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OrthodoxWiki:Copyrights

Revision as of 03:39, July 28, 2007 by FrJohn (talk | contribs) (Addendum - reissuing must be non-exclusive)
This page is an official policy on OrthodoxWiki. It has wide acceptance among editors and is considered a standard that all users should follow. If you are part of the administration, please feel free to update this page as needed, but make sure that changes you make to this policy really do reflect OrthodoxWiki's perspective before you make them.


All material on OrthodoxWiki is by default released under a dual GDFL and Creative Commons licensing arrangement. For other licenses (especially for images), see Help:Image licenses.

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Revised Default Copyright

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of GNU Free Documentation License as used by Wikipedia and/or the Attribution-ShareAlike Creative Commons License, Version 2.5 or any later version published; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. Subject to disclaimers.


As of November 22, 2005, we are tweaking our licensing structure a little bit. Previously, the default copyright for all OrthodoxWiki materials was a Creative Commons (CC) License (Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0).

There are a couple of problems with this arrangement, not least that it in incompatible with (and thus violates the terms of) the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) used by Wikipedia. This causes complications because a number of our articles began as Wikipedia imports.

Because of other concerns, we don’t want to simply adopt the GFDL.

So, we are planning to move to a dual license. Every edit that is made will be by default licensed under the GFDL and/or a revised Creative Commons license (Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5). Naturally, this will not apply to material that was previously released under a different license (unless we have explicit permission otherwise), such as the content taken from Wikipedia or edits made before November 22, 2005. This will also not apply to any material that is submitted to OrthodoxWiki under other copyright terms, such as most of our images and some of our articles. If you would like to apply this license retroactively to include all of your edits, please add the acceptrevised template to your user page. (You can do this simply by adding "{{acceptrevised}}" to your page.)

The main change as far as the Creative Commons license is concerned, is that the new license allows restricted commercial use of the material. The GFDL already allows this, and we see no reason to make the CC license more restrictive. Furthermore, we do not anticipate anybody making big money off of OrthodoxWiki content. If someone can earn something by publishing it commercially according to the terms of one of these licenses, we will simply be happy that the content is being used and that OrthodoxWiki is being publicized. Furthermore, we are still requiring authors of derivative works to "Share-Alike", which means they cannot restrict similar copying of the edits they make from OrthodoxWiki articles.

We would also like to make sure that the barriers to reprinting material here are not too high. Right now, to be safe, reprinting material requires contacting all of the individual contributors and obtaining their permission to use their materials and crediting them individually. We'd like to change it so that consent is implied and the requirement for attribution can be fulfilled more simply.

Here's an imagined scenario: A number of people dedicate their time and know-how to create a splendid series of articles on Orthodox monasticism in South Africa. A priest in Zimbabwe wants to reprint these articles for the edification of the faithful. Now, instead of getting permission from or citing every single contributor, this priest can simply cite collective authorship at OrthodoxWiki, and refer to the CC by-sa license. Also, he doesn't have to be shy about trying to recoup his printing costs, or even earning a small profit to help reward him for him time and effort. If he wants to polish up the articles, and add some local flavor, he is free to do so, but his revision must likewise by published under the same license. This way, others can benefit from his work just as he benefited from those before him.

To this end, the "click-through language" (what is agreed to every time a user clicks "Save Page" in an edit box) will be revised to say that, unless explicitly stated otherwise, the author of the edits is granting to OrthodoxWiki and its operator(s) the perpetual and royalty-free right to make use of, reformat, republish, change, edit, etc., the content of the contributed work in any form or medium, and that further permission need not be sought from the contributor to make such derivative uses of the contributed work, and that all requirements for attribution are met by citing collective authorship at OrthodoxWiki and a reference to the OrthodoxWiki site (OrthodoxWiki.org), which will contain this copyright information as well as the edit history of each article, with links to each user’s page containing however much or little information they care to submit.

This is lawyer-speak for our protection. No one can claim any author’s work as their own and authors remain free to re-issue their own work under any other (non-exclusive) license they choose.

We are trying to be as conscientious as possible about copyright concerns. It is our policy to be proactive about copyright infringement. However, if you think you have seen any type of copyright infringement, please give us the benefit of the doubt and contact us so that we can clear up any issues. Please also let us know if you have any other comments or concerns.

Further Stipulations - Imported Content

Note: Dual licensing applies does not apply to any material imported from Wikipedia or any other content explicitly released under another licensing arrangement. All material imported from Wikipedia should provide a link back to the original article (preferably a version permalink) on Wikipedia. ("Wikipedia considers a direct link-back to a particular Wikipedia article as being in full compliance with the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL), provided your derivative work is also licensed under the auspices of the GFDL" [1] - see also wikipedia:Wikipedia:Copyright.)

Material contributed to OrthodoxWiki must either be original work by the contributor, who releases it by default under dual license arrangement noted above, or it must be released to OrthodoxWiki by explicit permission of the copyright holder, in which case it can be included under a license determined by the owner. (You can browse OrthodoxWiki's selection of Copyright Templates or create your own.)

To determine if use of outside material legally qualifies as Fair use under U.S. law, consult Wikipedia:Fair use. Generally speaking, copyrighted material may be quoted if it is part of a larger work which cites the material and makes use of it for the purposes of comment on it.

Violations of copyright law on OrthodoxWiki are not tolerated. All material is the responsibility of the contributors to the site, so while the administration does the best it can to prevent violation of copyright law, some material may have slipped their notice. (See: OrthodoxWiki:Disclaimer.) If you own a copyright that is being violated on OrthodoxWiki, contact the administration immediately so that the problem may be resolved.

Revoking permissions

In some cases, a person who had previously posted or allowed content to be posted on OrthodoxWiki may wish to revoke permission for use. We will consider removing an article or image if it was clearly marked from the beginning as retaining full copyright and locked from further editing (of content, not necessarily of formatting). (We allow material to be released under more restrictive licenses on this site in various cases.)

However, once material is released to OrthodoxWiki under our default GFDL/CC license, we can't accept revocation of permissions, since already other people would've invested their time and effort into formatting and revising the article. In a sense, the content becomes the property of the community, sprung from the donation of an individual seed.

Please contact User:FrJohn if you have any questions about this policy.

Exporting OrthodoxWiki material

When exporting material from OrthodoxWiki, the dual licensing means that you can choose which license to export content under—it is "either/or" not "both." It is important to note that this only applies to material submitted directly to OrthodoxWiki. Articles that began as Wikipedia imports may only be exported under the GFDL (while the added parts alone may be either CC by-sa or GFDL). The licenses are pretty similar, with some minor differences. All that is required to use OrthodoxWiki material is to cite your source and include a link back to the original article (preferably its versioned URL, which can be found by clicking the most recent date on the history page). This does not apply to material explicitly licensed in some other way, which should be noted on the article or other material (many photographs, for instance, are licensed only to OrthodoxWiki and may not be exported).

Note to Wikipedia editors: Most OrthodoxWiki content may, unless otherwise noted, be freely used under the GFDL. This means we only ask for a link back to the original article (preferably its versioned URL, which can be found by clicking on the most recent date on the history page), with proper credit given. You do not need to include the list of authors, since they will be listed in our local article history.

See also

External links

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