Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks: Difference between revisions

Wikipedia's copyright, the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) requires that any derivative of works from Wikipedia must be released under that same license, must state that it is released under that license, and must acknowledge the main authors (which some claim can be accomplished with a link back to Wikipedia's article). This does not apply to material that was released into the public domain, to material whose authors have given permission, and to use that can be defended as fair use.

The web sites listed on the "compliance" pages below use content original to Wikipedia as a source for at least some of their content. Wikipedia itself is not included.

GFDL compliance

If the following websites have not followed the rules above, any person willing may notify them, but it is preferable that a Wikipedia contributor to an article they have copied does so. A possible process is given in the non-compliance section below.

Please add newly discovered sites to the top of one of the following pages:

High* | Medium** | Low*** | Undetermined or disputed degree of compliance

* either comply, or come close to complying with our licence

** make some effort towards complying with our licence, but fail to do so in some significant way

*** fail in a very significant way such as claiming their own copyright without including a GFDL notice

Copies of this list

A separate list of sites that utilise Wikipedia content is maintained at [1]. This list consists primarily of complete copies of all Wikipedia articles. It is intended to show readers where they can get Wikipedia content when Wikipedia itself is down.

Non-compliance process

This section is a work in progress. It is an attempt at formalizing the process that has happened on an ad hoc basis so far.

This section describes the steps that might be taken on discovering a new site that uses Wikipedia content. Note that Wikipedia does not give legal advice. Contributors retain their own copyright for submitted work.

If you do contact a website about infringement relating to work originally submitted to Wikipedia, please note it on the relevant subpage listed above. Doing this will help co-ordinate activities in helping other websites become compliant with our licence, without webmasters feeling harassed by lots of angry no compliance notices.

Compliant or largely compliant:

Perhaps send an email to the webmaster thanking them for making our free content more available. If there are some small changes that can be made to improve compliance, suggest them.

Poor or no compliance: Proxies/deep image linking:

1. Send a standard letter saying that they'll get blocked from accessing wikipedia if they don't comply. Add notice about the ongoing process on meta:Non-compliant site coordination.
2. If there's no reaction, place a note at meta:Non-compliant site coordination in the 'to be blocked' section. A developer will check that page and block the access to wikipedia by ip or referrer.

Others/ extreme cases:

1. Send a standard letter informing the website of their non-compliance (as soon as violation discovered)
2. Send a second standard letter, noting that this is the second letter and date of first letter (one month after first letter)
3. Send a third standard letter, noting that this is third letter and date of first two letters (two months after first letter)
4. Find the Internet Service Provider (and possibly also Domain Name registration anonymizing service) of the infringer. They will almost certainly be breaking their terms of service.
5. Send a final warning letter, noting that we will in XX days contact their ISP and Google with a DMCA notice to enforce take down of the material (approx three months after first letter).

Proposed : The next steps have never yet been taken

1. Send a takedown notice to google by following the nine steps at http://www.google.co.uk/dmca.html
2. ???

TODO note

The material has now been moved across to the four pages above. At the time of writing some material was in the wrong category. This has not all been moved yet. Please move it if you see it. The distinction between verbatim copies and derivative works had got lost on this page. Lots of verbatim copies (of each article) were in the derivative section. This needs to be cleared up. Apologies if I made an mistake - but for the time being I've removed the distinction - although I appreciate that we do need to reintroduce it.

Preliminary investigations

The following pages have been discovered via searching the internet, and need to be investigated further to determine whether or not they are giving credit, linking back, and releasing under the GFDL.

http://csf.colorado.edu/archive/2003/permaculture/msg00530.html

http://www.peacelink.de/

http://www.world-war-2.info/battles/bt_2.php

This listing originally consisted of pages from the first 14 pages of the following google search. Some have been removed due to their being investigated.

• "Mandelbrot fractal" at fractalmovies.com

The following links were posted by the website owners so that the sites could be assessed for compliance. Professional Researcher's Encyclopaedia FixedReference

First Warnings

The site at http://www.wikiverse.org/ appears to be a full/exact duplicate of Wikipedia, and except for its exact duplicates of the Wikipedia copyright pages, does not seem to give credit to Wikipedia anywhere. I (Balanone) discovered them because they sent me a link exchange request, and when I visited the page they referenced, found a copy of the Wikipedia page I authored! Someone with more experience should check into this and possibly take action.

See also

• Wikipedia:Wikipedia as a press source
• meta:Guide to the CC dual-license - for authors who want to make their contributions available to Creative Commons sites
• meta:vigilante GFDL enforcement - if you want to go further.
• Wikipedia:Send in the clones - a discussion of Wikipedia's relationships with its mirrors and forks