Talk:International Weddell Sea Oceanographic Expeditions

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Continuing copyright issues

Issues resolved through rewrite

This article began as a copy of [1] (page 25). While it is considerably improved, I'm afraid it continues to follow very closely on that source. For an example of close paraphrasing, compare the following:

They returned the next year, 1969, to collect them, but the ice was too thick. Even the world's largest ice-breaker Glacier was unable to get through. They got far enough to be able to fly over the area by helicopter. But there was no way of collecting the instruments.

The article says:

The following summer, 1969, the crew returned to retrieve the devices, but found the ice too thick. The world's mightiest ice-breaker, the Glacier, was unable to break through the ice. The ship managed to progress far enough to extend helicopter fly-overs; however, the staff had no way to extract the instruments.

There are other passages that similarly follow closely.

While facts are not copyrightable, creative elements of presentation - including both structure and language - are. So that it will not constitute a derivative work, this article should be revised. The essay Wikipedia:Close paraphrasing contains some suggestions for rewriting that may help avoid these issues. The article Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2009-04-13/Dispatches, while about plagiarism rather than copyright concerns, also contains some suggestions for reusing material from sources that may be helpful, beginning under "Avoiding plagiarism".

Alternatively, if the material can be verified to be public domain or permission is provided, we can use the original text with proper attribution.

Please let me know at my talk page if you have questions about this. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 23:12, 18 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Copyright problem removed

Prior content in this article duplicated one or more previously published sources. The material was copied from: http://www.cmr.no/doc/PDF%20files/AnnualReport2007.pdf. Infringing material has been rewritten or removed and must not be restored, unless it is duly released under a compatible license. (For more information, please see "using copyrighted works from others" if you are not the copyright holder of this material, or "donating copyrighted materials" if you are.) For legal reasons, we cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or published material; such additions will be deleted. Contributors may use copyrighted publications as a source of information, but not as a source of sentences or phrases. Accordingly, the material may be rewritten, but only if it does not infringe on the copyright of the original or plagiarize from that source. Please see our guideline on non-free text for how to properly implement limited quotations of copyrighted text. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously, and persistent violators will be blocked from editing. While we appreciate contributions, we must require all contributors to understand and comply with these policies. Thank you. MLauba ^(Talk) 10:10, 1 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The remnants of the article appeared a bit nutritionally deprived so I've added information that expands the limited coverage of the expedition research subjects. The description of the survey projects is factual, it would be foolish to attempt to move far beyond a paraphrase of the research project descriptions, the projects were publicly funded research and the titles unlikely to be original to the authors of the report. There is no copyright notice on the source as far as I can see.

(I'm not sure why saying that the Glacier was the largest icebreaker in the world should be considered copyrighted information but in the absence of explanation I won't repeat the info.) Opbeith (talk) 23:23, 2 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I mean I won't repeat it in the article - I hope it wasn't confidential. Opbeith (talk) 23:30, 2 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Joking (just in case). Opbeith (talk) 23:54, 2 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

A few remarks, if you will:

There is no need for a copyright notice for something to be protected, and that has been the case since 1987. In fact, unless something is explicitly placed in the public domain or licensed under a free license, the default is to assume it is copyrighted.
Regarding the notion that public funding automatically makes something public domain is only valid for the US government. Other nations, and most US states, do not work on that principle and reserve various rights for their publication.
The text before stubification reproduced almost verbatim significant portions of the source, not merely the fact about the Glacier's size.
That being said, there's absolutely nothing wrong with your additions that I can see :) What is protected are wordings, turns of phrase and over-reaching organization of a text. Pure facts and figures are not. A trap, though: the language used to describe facts, figures or ideas is subject to protection.
Yes, it's complicated ;) MLauba ^(Talk) 01:09, 3 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks a lot for clarifying all that, MLauba. A couple of questions if you don't mind. Can I assume that anything published in US Coast Guard Oceanographic Reports (not covered by specific copyright notice) is public domain as being US govt funded? And can the previous source be used to ref the Glacier's size? I think it's important that should be included because it was obviously key to the ability to carry out much of the Weddell Sea research. And is there any general principle applicable to the wording of the subject of a research study, since for obvious reasons the less fiddlinng about with often complex technical wording the better? Opbeith (talk) 12:00, 3 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The USCG material is produced by a branch of the US federal government and I believe can be re-used if properly attributed (only text, I'm told it's much more complicated with pictures for instance). Regarding sourcing data, there is absolutely nothing wrong with sourcing statements to the previous source, it's not "forbidden". When I stubified the article, the issue was that it reproduced that source's text almost verbatim. That's not a problem with the quality of the source but how it was used :)

And no general principle I'm afraid. Courts examine such matters on a case-by-case basis, so the standard recommendation to avoid issues is always: "read your source, close it, then walk away, do something else for at least 15 minutes, then come back and explain what you just read". Or use a direct quote (but sparingly if possible). Hope that helps a bit. MLauba ^(Talk) 17:40, 3 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Certainly helps in theory - but for those of us with goldfish memory span, life is hard! Thanks. Opbeith (talk) 18:39, 4 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Goldfish? As long as it's not a pacific blue surgeonfish :) MLauba ^(Talk) 18:46, 4 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]