Talk:French writer Julien Gracq dies at 97

Copyright issues?

Hi. I noticed that this article is made up almost entiredly of parts taken from English Wikipedia. That naturally led me wonder about the potential copyright infringement.

Here are some relevant facts that I gathered.

On English Wikipedia, revision as of 9 December 2007 has texts that this Wikinews article has. That rules out the possibility that texts were copied from Wikinews to Wikipedia.

Wikinews article does not cite Wikipedia article. There seems to be little indication that texts are taken from English Wikipedia, though it seems that is what has happened.

There are 6 paragraphs in the current Wikinews article, excluding the lead. The English Wikipedia's entry as of Dec 9 (linked above) has 7 paragraphs. Except for the 2nd para., all of the main body seems to have been brought to Wikinews. In other words, rather substantial portion of the Wikipedia entry is used.

The word "high school" is spelled, for some reason, as "highschool" in English Wikipedia as well as here. Not a very common typo, I think. It is an indication that the texts are copied and pasted.

In terms of the four factors that must be taken into account in determining if a use falls into a fair use, I see that there is a possibility that the copying is problematic in terms of the third factor (amount and substantiality) only.

Even if this article is a fair use, it is better to declare it as such. If, for example, someone mistakenly believes that this article is original to Wikinews and translates it into Japanese and post it to Japanese Wikinews, that would result in a copyright violation because Japanese law could be applied to Japanese Wikinews materials, and the law does not allow this type of fair use. Not that it would be a highly risky case, though, unless you assume that the Wikipedian who wrote the original text would pursue legal action under Japanese law..

Tomos 07:13, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

I spell high school as highschool quite often (and did not realize thats a typo), but thats besides the point. This looks like a copyvio to me, I don't really think this would be fair use, Wikipedia is gfdl, wikinews is not, and therefor it should be written (unless of coure the author is the author of the wikipedia article). Bawolff ☺☻ 07:21, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Hi.

GFDL does not prohibit anyone making fair use of the licensed work, as I understand. And fair use is not something that happens based on license terms. It is possible because of a provision in the copyright law. So if it is a fair use, I think it is okay regardless of the license the original work was under. I would assume either placing a notice informing readers of fair use or deleting on the ground of suspected copyvio would be the appropriate solution.

I also checked two sources (Reuters and CBS News) cited at the end of the article. Neither article contains some information that is in this article and the English Wikipedia entry.

Another possibility is that there is an original material elsewhere provided under public domain. But upon taking a look at the edit history of English Wikipedia article, such as this [1], it seemed to me that the current version grew out of collaboration of multiple contributors rather than coming from some outside source.

I also noticed that other obituaries from UnknownMan has some parts that is seen in Wikipedia's corresponding article. Russian choreographer Igor Moiseyev dies at age 101 (early Nov) and English Wikipedia entry on him (as of Aug), for example.

I figure it is quicker to ask UnknownMan's help here than engaging in a rather tedious fact gathering further.. Tomos 08:04, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

• GFDL is viral and not compatible with CC-BY. Sorry! --Brian McNeil / ^talk 08:19, 24 December 2007 (UTC)
  • Well, I agree with both of you assertions. But if this happens to be fair use, it is not restrained in any way by the terms of GFDL, in my humble opinion.. I am not a lawyer and not formally trained or educated in the field of law, but think about the fact that when you quote something out of a all-right-reserved book and if the quoting constitutes a fair use, it is not copyright infringement. Author's rights does not apply to that. If you quote from a GFDL'd document in the same way, the author's right does not apply to that, either. It means that the author has no claim to require the quoter to follow the license. Fair use, in short, does not require any license. Well, at least that is how I understand it. If, on the other hand, this is not a fair use, then it needs to fulfill the terms of GFDL, which is impossible here, given the incompatibilities between GFDL and CC-BY-SA. Here, I agree with Brianmc. Tomos 09:14, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Fair use can be a reasonable defense, but there are certain specific ways in which it has to be done. You need an "According to the Wikipedia article on ...." attribution (fair use doesn't mean you don't credit your source), and you need to verify details with WP's source - so why not write the information in your own words and attribute to the primary/peer-reviewed source? In the instance of an author you can use phrases like, 'Wikipedia describes xxx as "whatever" and lists the major influences on his writing as P, Q, R, and Z.'

Lifting material direct from WP should be a last resort with a plan to rewrite and use the {{wikipediapar}} template in the sources section. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 09:57, 24 December 2007 (UTC)