Wikipedia:Suspected copyright violations

This page is currently inactive and is retained for historical reference.
Either the page is no longer relevant or consensus on its purpose has become unclear. To revive discussion, seek broader input via a forum such as the village pump.

Shortcut

WP:SCV

This page lists possible copyright violations as detected by CorenSearchBot. If CorenSearchBot is down, please e-mail Coren or leave him a message.

To comply with copyright policy and Terms of Use, material imported to Wikipedia that infringes copyright should, as a general rule, be removed. While brief, clearly marked excerpts of copyrighted text are permitted under non-free content policy and guideline, text can otherwise only be imported if it is verifiably public domain or licensed compatibly with the Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike license. Aside from brief, clearly marked excerpts, information taken from non-free sources cannot be presented in identical language and must be sufficiently rewritten to avoid constituting an unauthorized derivative work.

Instructions

Evaluate each listing to see what steps have been taken or may be necessary and tag their current status here. The template {{SCV}} may be used for this purpose by placing it at the end of the report, on the same line. Do not remove listings, even if the article has been deleted or no violation was found.

Check the tagged source to see if it is public domain, compatibly licensed or a Wikipedia mirror.
- If the source is public domain or licensed compatibly, check to see if duplicated content is properly attributed in the article. Public domain sources should be attributed in accordance with Wikipedia:Plagiarism. Contributions licensed under CC-BY-SA and GFDL must be attributed. If necessary, please put a link to the original source of the material at the foot of the article and on the article's talk page. If the source is CC-BY-SA or CC-BY-SA-compatible only, please note that. Attribution templates may be useful.
- If something is copied from a Wikipedia mirror, it may still be a problematic article. Make sure it isn't a repost of deleted content or fallout from a copy and paste move. If it is a repost, an administrator may need to be consulted to restore the history for proper attribution. If it appears that a page was moved to a new location, it may be a cut-and-paste copy instead of an actual move, and those must be fixed by an administrator otherwise the contribution history is no longer attached to the text, which is violating the copyright of the contributors. On the other hand, it may catch cases of editors splitting an existing page; if the source page is clear in the new page's history through edit summaries then this would be a false positive and the tag put on the new page needs to be removed. If the split is not properly attributed, please repair in accordance with Wikipedia:Copying within Wikipedia.
Blatant copyright infringements where no permission or ownership is asserted and no untainted version exists should be tagged for speedy deletion under WP:CSD#G12 with {{db-copyvio}}. Mark them as such on this list, but do not remove them. Such articles are sometimes recreated after deletion and may need additional review to ensure they have been completely rewritten.
Mark non-blatant copyright infringements as well as blatant infringements where permission or ownership is asserted for review at Copyright problems. Replace the article with {{subst:copyvio|url=''source''}}, follow the directions on that template for notifying the contributor and note below the listing that the article has been blanked for later review.
Non-violations (such as duplicating track listings) or corrected violations should be noted on the list.
CSBot generally leaves notices for contributors. It may be a good idea to ensure that it has done so, if the problem was not repaired. You may also wish to communicate further with the contributor if clarification seems needed about copyright or verification process. Please remember to remain civil and be mindful of the specific application of "assume good faith" to copyright cleanup. If a contributor's talk page history suggests a pattern of copyright issues, additional action may be necessary in accordance with Wikipedia:Copyright problems#Repeated copyright violations.