Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates/Canoe River train crash/archive1

The map

In regards to File:Canoerivertrainwreck.svg, I explained everything quite clearly in the file description. In creating the image, I used maps depicting North American political boundaries, railroad tracks, and cities, as well as the national parks of the province of Alberta, provided by GeoGratis. These maps are provided by the government of Canada with a license that allows them to be used and modified for any purpose, but any such use or modification needs to include information that the data came from the Department of Natural Resources Canada. Also, under section 6.1 of the GeoGratis License Agreement for Unrestricted Use of Digital Data, the license these maps are published under can be terminated, which means any image using them isn't acceptable for upload to Commons under Commons:Licensing#Acceptable licenses since it states "The license must be perpetual (non-expiring) and non-revocable." -MissMJ (talk) 19:46, 12 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, and what makes you think that the image is acceptable to be used on the English Wikipedia, if it is not on Commons? I know of only a couple of cases where Commons policy differs from enwp policy on these issues, the big one being that enwp allows images that are PD in the US but not their source country. The English Wikipedia defines a "free" license in the same way as does the Wikimedia Foundation, just the same as Commons. Unless I'm missing something key, I really don't think this can be used. J Milburn (talk) 00:11, 13 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The English Wikipedia seems more lenient as to what defines "free"—see WP:TAGS: "For a file to be considered "free" under Wikipedia's Image use policy, the license must permit both commercial reuse and derivative works."—and is more lenient on the use of non-free images, provided they are properly documented (fair use, etc.). Also, nowhere in Wikipedia's image policies was I able to find the requirement that the license cannot expire or be revoked. Everything talking about "freely licensed" images mentions that they must be available for commercial use and derivative work. The license of the data I used does allow commercial use and derivative works, with attribution. In that aspect, it's a free license and seems perfectly fine for use on Wikipedia. But because the it is not non-revocable, which is a requirement Commons mentions specifically, the map can't be uploaded there. -MissMJ (talk) 01:28, 13 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This seems to be a rather novel interpretation of Wikipedia policy. Essentially, because you can't find anywhere that says it, you think it's ok? In the same way, we don't have any policies that talk about freedom of panorama, so what are we going to assume there? Unless you have a strong reason to assume otherwise, I think it's a fair presumption that this is not a free license- if someone were to include the image in a book, as they would be allowed to under a truly free license, and it was revoked, what then? Conservapedia received criticism from Jimbo Wales for precisely this reason; though they allow redistribution of their content, they reserve the right to relicense. J Milburn (talk) 09:39, 13 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

If there is any issue, can the map be justified using the info from the train map I cited above, which is PD? It surely included railroad tracks, city locations, and political boundaries. It does not seem to include the national park, but as said park plays no role in this story, that would not be so great a loss.--Wehwalt (talk) 10:46, 13 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I would certainly have no objection to a new map, based on unambiguously free images, being created. J Milburn (talk) 11:41, 13 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

J Milburn, have you actually read section 6.1 (Termination) of the license in question? I quote:

Notwithstanding section 5.0, this Agreement shall terminate:

i. automatically and without notice, if the Licensee commits or permits a breach of any of its covenants or obligations under this Agreement;

ii. upon written notice of termination by the Licensee at any time, and such termination shall take effect thirty (30) days after the receipt by Canada of such notice; or

iii. upon mutual agreement of the parties.

This means that this license can't be yanked unilaterally by the Canadian government whenever they feel like it. Either some other part of the agreement needs to be broken by the user of the data (like, for example, not attributing it properly), or Canada needs to be asked to terminate the agreement in writing, or both parties decide to terminate it. So please, pray tell, what is the problem here?

In addition, if license termination/revocation is such an important part to image use on Wikipedia, why is it not plainly included in the policy? Commons makes specific reference to it. Wikipedia doesn't. It's not all that far fetched for an average person seeing the Commons policy and the Wikipedia policy to conclude that Wikipedia is more lenient as to the issue of license termination, since it says nothing about it (unless it does and I've missed it, in which case, please feel free to point me in the right direction). -MissMJ (talk) 19:16, 13 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

So far as I am aware, it is not written anywhere, in the same way nothing about FoP is written anywhere on enwp- that doesn't mean we can just make up our own rules. Basically, as far as I can see, the fact that it's not written anywhere leads you to believe it's not an issue, but leads me to believe we should follow Commons policy. You argue that enwp is more leniant than Commons, I argue that we share fundamentally the same definitions. I think this discussion needs to be opened to a wider audience. J Milburn (talk) 19:39, 13 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps on the talk page? People get discouraged at reviewing long pages ...--Wehwalt (talk) 20:16, 13 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I have no objection to this thread being moved to the talk page. J Milburn (talk) 20:18, 13 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, enwp seems to defer to Commons policy on FoP. In the User-created images section of the Image use policy it says: "Some images may contain trademarked logos incidentally (or purposely if the image is either freely licensed, covered under freedom of panorama, or being too simple to be copyrightable)." And at the top of the freedom of panorama article, it quite clearly states: "For guidance about the use of images in Wikipedia under "Freedom of Panorama" provisions, see Commons:Freedom of panorama." To me it's quite obvious that enwp defers to Commons policy on freedom of panorama and makes it clear that it does so. There is no such reference to prohibition of licenses that can be terminated.

Furthermore, under the Guidelines section of Image copyright tags, it says that "Ideally, most free files should be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons instead of Wikipedia." To me the inclusion of "most" rather than "all" implies that there are certain free files that for whatever reason aren't appropriate for upload to Commons, and I think the map in question is one of those files. But you're right, the question of whether enwp allows files published under licenses with termination clauses in general is more appropriate for a wider discussion.

However, I think we can still agree that the data used in this map is published under a license that doesn't pose any problems. Obviously, Commons doesn't want images licensed under agreements that currently allow for unrestricted use, but can at some point in the future be unilaterally yanked or modified by the licensor (and I agree that such images wouldn't be appropriate for Wikipedia either), so it bans non-perpetual, revocable licenses outright. But although the GeoGratis License Agreement for Unrestricted Use of Digital Data does have provisions for termination, none of them allow for unilateral action on the part of the entity granting it. This license:

allows for unrestricted use of the data for any purpose, including commercial
allows for derivative works to be created, provided they are published under a similar license that does the same as 1, 2, and 3
asks for attribution (reasonable)
is perpetual in that it automatically renews each year
terminates only if you break it (reasonable), if you want it to and say so in writing (reasonable), or if both you and the entity granting the license agree to it (reasonable)
can only be modified with the agreement of both parties, in writing, per section 7.2 (reasonable)

So once again, what's the problem? I think it's a bit short-sighted to throw out a perfectly good image simply because it has a clause called "termination" without actually looking at the provisions to see whether they're an issue. If that clause had said that the government of Canada reserves the right to terminate the agreement at any time for any reason, tough luck, then I would completely agree with you that the map using that data would be totally inappropriate for any Wikipedia project. But that's not what it says. -MissMJ (talk) 20:24, 13 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm starting to agree with you that this image is unproblematic, but I'm not really getting why this is not Commons-friendly. Seeing as you seem to be familiar with legalese, is this any different from a Wikipedia user who says "this is CC-by-sa-3.0, if you want a different license, email me"? J Milburn (talk) 20:36, 13 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Oh I'm most definitely not familiar with legalese.

This license is just worded plainly enough that I get what it's saying and that it seems "free enough" for use on Wikipedia. And I have no idea how it's different than a user doing that.

I was pretty much just erring on the side of caution in regards to Commons; it says it doesn't accept files where the license can be revoked, and since this license technically can be, I figured it's not appropriate? Unless it can be revoked in the same way that a CC license can be revoked, but those don't seem to ever include anything in regards to termination. Beats me, I'm not a lawyer.

-MissMJ (talk) 21:24, 13 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I've contacted an editor who may be able to help out. If he's with you, I'm happy to let it drop. J Milburn (talk) 21:33, 13 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

"Revocable" for the purpose of Commons does not mean the termination conditions described here (which are pretty typical and rarely invoked), but rather refers to conditions which allow the licensor to revoke without the agreement of the licensee. As such it's fine for transfer to Commons. This rarely comes up so commons:Commons:Licensing doesn't mention it, but perhaps it should. Dcoetzee 21:44, 13 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Makes sense! Thanks for getting back to us so quickly. :) And I agree that there maybe should be a little note or something about it in the policy. Then again, it might just needlessly confuse people.

I'm gonna go ahead and edit the image description and move it over to Commons. -MissMJ (talk) 21:57, 13 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, I've moved the image from File:Canoerivertrainwreck.svg to File:Canoe River train crash.svg and updated the article to link to the version on Commons. J Milburn, since you're an administrator, could you please check the move? -MissMJ (talk) 22:23, 13 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks very much for your help, I've deleted the local version. Sorry for hashing this out MissMJ, but I think we've both learnt from this! J Milburn (talk) 23:22, 13 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]