Thanks GrahamN 16:42 Aug 29, 2002 (PDT)

It would certainly be within fair use guidelines to use an extract of the text to illustrate a point. If you want to copy large swaths of text, e-mail their office and ask. :) --Brion

There are 2261 words in the convention, and I'd like to quote 397 of them. This is about 18% of the text. Does this amount to a swath? GrahamN 16:53 Aug 29, 2002 (PDT)