Talk:Free content

Now with additional MainPage

This article is linked from the main page. ffm 19:20, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Owing to the increased vandalism on this page, I have added it to Cluebot's "angry" mode page. User A1 (talk) 12:54, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

File:Vinodkumar Dharavath@1

I'm a little curious about the first sentence on this page: "Riyaz Zameer Uddin is an Indian Citizen.He works into Bollywood as an Executive Producer". I wanted to remove it because I feel it makes absolutely no sense here, but I didn't know if maybe it had some other, strange, purpose... lol - NsTaGaTr ^(Talk) 22:47, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

Upload image

my account is blocked an i cannot upload a copyrighted bmp. who can put up an infrigment word for user:tide rolls to deblock me ?188.25.53.192 (talk) 04:15, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

Uploud Cimot nielie (talk) 18:38, 20 May 2018 (UTC)

A very big problem Kissaw Abdulai (talk) 09:35, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

Semi protection

I proposed semi-protection for this article, but it was declined, quoting WP:NOPRO. See request and decline diffs. Personally I only think this should apply to featured content, and "anyone can edit" links. User A1 (talk) 08:30, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

The misplaced editing is fairly light and it appears to be more new, lost editors than vandalism. Hopefully my comments to the article will help. It makes the article a little clunky to edit for experienced editors, but it's better than reverting so often. -- Gogo Dodo (talk) 16:43, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

I think this page requires semi-protection too. It seems to be victim of heavy misplaced editing, not just light. Users will be able to edit this page once they know what they are doing anyway. Gogo Dodo´s comment didn´t help it seems. Ren ✉ 03:38, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

How bad would it look if the article on Free content was protected? Esp since there is a link to this article from the main page promoting Wikipedia as containing free content. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.103.173.3 (talk) 04:19, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Not too concerned: One click reverts seem to take care of what goes on here. —Aladdin Sane (talk) 16:47, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

This was more of a problem when there was only myself and (if i recall correctly) lonleymarble watching this page over a year ago. Since then we have had a lot more people watching and reverting. User A1 (talk) 03:30, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Self-references

This page has too many self-references, in my opinion. One at the top of the page is acceptable, one for every major section is not. I think all the self-refs should be removed and replaced by a single reference to Wikipedia:Copyrights, or another page (which could be created anew). Superm401 - Talk 08:54, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

I don't like the self referencing either... User A1 (talk) 12:55, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

I moved all the self-references to the external links section. A self-reference at the top of the copyright article may be necessary, but they aren't that necessary in this article. LonelyMarble (talk) 10:19, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Free use v Fair use - public court records on Wikipedia

God talks about Free use v Fair use, and 'Free use' links to this page. I'm trying to discern whether this (later reverted) edit of mine was appropriate. ISTM that court documents such as transcripts, depositions, exhibits, discovery, and briefs are usable as a right that is at least in some cases both stronger than 'fair use', and weaker than 'free use', e.g. transcripts are probably most free, and discovery the least free of the set. FYI: This distinct but related edit has been allowed to stand, thus far. Relevant. I'm actually leaning toward thinking my edit was erroneous, and generally, such court documents are usable simply under fair use. And yet there is a movement toward having wikipedia, or forks thereof, include only material available for free use, i.e. exclude materiable usable only under fair use doctrine, and I feel that such projects would want to include the public court documents I'm concerned about, if only they could identify it, such as by use of a tag disparate from the fair use tag.

With respect to public records, Florida must allow access pursuant to Florida law, without further restriction; Florida "has no authority to assert copyright protection" over public records (with a few narrow exceptions), per Florida's public records law, section 119.07, Florida Statutes, but NY law is different. (Cited/Supported [ http://www.2dca.org/opinion/December%2001,%202004/2D03-3346.pdf here].) (Wikipedia is still based in FL?) --Elvey (talk) 10 February 2009

I'm not clear what this has to do with this article -- This seems like a WP policy issue, and not particularly in my demesne. You may want to take this to somewhere in the WP namespace -- you could start at the village pump? User A1 (talk) 00:54, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

This article is (partly) about the legal issues regarding which I am seeking clarity, and this page is relatively likely to be visited by editors with the requisite expertise and creative minds. I'm sorry if I've made you feel resentful of the intrusion. Thanks for the advice. I just made this draft.--Elvey (talk) 16:42, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Free and Open content

Note, same comment lead to thread at Talk:Open_content

What is difference between free content and open content? Saqib ^talk 08:24, 5 November 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Saqib Qayyum (talk • contribs)

It is different nomenclature, but hopefully they mean the same thing. The term "Open" has sometimes been used to distinguish the concept of free as in price from free as in the ability to use the content as you see fit (for free). If you feel this needs to be clearer in the article, please feel free (open?) to edit the article.User A1 (talk) 09:29, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

And how about a website, which use either GNU license or CC-SA for its content? Open or Free? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 119.155.5.238 (talk) 10:19, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure, but maybe Free content website. Or is it depends on type of content? --Saqib ^talk 10:23, 5 November 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Saqib Qayyum (talk • contribs)

Very late to this discussion, but given how both pages have evolved, I'd like to add that the terms can still be distinguished from each other, but on the same page. E.g. a section called "Free vs Open content" / "Definitions" / "Similar historical concepts" or similar. I'd therefore support a merge. T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)^talk 23:39, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

Libre content

Libre has been used synonymously with Free as in freedom (the meaning of free which applies in this article on free content). Some would prefer to say "libre content" to distinguish it from content that is available for free (gratis). Please consider adding the word "libre" to the text of this article (e.g. "Free/libre content, or free/libre information ..."). Thanks. - Kim Tucker (talk) 23:27, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

References

Abbreviation

Any source of Free content abbreviation?--Saqib ^talk 08:31, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Governance section

This section requires significant improvement with less "e-government focus" and a greater historical context. Also, ironically, many of the journals discussing free content are inaccessible, one particularly is "Wiki Government: How Technology Can Make Government Better, Democracy Stronger, and Citizens More Powerful", Brookings Press, Prof. Beth Noveck". If someone can expand this (it is not my area of expertise) that would be great. User A1 (talk) 17:05, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

Wiki Don't free

Has Wikis that not is of Free need payments,more so's bad. Knuckles The Echidna (talk) 21:24, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

Freebox

What on earth does a freebox have to do with free content -- can someone delete this image? 129.67.86.189 (talk) 20:11, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

• I agree and have deleted it. A freebox is gratis, not libre! --Sanglorian (talk) 08:18, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Merciless editing

I just edited this page mercilessly. Edit my own edits mercilessly. If you must tell me how, do so on my talk page. --I dream of horses (T) @ 03:21, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Why are there NEVER explanations in Wikipedia articles (about Wikipedia Image-use) on How to Actually Determine If an Image is Copyrighted Or NOT?!!

Why doesn't this article, for example, EVER tell you HOW to actually find out if an image is copyrighted or not? Or if an image is fair-use or free? Or if an image is free or non-copyrighted? These pages NEVER tell you that. It's maddening.

OK-- so now I know what I can and can't use-- but HOW do I tell whether or not an Internet image is copyrighted, or has any other designation or is just free?!!

And WHY doesn't this, or any other Wikipedia image article, just spell this out clearly in an easy-to find manner?

Telemachus.forward (talk) 15:09, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

If there was a supposedly clear rule, people would find ways to "game the system" and start including things that actually can't be used. At the same time, other people would take that same supposed clarity as their excuse to start deleting things left and right. The reality is that there is often judgement involved, and there are often doubtful cases. The real answer is "Contact the person who the image legally belongs to, and ask them". TooManyFingers (talk) 21:29, 13 August 2021 (UTC)

A better answer: The rule you want already exists and is already being used. Those unreadable 50-page explanations, the ones where you read the first sentence and then you say "OK, OK, just tell me the rule already!" - all those different 50-page walls of text that you need to be a copyright lawyer to even read, all taken together at the same time - that's exactly the rule you asked for. As soon as you simplify and say "Well really it's just this basic idea", you've started making mistakes. TooManyFingers (talk) 21:48, 13 August 2021 (UTC)

File:FSF-Logo.svg Nominated for Deletion

An image used in this article, File:FSF-Logo.svg, has been nominated for deletion at Wikimedia Commons in the following category: Deletion requests August 2011 What should I do? Don't panic; a discussion will now take place over on Commons about whether to remove the file. This gives you an opportunity to contest the deletion, although please review Commons guidelines before doing so. If the image is non-free then you may need to upload it to Wikipedia (Commons does not allow fair use) If the image isn't freely licensed and there is no fair use rationale then it cannot be uploaded or used. This notification is provided by a Bot --CommonsNotificationBot (talk) 04:07, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

Only three liberties mentiones

As far as I knew, in ordered for a content to be considered free, it must abide to 4 rules ( http://freedomdefined.org/Definition ). This article only lists three of them. Am I missing something?--Strainu (talk) 11:04, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Good catch. Those three rules seemed to have been derived from Stallman's writing on free manuals; I've changed them to fit the definition at FreedomDefined. --Sanglorian (talk) 03:21, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Usage section confusing

The Usage section is currently confusing. It has subsections Media, Software, Engineering and technology, Academia and Governance. Although media and software and perhaps engineering and technology can be considered as types of content which may be free, academia and governance are not types of content. They may be "users" or "producers" of free content. Perhaps the section should be split in 2. --Chealer (talk) 17:18, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

Remove "copyfree"?

If the idea ever takes off, then Wikipedia should document it then.

Now, I think Wikipedia is being abused as a stage to promote a new idea. Gronky (talk) 20:37, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

I dunno, the article cited is from two years ago... you may put up a notability tag up if you like. The cited article mentions BSD and MIT as copyfree licenses. In vocabulary used by people I've met, this means "non-viral" licensing. Because you can distribute BSD/MIT-licensed derived works under a different license. As I say, put up a notability tag if you see it as a problem. --86.5.226.63 (talk) 20:09, 24 June 2012 (UTC)

BSD license is copyfree, its long established and is in essence "opensource software" as opposed to "freedom software". It is better to leave it as is - separate entity, otherwise the BSD zealots will backstab us, GPLers, as usual. They have own anarchy point of view and own problems, so let it be.77.180.212.77 (talk) 22:19, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Are there any sources not affiliated with the copyfree initiative (and not blogs)? Currently, the two sources used are one primary sources for the copyfree.org site, and a self-published blog. If there are not any third-party sources, the section should be removed. Template was added to section to encourage such sources to be added. Belorn (talk) 14:52, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

I've seen discussion forum sites (including Ludwig von Mises Institute), mailing list discussions, and TechRepublic articles mention the term. Do those count? - Apotheon (talk) 23:07, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

In addition to the kind of stuff mentioned just above, I found a reference to it in an academic copyright law workshop listing [1], it's a licensing category for FreeBSD ports, Freedom Defined (free culture definition site) has at least one article that talks about (among other things) copyfree licensing [2], and for shits and giggles I'm not really sure what this is: [3]. That was just a few minutes of searching on the DuckDuckGo search engine, which also yielded a fairly large number of sites that probably wouldn't count for your requirements. - Apotheon (talk) 23:37, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Please note that there is /potentially/ a conflict of interest here as user Gronky is a member of Wikiproject Free Software and seems to have taken an interest in copyleft articles. While I'm not an expert on Wikipedia policy and there /could/ be nothing in particular preventing him from editing this article in this way, I just hope that everyone else involved with this article puts his suggestions regarding removal of the copyfree section under more scrutiny to prevent the possibility of overrepresentation of copyleft information. 71.8.60.131 (talk) 07:10, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

I have just removed this. It is definitely not on par in usage with "copyright", "copyleft" and "public domain". Most of the sources are its own website or based on Wikipedia. Shreevatsa (talk) 23:07, 9 May 2016 (UTC)

What is the test for free-content? - Does Wikipedia respect foreign copyrights or only US law?

A clearly-misplaced Wikipedia policy issue - discuss at a more appropriate location
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Is it the case that "only United States copyright ultimately matters on the English Wikipedia" or do we "generally respect the copyrights of other countries as best we can"? The latter statement is derived from Jimbo's answer to a question here Background to my question can be found here: Template talk:Non-free architectural work Template talk:FoP-USonly Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2012 May 28#Template:Non-free_architectural_work Wikipedia is defined as 'the free encyclopedia', and the definition of free mandated by the WMF includes the requirement that there must be no limit on where the information can be copied. If this rule were rigidly applied we would have the huge burden of needing to consider whether a work is free from copyright restriction in all of the 190-plus states on the planet. Of course the answer is to use common sense, but what does that mean in practice? On Wikimedia Commons the official standard is generally that content should be free from copyright restriction in both the country of origin and the US but neither this nor any other common sense test for free-content appears to be written into policy on Engish Wikipedia. Some users who take the view that only US law matters do so on the basis of WP:Non-US copyrights which includes the statement: While Wikipedia prefers content that is free anywhere in the world, it accepts content that is free in the United States even if it may be under copyright in some other countries. For example works of the U.S. federal government are in the public domain in the United States and widely used on Wikipedia, but they may not be in the public domain outside the United States. While the meaning of this statement is not entirely clear, for example: it doesn't contradict the common sense test for free-content used on Commons, the text quoted was added in replacement of the statement "we should generally respect the copyrights of other countries as best we can" and the edit summary does suggest that the editor's intention was to signify respect for US law only. I have seen no discussion by the community regarding this change. So what is the common sense test for free on the free encyclopedia? US law only? The same as on Commons? Something else? 9carney (talk) 16:41, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

This is the talk page for our 'Free content' article, and as such is the wrong place to have an RfC on a policy issue - I have collapsed the discussion accordingly. AndyTheGrump (talk) 17:34, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

Agreed, unnecessary to put it in a RfC. Some tries at answering the question can be found here. 9carney (talk) 15:18, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

External links modified

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Got a 54KB PDF, assuming okay. –Be..anyone (talk) 23:34, 11 April 2016 (UTC)

Publicly Displayed Photos Online/Painting in a Public Building

Hello Wikiphiles. I have two questions about free content: I want to add a photo to a prominent legal professor Herbert Hovenkamp from the law school I attend. His photo is available on the law school website that (presumably anyone with a computer) can access . Is this free content that can be used on his Wikipedia page? I don't believe so since I don't own the rights to the photograph but I wondered because it's publicly available online. My second question is related in that, if I cannot use his photo online, can I take a picture of an oil painting of him hanging in our law building (we're a public land-grant institution) and use that since it's on public display? I would ask to take his photo for Wikipedia but I don't want to be a weirdo. Thanks! (Also, sorry if I asked this in the wrong place -- I'm a pretty unsophisticated page editor)RedDarling (talk) 02:47, 10 May 2016 (UTC)

@RedDarling: Hello, this is the wrong place to ask this - please go to Wikipedia:Media copyright questions. I can answer your first question though: it's not. But you could ask (email) him if he'd like to appropriately license the image or search for another image with a suitable license. --Fixuture (talk) 18:06, 25 May 2016 (UTC)

References

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Merger suggestion: Free content + Open content

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

The result was merge into Open_content. -=- Halfadaniel (talk) 18:40, 18 December 2020 (UTC)

---

The concept of Free content and Open content have huge overlap (as do the current articles on each). I suggest merging the two pages, retaining a section that describes the distinction between the two and the historical links between them. Otherwise we mainly end up with duplicated pages that mention each other only to say how the concepts are "legally very similar, if not like an identical twin" or essentially the same but "with no clear threshold", which, when split between the two separate current pages makes them more confusing when there then listing many of the same concepts, examples and licenses. T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)^talk 23:52, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

• Merge as per nom — maintaining two separate articles on highly overlapping topics is counterproductive, it also makes it more difficult for the reader to compare & contrast between the two; much better IMO to cover both terms in one article. -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 10:35, 22 July 2020 (UTC)
  • Comment it seems this was discussed several years ago at Talk:Open_content#Merge_from_free_content; don't know how things have moved on since then. -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 10:42, 22 July 2020 (UTC)
• Merge Broadly overlap. I recommend merging open content into free content. Harmonia per misericordia. OmegaFallon (talk) 15:45, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

• Merge as per OmegaFallon points. Thanks. KesunyianAyam (talk) 06:11, 5 October 2020 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

What is the meaning of handicap

I need the answer Kissaw Abdulai (talk) 09:39, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

Have you looked at handicap? —Bruce1ee^talk 09:42, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

"Free knowledge" listed at Redirects for discussion

A discussion is taking place to address the redirect Free knowledge. The discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2021 July 5#Free knowledge until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. KamranBhatti4013 (talk) 21:01, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

"Successor project": incorrect term

A successor project is one that completely takes over from the first project. More than once here, there's mention of Creative Commons "successor projects", which is impossible because Creative Commons is still operating. I'm sure those projects belong in the article, but there needs to be a better descriptive word for them. TooManyFingers (talk) 21:22, 13 August 2021 (UTC)

Requested move 6 March 2022

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: Not moved (non-admin closure) Natg 19 (talk) 07:31, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

---

Free content → Open content – I think ‘Open content’ is a more general name for this and free content (like free software) is a more philosophical concept. See: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html Avoinlähde (talk) 23:21, 6 March 2022 (UTC)

Oppose per Google Ngrams, pageviews (1,800 for free, 130 for open yesterday) and Google search (15 billion hits for free content, but 10 billion for open content). Oh, and this time the pageviews have a lower margin of error; Google shows different Knowledge Engine links for free and open content searches. 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 03:21, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

Oppose per EpicPupper, also Wikidata will show that the vast majority of other language wikis appear to use words that translate to "free" and I have not found a mention of "open" yet. Our title policies tend to lean more toward actual usage than interpretation of definitions. ASUKITE 00:39, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.