This page is an archive of a community-wide discussion. This page is no longer live. Further comments should be made in the Senate Hall or new Consensus Track pages rather than here so that this page is preserved as a historic record.
The result of the debate was inconclusive. No Change in Copyright policy. –SentryTalk 08:31, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
I was looking at the Memory Alpha Copyrights (Creative Commons) and at the Wookieepedia:Copyrights (GNUFDL) and I noticed that they are under different policies. Since Star Trek and Star Wars seemed like they should be similar policy wise, I looked at why they don't use the GNUFDL. Some of their reasons (especially the commercial use reason) seemed like they would apply to Wookieepedia too. Comments? --Jediarchives11 00:24, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
- This is certainly interesting. We should definitely discuss this, possibly in a Consensus track. Will Wikicities allow us to change our copyright policy? --Imp 21:57, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
- I added it to the consensus track at Wookieepedia:Consensus track/Copyright Discussion. --Jediarchives11 00:25, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
- I don't think we would have that option. Memory Alpha existed already, then moved to Wikicites, so I think they are a special case. I could be wrong, but I think all wikis which started with Wikicities would have to be GFDL. WhiteBoy 22:55, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
- Well the fact that the GNUFDL allows commercial use of the material on the wiki seems like it would be a cause for concern anyways, considering that Lucas owns the copyright to all this stuff. --Jediarchives11 04:35, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
- I agree....the "commercial use" point seems to be the most compelling reason to consider a change. Worth noting is that we have copied several articles from Wikipedia, so we would have to identify which ones those are and totally rewrite them, if they have not already been totally rewritten. WhiteBoy 16:28, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
- Well the fact that the GNUFDL allows commercial use of the material on the wiki seems like it would be a cause for concern anyways, considering that Lucas owns the copyright to all this stuff. --Jediarchives11 04:35, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
I mentioned this before, but now I actually looked at the Terms of use. It specifically says that content for all Wikicities is under the GFDL. WhiteBoy 16:37, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
I guess the real question is: "does it break the original copyright to have a GFDL site about copyrighted material?" My first thought is "no." I will ask Angela to address this, too, because I'm sure they have already thought about it. WhiteBoy 16:53, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
- I should certainly hope they've thought about it, give the number of Wikicities wikis it affects. In just five minutes, I've found Muppet Wiki, Doom Wiki, Stargate Command, TARDIS Index File, and Family Guy Wiki (this one is especially bad, they even have whole episodes transcribed). If the GFDL isn't right for us, then pretty much the whole Wikicities network has a problem. —Darth Culator (talk) 18:33, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
- Wikipedia is also GFDL and includes text about copyrighted and trademarked things, so I can't see that this would be a problem. The license on Memory Alpha is not a free license (see [1] for an essay on why CC-NC licenses are inappropriate). With MA, we had no choice since they were already using that license, but it is not something we would choose or recommend anyone else use. Angela (talk) 22:33, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
- That makes sense. Thanks Angela. --Jediarchives11 15:13, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
- I feel better now. :-) I hadn't even thought of how much of a copyright nightmare Wikipedia itself must be. So I guess all our new disclaimers should be enough. —Darth Culator (talk) 15:56, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
- That makes sense. Thanks Angela. --Jediarchives11 15:13, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
I should also add that a wiki cannot change licenses on the fly, even to a less restrictive license (Uncyclopedia considered switching from CC-BY-NC-SA to CC-BY-SA, but eventually they had to abandon this idea), leave alone more restrictive ones (and CC-BY-NC-SA is more restrictive than the GFDL due to the noncommercial clause). First, many users would disagree with their contributions being relicensed, and second, many of our articles were originally forked from Wikipedia, which could raise quite a major legal buzz should we change the license. - Sikon [Talk] 09:21, 13 February 2006 (UTC)
Right. I don't think we have anything to worry about. We're writing about Star Wars and not for Star Wars. There's no copyright law anywhere that says that if you write about a fictional work that the owners of that fictional work get ownership of your writing. We can do a Star Wars wiki all we want with no fear as long as we don't post any copyright-violating material here. This is a potential problem, but as long as we erase it when we find it, it's no biggie. — SavageBob 17:08, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
- The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.