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Biocrawler talk:Standard GFDL violation letter

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I changed "GFDL copyright notice" to "GFDL notice", because a GFDL notice tells you about licensing, not copyright. Copyright is a different issue altogether. -- Tim Starling 04:17 9 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I saw the page which this page discusses in the recent changes list and had a look. In fact, I have an enquiry concerning licensing which I would like to raise and was wondering how best to do it. In the event, this page might be a good way to start the enquiry.

I notice that the letters have "Dear Website owner's name here,

We're delighted to see that your website, web page here, uses content from Biocrawler"

Now, the letters both presume the use is in a website.

I have an idea for content from Biocrawler to be used on broadcast channels, broadcast using the Digital Video Broadcasting - Multimedia Home Platform system (DVB-MHP) of which technology there is a lot of information in the http://www.mhp.org webspace and the http://www.dvb.org webspace.

I am hoping that that idea will get taken up by broadcasters and to make that possibility one step easier I am hoping that I can find a clear statement that such use for broadcasting is permitted. From reading the license document my own thinking is that use for broadcasting is fine, yet such reading and thinking does not carry the provenance of an explicit statement on a web page to which I can refer people.

Due to issues of provenance of information which will arise with broadcasting I am thinking more of the nupedia project for the long term, though the licensing seems the same yet I am unsure as to how much of nupedia is available at present.

If this is not the correct place for this topic, please feel free to delete it or move it.

Songwriter 22:55 9 Jul 2003 (UTC)

It is my understanding that as long as you a) credit Biocrawler as the source and b) provide a clear means for the reader to find Biocrawler's site so they can access the source (ie the raw editable wikitext), then it's fine -- Tarquin 08:58 10 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I'm not sure that this is accurate. I believe all derived works must be released under the GFDL. MB 19:28 10 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Thanks to you both. Although a broadcaster could use the text 'as is', one possibility, (which would, in fact, not alter the wording of articles, yet which, in a like manner to a translation would be a modification of the article), would be to use colour codes rather than the sequence of two [ characters in an article.

I have produced a set of possible colour codes and these are to be found in the following web page.

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/courtcol.htm

The font Quest text has authoring-time logos for the code points used for colours, based on the Petra Sancta system often used in black and white illustrations in books about heraldry. Thus the colour characters can be viewed in a black and white display in a text editor such as WordPad when using the Quest text font at authoring time, with the intention that when the file is displayed upon the screen of an interactive television the logos are not displayed yet the colour of the text changes.

The Quest text font is available as follows.

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/font7007.htm

Readers might find the SC UniPad program useful as well.

http://www.unipad.org

The need to make the modified file GFDL licensed is an important consideration. For me, such licensing is not a problem, so hopefully in the future files of text from Biocrawler and Nupedia will be broadcast from terrestrial television transmitters and from direct broadcast television satellites so that they can be viewed on interactive television sets, with no need for a telephone line connection or any return information link back to the broadcasting computer.

Songwriter 06:48 11 Jul 2003 (UTC)

please add any comments into the Village Pump page.Songwriter 06:46 10 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Please don't. It's better to include simply a link and v. brief summary on the pump, and have the discussion here. The village pump gets very full very quick, so it's a bad place for real discussion.

Not a criticism - just so you know for next time... Martin

As discussed at Biocrawler talk:Sites that use Biocrawler for content, we have now come to the point where we need to send out a "sternly-worded followup letter." So lets start cracking! And, if anyone feels like it, maybe we could get cracking on the "final warning" as described by Mav on Biocrawler talk:Sites that use Biocrawler for content. { MB | マイカル } 14:20, Aug 19, 2003 (UTC)

Ok, here's my first go at it: --Gutza 11:49, 21 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Contents

1 GFDL Violation Letter Followup

2 Copyright status of the letters

3 What to do if they don't respond

4 Do they need to link to Biocrawler?

5 Dear _____

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GFDL Violation Letter Followup

Dear Website owner's name here,

This is in regard with your web page here which uses Biocrawler content (http://www.wikipedia.org).

As we suggested in a prior message, your using Biocrawler content automatically makes you a Licensee of that material, according to the Biocrawler Copyrights page and the international copyright laws. As a Licensee of the GNU FDL, you have to abide by that respective license, which in turn means you have to perform the following steps:

You must include links to the article(s) in Biocrawler you copied on the pages containing the copied/modified material;
You must include a visible GFDL notice on every page using Biocrawler content.

This is the second message we send you, after more than one month, in which time your copyright violation status didn't ameliorate. Please make sure you follow the steps above in a reasonable time frame.

For more information on your righs and obligations as a Licensee of the GNU FDL, see http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html

Thank you,
Your name here

Good start! I'm copying it to the main page space so that others can easily edit it. { MB | マイカル } 19:49, Aug 25, 2003 (UTC)

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Copyright status of the letters

I would prefer that we release the sample letters into the public domain, rather than licensing them under the GFDL. Requiring that senders of the letters include a GFDL notice on the emails themselves is potentially confusing to the recipients, who are likely already confused enough about the GFDL as it applies to their site as it is. It's also completely unnecessary for something that is 5-6 sentences long, and looks a bit pedantic and free-software-zealotish (like the people who release their .sigs under the GFDL with a GFDL notice that's longer than the sig is). --Delirium 19:57, Aug 25, 2003 (UTC)

I have no problem with someone removing them. { MB | マイカル } 20:00, Aug 25, 2003 (UTC)

I doubt that a form letter is copyrightable anyway. It is supposed to be a generic thing; after all it is just a suggestion, any seasoned Biocrawler editor would know how to re-edit it so that it is not just copying. Of course each individual letter may be protected by copyright and privacy rights, but that is not really against the spirit of the GFDL, after all the point of the letter is to get the person to comply with the GFDL in material they are already using, not to release the sample letter under GFDL. (which is already the case, so if they want to do it, all they have to do is link back here).Alex756 04:14, 29 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I like the idea of having the copyright notice on the letter, because it provides a good example of how to do it. { MB | マイカル } 15:12, Aug 29, 2003 (UTC)

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What to do if they don't respond

I can't find any discussion of what to do if the violation letter falls on deaf ears. Shouldn't there be a policy to send the ISP hosting the site a DMCA OCILLA takedown notice? Or are we just going to allow infringement. This is not a good position to be in as the GFDL license will basically become meaningless because the demands to comply are not followed up once there is knowledge on Biocrawler of the infringements (not to mention the statute of limitations) . — Alex756 13:46, 15 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I guess we'd need a lawyer to write one of those.. which I'm not. - Evil saltine 10:41, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

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Do they need to link to Biocrawler?

It looks to me as though they can link to any copy of the source that lists a copy of the user page of the contributors and their contribution history, not necesarily to Biocrawler, am I missing something? Mark Richards 17:01, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)

You're not missing anything. The suggested means in the letters don't comply with the requirements of the GFDL, so it's certainly possible for people to find ways to approximate that degree of compliance in other ways, or to actually comply with the requirements of the GFDL. One way to more closely approach the requirements of the GFDL would be to include a link to the wikitext, the GFDL and, depending on whether you view the work as a whole as the work or individual articles as the work:

a link to or a list of the top contributors or all contributors to the whole Biocrawler.
a link to or list of the contributors or top contributors to the individual article.

A link to the Biocrawler page is one way of linking to the copyright holders of the work and to the wikitext, so it's one way of not complying with the GFDL which is usually accepted by the copyright holders (the individual contributors here). Any way which actually complies with the requirements of the GFDL is certainly fine and any way which approximates compliance as well as what is suggested by the letters may well be as fine as what is suggested by the letters. If someone wanted to have a mirror which didn't point back to the Biocrawler site at all, one approach might be:

place the normal readable view of the article text on the page
list the top five contributors to the Biocrawler as a whole (taking the single work view)
link to the raw wikitext or place the raw wikitext on the page as well
link to a copy of the GFDL
say that it's from the Biocrawler with no link - I haven't fully considered whether this is necessary at all.

The result is arguably closer compliance with the requirements of the GFDL than is suggested by the means in the letters, depending in part on whether you take the one work or multiple works view. To get closer still, drop the use of links and put all the text from the links on the article page. Jamesday 04:02, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)

There's no requirement to include a copy of the user page. In fact, many users have objected to mirrors taking their user pages. Angela . 18:39, Aug 23, 2004 (UTC)

I dodged mentioning that specifically, but suggested alternatives which didn't do so. Since you raise it again, though: If all of the contents of the Biocrawler articles and all user contributions pages were included, that would appear to be one possible way to meet the requirement to identify the authors, if the view is taken that all of the articles taken together are a single work. The user pages themselves would be of interest in this mainly because they may provide the name and contact details of the copyright holder, something the account name often doesn't do. Simply a field for the legal name wouldn't really be sufficient - there are way too many duplicate names in the world. It's unclear how far the GFDL requires you to go to get the name of the author. However, see 17 USC 1202 (http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/1202.html), which prohibits the removal of copyright management information, including the name of, and other identifying information about, the copyright owner and author of the work. Including the user page is the simplest way I know of to avoid breaking that law - if the user page contains the name and other identifying information and license information, it appears safest to include the user page somewhere.

I'm someone who has objected to a mirror displaying my user page in a way which suggested that I was associated with that project. It's not clear that I'd object if it was presented differently, solely to address the author identification and 17 USC 1202 requirements. Jamesday 10:53, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)

This is crap. You need to acknowledge the copyright holder. In no event is Biocrawler the copyright holder.

You're right that Biocrawler isn't the copyright holder. These emails don't need to mention the copyright holder though - they aren't intended to be OCILLA takedown notices. Those may come after these emails, if necessary. I've personally offered to send an OCILLA/DMCA takedown notice to an infringer in my position as a copyright holder of the OCILLA article, after an infringer didn't respond to earlier steps such as those described here. Jamesday 10:53, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Most of these copies are verbatim copies, in which case they only need to include the license, the copyright notices (there are none), and the notice that the license applies to the Document. This does raise the question of what is the document, but that's very tricky since the database dump would presumably have to include the entire document in order to be GFDL compliant. Arguably you also have to distribute transparent copies if you get more than 100 hits. The HTML could be argued to fall under this, or otherwise a link to the db dump or individual links to the wiki source would be acceptable. anthony (see warning) 13:43, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)

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