Commons talk:Licensing

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This is the talk page for discussing improvements to Commons:Licensing.

For discussions of specific copyright questions, please go to Commons:Village pump/Copyright. Discussions that do not relate to changes to the page Commons:Licensing may be moved, with participants notified with the template {{subst:moved to VPC|Commons talk:Licensing}}.

For old discussions, see the Archives. Recent sections with no replies for 14 days may be archived.

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Seven 2006/2007 discussions organized as subpages, ignoringincl. comments added in 2014:

Printed Circuit Boards[edit]

1 GB SD card, board-1025.jpg
see also Category:Printed circuit boards

I am concerned about the copyright status of several files in this directory. No doubt the photographs themselves are correctly licensed, but I am more concerned about the printed circuit boards depicted in them, as I would highly doubt that many, if any, of the boards have had a license obtained that is compatible with Wikimedia Commons.

A printed circuit board is a creative work and as such the pattern of copper and silkscreen deposited is fully protected artwork under United States copyright law (17 U.S.C. §§101 et seq.). The image at right depicts the entire top layer of copper expressly and wholly, and if I were the owner of that design, I know I would not be okay with it being published with a license that implied share and share alike, as that may well impact my commercial exploitation of my own design, were it to be copied by a competitor.

I may moonlight as a Wikipedian, but my day job is PCB design. If anyone would like to know more about my experience with my designs and the IP laws that cover them, feel free to ask. I raise the issue here because I normally do not get involved in license discussions and was not sure if I should just jump to nominating some of these for deletion, or whether there was something in our policies I am not aware of that I needed to account for first. I look forward to hearing from folks who swim in this pool regularly. I would also like to come up with a notification that can be added to Category:Printed circuit boards that can inform contributors about the unique issues with PCBs and our licensing requirements. Josh (talk) 09:12, 25 December 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

The traces on PCBs are the shortest path between two points that should be connected. If you could make the distance 0 by a magic trick, you would do so. Therefore PCB layouts can not be protected by copyright since the shortest path between two points is no creative work (therefore no licence is needed). If the traces on a PCB board look creative it's just because your brain wants to see patterns were there are none. Even using someone's brain is may involved in the making of PCBs, it's outcome is too simple to pass the threshold of creativity to be protected by copyright. There are many other examples like the outside of regular cars that are also not protectable by copyright. Someone may spend some time and thought with it, but their curves are also not creative enough to be copyrightable
Asked from a different point: How many times have you (as PCB designer) taken a layout from Commons and used it as inspiration or straight up pirated it?
Even the designer of the YAMAHA logo might not be OK with the logo being used here, it is ineligible for copyright as well and therefore nobody has to care about their opinion. Nobody uses Wikipedia to check on the latest PCB designs to pirate it. Furthermore the design itself does not help you at all since you also need a lot more know how and different electrical components including ICs and maybe even their software. It's like Nike would worry about their shoes being pirated because someone uploaded an image of their new pair of sneakers on Commons. If you expect people to pirate a PCB layout from an image on Commons you simply see causality where there is none.
On IP laws: Samsung and Apple had a dispute about the rounded corners on their smartphones. One claimed that their fabrication style is a unique feature of their product and must not be used by their opponent. We have images of many Apple and Samsung devices for the very same reason: Rounded corners are not copyrightable.
--D-Kuru (talk) 01:42, 26 December 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@Joshbaumgartner I think @D-Kuru is right. Per Wikipedia creative work "is a manifestation of creative effort including fine artwork (sculpture, paintings, drawing, sketching, performance art), dance, writing (literature), filmmaking, and composition" only. I found an exception for Integrated circuit layout design protection: "rights in semiconductor mask works last 10 years".
But we do not show a mask here, only the end product of the PCB. Raymond 07:58, 26 December 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@D-Kuru and Raymond: You misunderstand me. I am not debating whether or not there are elements of PCB designs that are covered by copyright. I know there are. I am not wondering whether photographs of PCBs can infringe on that copyright. I know they can. I know this as a result of working with intellectual property attorneys in my professional capacity regarding this exact issue. Your analysis is not unreasonable, and in fact many of the same points were the same we discussed, but at the end of the day, the fact is that PCBs do have copyright-protected elements and photographs of those can in fact represent copyright infringement. I could go on at length about exactly why, but none that changes the fact.
My only question here was what are we going to do about it? If the answer is that we need a compliant license to depict copyrightable portions of printed circuit boards, then great. If the answer is that we do not care if a copyright is being infringed since it is too niche of a specialty for anyone to really cause a fuss over, then that is fine by me as well. And if the answer is that we are going to pretend we know better than people who actually have real-world experience with the matter, well, I guess there is not much more to discuss, so I accept that as well. Josh (talk) 08:51, 26 December 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@Joshbaumgartner: "[...] photographs of PCBs can infringe on that copyright. I know they can.", "I could go on at length about exactly why, but none that changes the fact." - You already really should have provided some examples by now because it would actually change a lot. All I see is that you claim a problem exists without providing any evidence or providing a clear case. Source: Trust me bro! You claim that PCBs or elements of it are copyrightable but you do not provide any example of what is protected and how the copyright would be violated. I explained why I don't think that it is even possible to violate copyright with images of PCBs. If you don't give some concrete examples it's not about compliant licences or not caring or even about pretending "we know better than people who actually have real-world experience with the matter". It's about one person (you) claims to work with such problems in their day job and claims that copyrighted is violated (could potentially be the case) but said person does not give a single example for such a case. Source: Because I say it is! is far to little for such a claim (I know they can falls into the same category). --D-Kuru (talk) 10:38, 26 December 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@D-Kuru: I understand all of that, and if the response had simply been that we cannot act without more basis, then that would be fine and I would understand. But I am sorry to say your response was disappointing. Your very first sentence and the rest of that paragraph made it clear that there is a lot about PCB design that you do not understand. I have no idea where you got such concepts from but they fall very far from the truth. I appreciate that you now admit it is just why you don't think it is possible to violate copyright, but your initial presentation was as if it was just fact, and combining that with how off you were in the first sentence, it did not appear to me that you were much interested in actually having a conversation about it. Now maybe this was just a completely incorrect vibe that I got from it, and if that is the case, I completely apologize for misreading you.
Unfortunately, I am not at liberty to share any of the specifics of my professional conversations as I am sure you will understand. If that makes my post here ineligible for consideration, I completely understand and certainly have no desire to push the issue on a 'because I say so' basis. I merely know that there are many PCB designs with significant portions that are covered by copyright, and that our having photos of them is an infringement on that copyright. Thus I felt the responsibility to the project to raise the issue here to see what if anything was to be done about it. Note that I was not even proposing a particular course of action. I am perfectly fine with the answer being whatever it is, and frankly if the consensus is no action needed, that's perfect, I can go back to categorizing these images and not worry about whether they are infringements.
If you really do want to know more about why PCBs are more than they seem when it comes to copyright and IP issues, I am happy to discuss what I can about it. However, I suspect that the best course for this post is to simply close the discussion as I cannot bring the hard evidence that would be needed to actually prompt a policy change. I won't worry about these images and I will leave the license policing to others. Josh (talk) 11:20, 26 December 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
There was further discussion at Commons talk:Copyright rules by subject matter#Printed_Circuit_Boards. Normally we try not to start the same discussion at different talk pages, but rather pick one and maybe put a link to there from some others, to get the notice of other editors but still have a single discussion. Commons:Village Pump/Copyright probably would have been the best place, actually. Carl Lindberg (talk) 14:04, 26 December 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Hosting the text of free licenses on-wiki, where that text is non-free[edit]

The GFDL is a free license. But the text of the GFDL itself is non-free:

Version 1.3, 3 November 2008 Copyright (C) 2000, 2001, 2002, 2007, 2008 Free Software Foundation, Inc. <http://fsf.org/>
Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.

That doesn’t stop us from hosting that text in Commons namespace; we have some sort of (unwritten?) exemption that allows this. Apparently, we now have such an exemption for files, too; see Commons:Deletion requests/File:GFDL (English).ogg.

At that DR, concerns were raised about whether such exemptions were allowed by the licensing policy and, if so, how they should be documented. It seems clear that such exemptions, at least for files, are not allowed by the licensing policy. What should we do about this?

Pinging @Matr1x-101, Accipiter Gentilis Q., Mdaniels5757, A4531826, King of Hearts, IronGargoyle as users involved in the DR. Brianjd (talk) 05:33, 27 December 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

  • I don't think the intent here was to prohibit derivative works of the license. The point was that if you change it, then you can no longer call it the GFDL license. - Jmabel ! talk 06:04, 27 December 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
    @Jmabel The GFDL’s treatment of ‘Invariant Sections’ and ‘Cover Texts’ makes it clear what their intent is. Also, the GPL contains substantially the same text as quoted above (the second line is identical) and the GPL FAQ says (emphasis added):
    You can legally use the GPL terms (possibly modified) in another license provided that you call your license by another name and do not include the GPL preamble, and provided you modify the instructions-for-use at the end enough to make it clearly different in wording and not mention GNU (though the actual procedure you describe may be similar).
    A later section says:
    The preamble and instructions are integral parts of the GNU GPL and may not be omitted. In fact, the GPL is copyrighted, and its license permits only verbatim copying of the entire GPL.
    It is reasonable to assume that these attitudes apply equally to the GFDL. Brianjd (talk) 11:00, 27 December 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
My opinion: The only hard requirement we have is that our content must be legal to host in the United States. Otherwise, we allow certain restrictions on freedoms depending on a variety of factors such as practicality and impact on the free-culture movement. For instance, per COM:NCR we allow images of people that you can't use to advertise a product, as well as simple text logos that you can't use to sell a product. I think this is because we have no desire to abolish publicity or trademark rights, or to ask famous people for rights to their likeness under the theoretical possibility that it could be useful in an advertisement. Regarding COM:FOP, we do not allow non-commercial FoP because it is a motivating factor that may cause people to lobby governments to change their laws; there have been some successes like Russia and Belgium, with the Wikimedia movement perhaps playing some role. However, we do allow images that carry restrictions on certain types of derivative works, namely extremely detailed crops of copyrighted works (COM:DM), because we don't want to ban high-resolution panoramas that happen to include an intrusive billboard and don't want to incentive people to make it illegal to photograph PD-old buildings by putting copyrighted sculptures in front of them; there is no substantial harm to the free-content movement by allowing such images.
The GFDL is clearly legal for us to host, per the text itself. So the question is whether allowing this exception to our "100% free" principle helps or harms the movement. My view is that it helps the movement by assisting visually impaired users in understanding a major free license. The text of free licenses is a highly isolated edge case so there's no slippery slope either. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 06:21, 27 December 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@King of Hearts, we need to put a disclaimer template on the file page if we want to keep this file. --Matr1x-101Pinging me doesn't hurt! {user - talk? - useless contributions} 15:31, 27 December 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@Matr1x-101 Why do we need a disclaimer? Why isn't the statement that "changing it is not allowed" enough? —‍Mdaniels5757 (talk • contribs) 19:21, 27 December 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@Mdaniels5757, sorry if my English wasn't clear enough, but I meant like a red box at the top stating that "only verbatim copying is allowed" and "derivative works may be restricted", linking to this talk page to show consensus was reached (if it is reached). --Matr1x-101Pinging me doesn't hurt! {user - talk? - useless contributions} 21:21, 27 December 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
@Mdaniels5757 I think what @Matr1x-101 means is that we need a prominent notice stating that this file is an exception to our normal licensing policy, along with a link explaining why that exception is allowed. None of that is currently in the file description. Brianjd (talk) 00:54, 28 December 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Yes, that's what I mean. --Matr1x-101Pinging me doesn't hurt! {user - talk? - useless contributions} 12:37, 28 December 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Not surprisingly, a user has just tagged the file as {{Nonderivative}}, which I reverted (with a link to this page). Brianjd (talk) 06:55, 4 January 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Add image of Iranian actor majid vasheghani, to Wikipedia[edit]

Add image of Iranian actor to Wikipedia Masoudbarati33 (talk) 23:43, 28 December 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

@Masoudbarati33: Hi, and welcome. I am sorry to inform you that you have also triggered Special:AbuseFilter/156 by trying to upload a smaller (<50,000 bytes) jpg image as a new user. Usually when someone uploads a smaller jpg image, it is a copyright violation taken from the web. If you created the image yourself, please upload the full-size original of it per COM:HR, including original EXIF metadata. If you did not create the image, please see Commons:Licensing for why we can't accept it, and have the copyright holder license it on their official website or social media, or send the image and permission via VRT with a carbon copy to you. If you can't get a compliant license, the image may still be uploaded to English Wikipedia in compliance with en:WP:F because we don't allow Fair Use here. See also en:H:PIC.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 23:53, 28 December 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Add image to Wikipedia[edit]

Add image of hossein Hosseini player of Esteghlal to Wikipedia Masoudbarati33 (talk) 00:00, 29 December 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]

@Masoudbarati33: Read COM:L.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ please ping or talk to me🇺🇦 22:00, 29 December 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]
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