User talk:Iph/Copyright

Sangorski & Sutcliffe and copyright

Hello. I have been reading the article on Sangorski & Sutcliffe that you wrote on Tuesday evening, inspired no doubt by the Radio 4 piece that day.

Judging from the text of your article, it looks like you have relied quite heavily on the Shepherds history page at http://bookbinding.co.uk/History.htm Most of the Wikipedia article is awfully similar to that source material, and some parts are directly copied, which gives me some concerns as to potential copyright violation.

Please don't take this the wrong way - it is great that you are adding content - but I am not at all convinced that the slight changes you have made are enough to avoid copyright concerns. I am tempted to ask for further outside input, perhaps at Wikipedia talk:Copyright problems, but wanted to see what you thought first. -- Testing times (talk) 13:10, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

I have not had time to search further for other sources of information. It seemed more important to get something in place with main features. Given that many statements are presented chronologically in the main source and expressed fairly straighforwardly, using the only information I had at all inevitably makes it similar. I felt the revision and selection I made was nore that just slight; but as I had no other information I had to leave it as it was. I have had no time since then to look further eg. for biographical about them. Given their careers it's unlikely anybody else has written those of them --- except the BBC piece. I did put a comment at the end of the source page that I would add more when I could, which means from elsewhere, when I had time. I haven't found any other source on the founders or the company yet, but given the great Omar I felt the founders' names and it should at least have a stub. I asked someone at Sherperds about the typo in Sherpherds site (they had photo captions re Hobson as "Hudson") & the lady thanked me so I then asked whether they'd permit, re. copyright, use in Wikipedia of a photo from their S&S archive pref. one not already on their website. Still looking out for any reply; I dare say she'd have to ask someone more senior before getting a reply. And it is August so probably everyone senior is away on hols. Meanwhile I doubt they'd sue: it all serves to generate new interest in their company and its unusal products and pedigree, after all.

Iph (talk) 02:41, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. Some parts of the bookbinding.co.uk website seem to be copied without any changes, which is only allowed if they give us permission to copy their text (i.e. it is freely licenced) or it is in the public domain. I have posted at Wikipedia:Copyright problems, and added a temporary version at Talk:Sangorski & Sutcliffe/Temp. The {{copyvio}} template tells me to post the text below (my apologies for the tone of the template text below). -- Testing times (talk) 17:40, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

This is apparently the standard message put on the talk page of anyone who has written a piece that somebody thinks raises a copyright problem regarding source. It does not address the issue of exactly what is defined as "copyrighted text"; it just assumes it is self-evident. It has several links to supposed Wikipedia guidance; and the main one, Wikipedia:Copyright violations has a whole lot more links to further pages. They give instructions on how to ask for permission to use copyrighted material, and how to use Wikipedia admin processes when a copyright infringement is suspected; but it says nothing about how to decide whether a piece is sufficiently close to a source to constitute a breach of copyright.

I claim that my piece is written by me although it happens to be based on a single source (but only because there is apparently no other source on the web for the facts derived from the Shepherd's site) but was not just copied and pasted from it The text was simply written in roughly the same sequence of presentation and including the same facts, so that the observed similarity is inevitable. I do not see that the offered replacement for my page is any different; it is simply another rearrangement of the same facts using words and sentences based on the same single source.

Copyright problem: Sangorski & Sutcliffe

Hello, and welcome to Wikipedia! We welcome and appreciate your contributions, such as Sangorski & Sutcliffe, but we regretfully cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from either web sites or printed material. This article appears to be a copy from http://bookbinding.co.uk/History.htm, and therefore a copyright violation. The copyrighted text has been or will soon be deleted. While we appreciate contributions, we must require all contributors to understand and comply with our copyright policy. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously, and persistent violators will be blocked from editing.

If you believe that the article is not a copyright violation, or if you have permission from the copyright holder to release the content freely under allowance license, then you should do one of the following:

• If you have permission from the author leave a message explaining the details at Talk:Sangorski & Sutcliffe and send an email with confirmation of permission to "permissions-en (at) wikimedia (dot) org". See Wikipedia:Requesting copyright permission for instructions.
• If a note on the original website states that re-use is permitted ''under the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL), versions 1.3 or later and Creative Commons Share Alike (CC-BY-SA), versions 3.0 or later, under CC-BY-SA, versions 3.0 or later, or that the material is released into the public domain leave a note at Talk:Sangorski & Sutcliffe with a link to where we can find that note.
• If you own the copyright to the material: send an e-mail from an address associated with the original publication to permissions-en(at)wikimedia(dot)org or a postal message to the Wikimedia Foundation permitting re-use under the GFDL and CC-BY-SA, and note that you have done so on Talk:Sangorski & Sutcliffe. See Wikipedia:Donating copyrighted materials for instructions.

It may also be necessary for the text be modified to have an encyclopedic tone and to follow Wikipedia article layout. For more information on Wikipedia's policies, see Wikipedia's policies and guidelines.

If you would like to begin working on a new version of the article you may do so at this temporary page. Leave a note at Talk:Sangorski & Sutcliffe saying you have done so and an administrator will move the new article into place once the issue is resolved. Thank you, and please feel welcome to continue contributing to Wikipedia. Happy editing! Testing times (talk) 17:40, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

My second reply

This was, not necessarily completely relevantly, added to the talk page of Testing times, the person who flagged the S&S article matter. I think that is where it is usual to post replies to messages from people to one's own talk page: to their talk page; but this makes the following of dialogues a bit inconvenient, which is why I question its correctness and therefore the relevance of the reply to the talk page of the person who left one a message. SO I have moved that to here and just put one line directing Testing times to here if he wants to see this continuation.

S&S

I think the problem I had with the complaint about copying remains: I do not know how to fix it within the other rules of wiki in the particular case of a sole brief source of information from which one needs to use almost all of the facts. From the BBC piece, the topic seemed Quite Interesting and, as a notable landmark in a little-known but intricate art & craft, appropriate for a shortish wiki article. Yet when I searched for information, I found only the Shepherd's history page. I made an attempt to rewrite it a little but with no additional facts and not a lot of time to hack at it to effectively "disguise" it more than I managed to, what I left evidently was insufficiently different for the wiki copyright mavens. I don't have many minutes a week to spend on wiki these days; I have had no time to add much for months. If what you have on the temp page is OK, let it stand. Tonight I have hunted on Wiki's pages about the copyright issue for some clear guideline on how much different a text has to be not to be regarded as "copied and pasted"; therefore I ask: is wiki banning itself from covering any topic about which there is only one source --- either one acknowledged to be authoritative, or one of any quality? For such topics, is the logic "Only one source? Not notable enough to be in wiki at all" ? Or is it just "you have to move the words around more so it doesn't look copied"? Whichever of these it is, I think we should be told which and (if the latter) how.

This issue is arguably going to arise ever more often in the future with wiki; as its already vast coverage of all fields and details of human knowledge grows, the typical level of notoriety (that's notability taken to extremes) of new topics will obviously drift downwards. Obviously: it is human nature for people to think of the most important topics first and fill in the others in (over a vast enough sample) an order of generally decreasing importance/notability/fame what-have-you. And in the limit, as here, you then start to hit topics for which there is only one source of information, and every time you do that there will be a problem of how much you have to change the sentences in the text of the new article so that it does not infringe the copyright of the sole source of information, the original article, the authority, the reference. In a way this is associated with the problem of "no original research": if I went to Shepherds and asked very nicely and sat in their archive and made notes and came home and wrote an article for wikipedia, it would be original research and banned. I'd have to get it published somewhere else (say in a book) and then quote that to get past the demand for authorities & references. But if the topic is not important enough to expect big sales, the book publishing industry will not look at it. So if I do the work in the archive to avoid the Shepherds website author's copyright I get done on "no original research", and if I don't do the work but rely on their text, it's a copyright problem. Between them these two rules end up preventing any topic below a certain level of fame being covered at all even if they are factual, interesting, and intellectually important (that is, in this case, seen as a noteworthy pair of figures and an era in the history of the bookbinding art and craft).

And thus back to the point above: if this argument of despair is to be avoided, we need wiki Guidance: how much must a text differ (be changed) from its information source in order not to be a copyright problem? Is it even always possible, given a topic with only one not very detailed source, to create something with the same amount of information and detail without it being seen as a copyright violation? Does changing the order of the sentences, and the order of words in those sentences, plus a few replacements with synonyms or paraphrases, fix it? Iph (talk) 00:52, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for the message on my talk page. It usually makes sense to keep these conversations in one place (either your talk page, or mine, but this sub-page will do too).

You ask some good questions about the intersection of various Wikipedia policies (copyright, no original research, verifiability, notability). The place to start is probably Wikipedia:Copyrights, which makes it clear that:

"If you want to import text that you have found elsewhere or that you have co-authored with others, you can only do so if it is available under terms that are compatible with the CC-BY-SA license."

and carries on:

"If the material, text or media, has been previously published and you wish to donate it to Wikipedia under appropriate license, you will need to verify copyright permission through one of our established procedures."

You ask how much rewording is required to avoid copyright infringement. That is a bit like the question about the length of a piece of string, but that page also says, lower down:

"Note that copyright law governs the creative expression of ideas, not the ideas or information themselves. Therefore, it is legal to read an encyclopedia article or other work, reformulate the concepts in your own words, and submit it to Wikipedia, so long as you do not follow the source too closely."

and then cross refers to two entries from Wikipedia:FAQ/Copyright. The first reiterates that:

"Facts cannot be copyrighted. It is legal to read an encyclopedia article or other work, reformulate the concepts in your own words, and submit it to Wikipedia, although the structure, presentation, and phrasing of the information should be your own original creation."

and the second says:

"Generally, a summary (or analysis) of something is not a derivative work, unless it reproduces the original in great detail, at which point it becomes an abridgment and not a summary."

There is also the rather fraught issue of Wikipedia:Plagiarism (using someone else's work without infringing their copyright, but also without providing adequate credit.)

Assuming the subject is notable (as this undoubtedly is), and at least one good source exist to verify content that you add, then it should not be Original Research (which was originally about avoiding articles on crackpot theories, although it has expanded a bit beyond that now). But you can't just copy that source - you need to distil the original source and rewrite the facts that it mentions in your own words. Looking at the version you wrote, I see several places were original Shepherds text is copied directly:

Original	Your version
Sutcliffe specialised in gold finishing and Sangorski worked as a forwarder. Within a year they were teaching bookbinding at Camberwell College of Art, and in recognition of their exceptional talents, their scholarships were extended for another year.	Sutcliffe specialised in gold finishing and Sangorski worked as a forwarder. Within a year they were themselves both teaching bookbinding at Camberwell School of Art and Crafts, and in recognition of their exceptional talents, their scholarships were extended for another year.
With the coal strike of 1901 the economy slumped and work at the Cockerell bindery diminished. The two junior employees were laid off. Despite the difficult economic climate, they decided to set up a new business together. They founded Sangorksi & Sutcliffe on 1st October 1901.	With the coal strike of 1901 the economy slumped, and work at the Cockerell bindery diminished. The two junior employees were laid off. Despite the difficult economic climate, with their strong friendship they decided to set up a new business together. They founded Sangorksi & Sutcliffe on 1st October 1901.
Their first rented premises were an attic room in Bloomsbury, but they soon moved around the corner to larger rooms in Vernon Place. In 1905, they moved yet again, to Southampton Row ... produced many of their greatest early works. The golden age of the company was in those early years of intense creativity.	Their first rented premises were an attic room in Bloomsbury, soon followed by a move around the corner to larger rooms in Vernon Place. In 1905, the bindery moved again, this time to Southampton Row ... produced many of their greatest early works. The golden age of the company was in these early years of intense creativity.

and so on.

I have had another look at my temporary page. I think it is substantially different from the original Shepherds text; although clearly based upon it. I hope there is no direct copying, but rather abbreviation, reordering, and paraphrasing of the key facts, to distance it from the original. Please feel free to edit it if you disagree.

Although the Shepherds page is the best that is easily available, there are other sources on Sangorski & Sutcliffe - a straight Google search has over 7000 hits, and Google Books throws up over 300 hits. Here are a few: [1] [2] [3] The British Library holds the third copy of the Rubaiyat that was created by Stanley Bray after the Second World War - [4] And there are a few published books about the Great Omar.

This is a difficult thing to get right, so my apologies if I am being too critical. -- Testing times (talk) 19:27, 20 August 2009 (UTC)