Talk:Casa Paoli

A fact from Casa Paoli appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 25 October 2009 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that Puerto Rican tenor Antonio Paoli's birthplace, the Casa Paoli (pictured), was a wedding gift to his parents, who already had five children together at the time of their marriage?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2009/October.

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National Register of Historic Places Low‑importance

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Copyright problems

A contributor approached me as an administrator who works on copyright problems about concerns related to the article Antonio Paoli.Like that one, this one copies content extensively from the linked PDF. For example, compare this paragraph:

Antonio Emilio Paoli y Marcano was born in the city of Ponce on April 14, 1871. He was the seventh of eight brothers and sisters procreated by Domingo Paoli Marcatentti, born in Corsica, and Amalia Marcano Intriago, who was originally from Isla Margarita in Venezuela. The couple met in Caracas and instantly fell in love, but because of class differences, Amalia's father, a rich landlord, was strongly opposed to the relationship. The young couple, breaking all class protocols and nineteenth century moral codes, escaped without getting married, first to the Dominican Republic and later to Puerto Rico.

with the source, at page 6:

Antonio Emilio Paoli y Marcano was born in the city of Ponce on April 14, 1871 (FIG 9). He was the seventh of eight brothers and sisters procreated by Domingo Paoli Marcatentti, born in Corsica, and Amalia Marcano Intriago, who was originally from Isla Margarita in Venezuela. The couple met in Caracas and instantly fell in love, but because of class-differences, Amalia's father, a rich landlord, was strongly opposed to the relationship. The young couple, breaking all class-protocols and nineteenth century moral-codes, escaped without getting married, first to the Dominican Republic and later to Puerto Rico

This is at the very least a clear problem of plagiarism, as verbatim copying must be explicitly noted. However, it is also very possibly a copyright problem, as the form was filled out by one Juan Lianes Santos, who is not a federal employee but rather an historian for the Puerto Rico State Historic Preservation Office. Puerto Rico is governed by US copyright laws, which means that state employees are entitled to copyright protection unless the state otherwise designates. Puerto Rico does not so otherwise designate; at [1] they say that they retain proprietary rights and copyright in their content. The US government website that hosts the pdf is unclear. It doesn't say all text is public domain, though it doesn't exclude it explicitly, and it doesn't indicate whether applications have been released along with content actually hosted at the website. I don't believe that this content can be presumed to be public domain.

In investigating the situation at Antonio Paoli, I wrote to Santos through the OTRS e-mail system to ask him to clarify the copyright concerns. That ticket is viewable at Ticket:2010090110009025, for those with access to that system. This letter was sent on 9/1/2010; so far, he has not responded. Perhaps he will. Unless we are able to confirm that Mr.Santos was working as a federal agent or that the NPS requires release of copyright from those filling out the document, this content will probably need to be rewritten or restored to prior to the introduction of Mr. Santos' text: [2]. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 13:40, 8 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Does it matter who fills the form addressed to a federal agency? Isn't such a filing Public Domain just as federal court filings are? -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 03:09, 9 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, the identity of the author does matter. The text is not the work of the federal government, so it is not public domain. (That's a common misunderstanding.)

Here is a plea by the original author of the article, Doncram, who posted on his talk page, regarding this item:

Help. I am currently blocked for 24 hours or so from now, and cannot respond there. The issue is that the article text follows the NRHP nomination document too closely and it should be re-written. I am sure i did not myself copy that text verbatim, but an article co-author may well have assumed the text was in the public domain. It is not. The nom author Juan Santos should not be being bothered about this. The author did cooperate very nicely in releasing the photos that are included in the article. It is, frankly, a bit embarassing for the person to be being contacted again now. I personally do not want for anyone to request release of the document text, and since he was asked to release the photos (which he did in correspondence to me, and I posted them to commons under suitable license for him), he may misunderstand that is what would be asked now. There's no need to bother the guy! I would be glad to do a rewrite to avoid plagiarism / appearance thereof. Could someone possibly please do me a favor and mention this offer at the copyright problems discussion? --doncram (talk) 03:50, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

--Orlady (talk) 04:30, 9 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. In this edit just now i reverted the article to the version of 14:54, 17 May 2010, last edited by Mercy11, which was the last version before a passage was added that copied the NRHP nom doc too closely (the passage quoted above). It was too closely following the NRHP nom doc, which is not in the public domain (and even if it were in the public domain, a quote needs to be shown in quotation marks, and any very close version needs to give explicit credit to an author for his wording). I have not yet thoroughly compared the NRHP nom doc to this version, but hope this version is clean, and then we can make further edits capturing the improvements that were made in later edits, while avoiding any appearance of plagiarism if not copyvio. Is this version completely clean? --doncram (talk) 19:53, 12 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

My attention was called to conversation at Talk:Moonriddengirl which i don't see specifically resolving the issues. I don't think i was given a pointer to actual discussion meant. And a new edit labelled "per ongoing discussions with copyvio agent" means what? Are you referring to User:Moonriddengirl or whom else, and is this discussion available or is it private by email or something? What is the general plan, to do a rewrite? --doncram (talk) 04:06, 13 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]