Ian Monroe wrote:
Now that Wiktionary 1.4 is settling in, thought I would bring up an issue thats been on the en:Beer parlor for a while, which may benefit from some ideas from other wikt's. Plus it would take a sysop, {{sofixit}} isn't an option ;)
Here it is:
Its fairly common that we find copyright infringing articles. I hypothesize this is not someone trying to poison Wiktionary, but is due to ignorance. If you are like me, you've read it once and then forget that it says the following at the buttom of every edit page:
You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource. DO NOT SUBMIT COPYRIGHTED WORK WITHOUT PERMISSION!
Really I think this assumes the reader understands copyright as well as understands what folks in the Free Software movement consider to be 'free'. I mean, dictionary.com is free as in beer, but it isn't 'similar free' which is kind of expecting a bit from Joe User. The paragraph previous to that already gets the legal crap over with by stating you are releasing under the GFDL, I don't think we need to cover every case. It should talk to the anonymous junior high student who sees noctilucent doesn't have a definition. I'm not claiming to be a great wordsmith, but here is a try:
All definitions must be written by yourself or borrowed from a public domain resource. Do not use content from copyrighted resources such as dictionary.com.
I think dictionary.com is the biggest culprit, so naming it specifically will be helpful. Also its a good example of what a copyrighted resource is. We could also throw on something nice to it, like 'we want to know what you think' or 'we apperciate your input'. I'm not sure how to put it. Just to be nice and to reiterate the 'your'.
There wasn't any further discussion of it, though Eclecticology stated his belief in their being legal gray area around copyrights on dictionaries.
Any ideas?
I really don't think that the problem is as bad as Ian makes out. The copying of any single definition from another dictionary may just as easily be fair use. Though when the definition is copied from another source that source needs to be referenced. Copyright infringement would depend on a pattern of behaviour. Writing one's own brand new definitions is not as sound a practice as Ian suggests. If one is to do that it should properly be accompanied by evidence of identified quotations that illustrate the use of the word in just that way.
We've already had the argument about protologisms as original work, but so too are definitions that take a word into areas where it has never been used before. Writing one's own definitions is not as easy as it seems.
A significant statement in the GFDL license is "You accept the license if you copy, modify or distribute the work in a way requiring permission under copyright law." Fair use does not require these permissions.
Ec