Forum:CT:Musical theme LG

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The result of the debate was Approve proposal. Toprawa and Ralltiir (talk) 05:13, November 29, 2012 (UTC)

Since we recently passed an OOU Layout Guide, it's now time to crack down and pass some LG's for individual types of articles. I've been working this thing up for some time now, and since it's been used in five musical theme status articles, I feel there is general consensus that this layout works. Here it is:

Musical Theme Articles

There are some guidelines for the organization of musical theme articles within Wookieepedia. Ideally, they are organized into five main sections, with subsections and extra sections where appropriate:

  1. Conception and development deals with the origin of the theme (when, by whom, where, and for what it was written), the writing process of the music and, if applicable, lyrics, the release of the theme into the public, and the musicians who performed the piece.
  2. Summary gives a detailed summary of the entire piece in its most complex, original form. This section should be divided in sub-sections based on scenes in the primary piece of media in which the theme is utilized.
  3. Use provides an overview of the the usage of the theme in all of Star Wars media and popular culture. This should be divided into five sub-sections, only using the ones necessary. These are "In the soundtracks," "In the movies," "In the Expanded Universe," "In other media and merchandise," and "In popular culture." These sub-sections may be disregarded if using them would result in unnecessary short sections of one or two sentences.
  4. Reception gives reviews and opinions from critics, as well as information regarding sales performance.

Each of these sections may be further subdivided if necessary. Music clips using a {{Music1}} tag are also appropriate for replacing quotes in the "Summary" section and subsections. This also applies to the leading quote of the article if no quote is available. Also, per copyright laws, full lyrics are not allowed. A link to the lyrics on LyricWiki should be added to the "Further reading" section and infobox if possible.

Duel of the Fates is the only current article that uses every section of this layout for those who want to see this baby in action. Just to be clear, this will be added to the OOU LG page after the "Article body" section just as is done on the IU LG page in a section titled "Musical theme articles."

Other articles that use this layout are the following:

MasterFredCommerce Guild(Whatever) 05:05, November 15, 2012 (UTC)

Approve

  1. As proposer. MasterFredCommerce Guild(Whatever) 05:05, November 15, 2012 (UTC)
  2. Alllllllriiiiiight, pardner. Keep on rollin', baby. You know what time it is. Toprawa and Ralltiir (talk) 05:12, November 15, 2012 (UTC)
  3. The lyrics concern will be cleared up bythe end of this CT, I'm wagering. NaruHina Talk Anakinsolo 15:38, November 15, 2012 (UTC)
  4. Darth Trayus(Trayus Academy) 19:45, November 19, 2012 (UTC)
  5. I like MJ's suggestion in the discussion below, to link to the Lyrics Wiki. Overall, the layout guide seems sound. Trak Nar Ramble on 07:47, November 20, 2012 (UTC)
  6. I'd feel much more at ease with MJ's idea. Good work putting this all together overall.—Cal JediInfinite Empire (Personal Comm Channel) 15:32, November 20, 2012 (UTC)
  7. Now that the lyrics issue has been sorted out. I would oppose full lyrics with or without copyright permissions; we don't post full text from novels, why would we from songs? ~SavageBOB sig 16:27, November 20, 2012 (UTC)
  8. Now that full lyrics have been removed, I can support, though in light of this decision, we may want to revisit Ballad of Cham Syndulla. —MJ— Jedi Council Chambers 22:17, November 20, 2012 (UTC)
  9. I fully support this now that the lyrics copyright thing has been resolved. Corellian PremierJedi symbolThe Force will be with you always 00:13, November 21, 2012 (UTC)
  10. Exiled Jedi Oldrepublic crest (Greetings) 18:51, November 25, 2012 (UTC)
  11. The new LG needs some meat to it! Menkooroo (talk) 00:47, November 26, 2012 (UTC)
  12. Lyrics bad, revision good. jSarek (talk) 07:19, November 26, 2012 (UTC)
  13. Do re mi. CC7567 (talk) 02:40, November 29, 2012 (UTC)

Oppose

I like the rest of it, but I have to disagree with the "Lyrics" section. Posting full lyrics stretches our fair use claim too far, I think (and remember that Disney has in the past been stricter than Lucasfilm). The "Lyrics" section should instead describe the lyrics in an encyclopedic fashion without excessive quoting of them. —MJ— Council Chambers 05:38, November 15, 2012 (UTC)
  • I have talked with Wikia on this matter before, as my own wiki on Christian music contains full lyrics to songs. Wikia has permission to post full lyrics of songs per their agreement with Gracenote. Plus, as is the case in the Duel of the Fates article, the lyrics are technically explained in the Conception and development section when detailing the writing process. MasterFredCommerce Guild(Whatever) 13:45, November 15, 2012 (UTC)
    • So the attribution template will not work for this case? Looking at other musical articles, such as the recently approved Duel of the Fates, the article utilizes it, unless the copyright holder has not noticed yet. :P JangFett (Talk) 16:15, November 15, 2012 (UTC)

Discussion

  • Master Jonathan has a good point. I didn't realize myself how crazy license holders are about lyrics until doing a little Google searching myself just now. This page gives a pretty good, quick little rundown of lyrics and fair use, and even mentions Disney's insane tendency to prosecute for good measure. Toprawa and Ralltiir (talk) 05:50, November 15, 2012 (UTC)
    • Indeed. Personally, I'd rather have the lyrics in the article as we have before. However, I also don't want to push Disney's buttons right off the bat. The lyrics could easily be worked into the article. Perhaps, like MJ said, have a "Lyrics" section that just describes the lyrics and their meaning in an encyclopedic fashion. That way, we still get the explanation of the lyrics without riding the edge of policies. Otherwise, I like it. I'll support as soon as this is resolved.—Cal JediInfinite Empire (Personal Comm Channel) 14:17, November 15, 2012 (UTC)
      • Can we stop fretting about Disney's sensibilities every two minutes? Nothing is going to happen to us. Nothing has happened to any other wiki whose subject was bought by them, including the ones on their cartoons. The Disney Wiki and ones on subsidiary topics are telling on their own: Disney's litigious reutation comes from its irrrational defense of its cartoon characters and some animated canon, with the elements thereof. They don't care about other properties, like Star Wars or Marvel Comics or The Avengers (you were on the internet when that came out, yes?) in the same way. Not to say Fair Use concerns are illegitmate, but we're not going to "push Disney's buttons" by existing and carrying on as we will. NaruHina Talk Anakinsolo 15:36, November 15, 2012 (UTC)
        • This isn't about Disney. This is about past experiences and what is the law. Lyrics have been deemed as more offensive than something like images and quotes. As I said before, this could easily be made into the article without the actual lyrics. The quality of the article will not be lessened. The same info will basically still be there, albeit in a different, more reasonable form.—Cal JediInfinite Empire (Personal Comm Channel) 15:42, November 15, 2012 (UTC)
          • I agree with what Cal is saying -- this particular concern really isn't about Disney at all. It's about the realistic legal precedent that, from what I've read, posting comprehensive lyrics does not fall under fair use claim. We hide behind fair use with things like images and whatever else, but lyrics appear to be a completely different entity. Speaking again to my original post, I would seriously suggest anyone do a little Google searching to see how serious license holders, judges, and courts really do treat this. Are we realistically going to get a cease-and-desist notice from Disney or whomever else because we have one or two articles posting lyrics? Probably not, but it's not even worth the gamble, is the point, when we can easily turn lyrics sections into prose. I'm still supporting this proposal, because I trust this will be satisfactorily resolved. Toprawa and Ralltiir (talk) 16:32, November 15, 2012 (UTC)
            • I have contacted Wikia about how they handle lyrics and copyrights. I'll post the email here when I get a response. MasterFredCommerce Guild(Whatever) 19:40, November 15, 2012 (UTC)
              • Watching the destruction of the International Lyrics Server, one of my favorite sites back in the day, was one of my first experiences of the modern interaction of the Internet and copyright law, so full lyrics are one of the biggest red flags of "oh kriff, this might be trouble" for me. Including them is bad mojo, even if Wikia has some kind of agreement that might protect them ... today. jSarek (talk) 09:13, November 16, 2012 (UTC)
  • Here is the reply I got from Wikia:

Hello,

Thanks for contacting Wikia.

Let me start by saying that Wikia is a host for user-generated content, but we are not in the position to offer legal advice to our users.

That being said, lyrics are copyrightable expressions and the original authors do retain the copyright to them. Posting them to Wookieepedia would involve relying on the fair use exception. Fair use can be a bit complicated, and I cannot say for sure that posting the lyrics would qualify.

Attribution is nice and part of the wiki spirit, but it does not actually enter into the fair use consideration.

Breaking the lyrics up with some commentary and/or discussion would go much further toward bolstering the fair use argument for such a thing because it gets at the heart of what the fair use exception to copyright is all about.

Unfortunately, there are no strict guidelines I can offer fair use (x% of lyrics is too much, etc.). In addition to the legal considerations, it depends also on the copyright holder and their tolerance for uses of their content.

I can say that if you did post the lyrics, and the copyright holder did not consider them to fall into the fair use exception, this is what would happen:

1. They would send us a DMCA Takedown notice. 2. We (Wikia) would remove the content and include a statement why. 3. If it gets reu-ploaded, we would remove it again and warn the user. 4. Multiple re-uploads would result in account closure.

This is the notice and takedown procedure outlined in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Hope this helps,

__ Sean McGilvray Wikia Community Support

  • So, in reality, there would be no danger for posting the lyrics. If the copyright holder ended up not liking it, they would just be taken down and we could put a notice up saying we didn't have rights to the lyrics (like most lyrics sites do). On the other hand, we could put them in prose. This way presents some problems, though. How are we supposed to source this? What information would go in the prose besides the lyrics? We can't explain what the lyrics mean without an official interpretation that can be referenced. Also, when looking up a particular piece, no reader wants to have to read through a paragraph and pick out the lyrics. A box that simply quotes the lyrics is far more convenient for both the reader and writer. MasterFredCommerce Guild(Whatever) 18:45, November 16, 2012 (UTC)
    • I'd rather not push our luck. If we absolutely have to have full lyrics, then give them only as a link to w:c:lyrics:John Williams:Duel Of The Fates, where they apparently have the necessary license for the lyrics, and remember that we don't know if that license extends to other wikis or not (I'm guessing not). Note that even that wiki doesn't have the license for every song in existence, as they have a staff-operated bot that proactively enforces a takedown list of songs that they don't have the license for. I would suggest that we follow that example; when dealing with something with legal consequences, the saying "it's easier to ask forgiveness than permission" isn't a good idea. —MJ— Council Chambers 20:45, November 16, 2012 (UTC)
    • (Edit Conflict) Yeah, considering Wikia would get the notice and handle removal automatically if there were a problem, I'd say this is one of those situations where it's better to do it and ask forgiveness later. Lyrics are as open to interpretation as any kind of poetry, so there's no benefit to Wookieepedians writing out what we think the meaning is when someone on the nom page alone might read it completely differently—just wait for the talk page discussions after it reaches the main page. I don't really see that as an option, in the absence of an official explanation. It's about as valuable as omitting a lyrics section entirely, since it would be meaningless for an encyclopedia of hard facts (Paragraph 1, Sentence 2). That said, I say should just go ahead with the full lyrics. Even if we did the prose and quoted the lyrics like we do statements, as McGilvray suggested, they could still technically come in and object the same way that they could object to a full post. Then we'd have just the unsourced interpretation. NaruHina Talk Anakinsolo 20:55, November 16, 2012 (UTC)
      • (Addendum for MJ's statement) Since there wouldn't be any concrete consequence for us except the removal of the content by Wikia at LucasFilm's explicit request, it is one of those "forgiveness" situations. Wikia would remove it in accordance with the law and we wouldn't be in trouble, so long as we don't put it back up again. It would just happen and from that point we could enforce not having any lyrics on articles and everyone would be happy. NaruHina Talk Anakinsolo 21:02, November 16, 2012 (UTC)
        • Not only that, even if the lyrics were reposted, only the user who posted them would be punished. We could simply put a tag on the page stating that lyrics are not to be added for legal reasons so we would have done our part. If a user adds them and they get caught, there is no skin off our backs. We are risking nothing be having full lyrics. MasterFredCommerce Guild(Whatever) 21:20, November 16, 2012 (UTC)
          • If we go this route, we are deliberately ignoring all pretense of following copyright law. Just because the DMCA is thankfully not as brutal as it could be when it comes to consequences, that doesn't change the fact that including full lyrics as a part of the style guide would make breaking United States copyright law a part of an official Wookieepedia policy. Also note that DMCA takedowns have been issued to servers for entire sites, not just offending pages. While Wikia obviously has good reason not to take down their biggest moneymaker, I think we'd be playing with fire here. jSarek (talk) 07:14, November 18, 2012 (UTC)
            • I would be ok with MJ's proposition. I could put a link to LyricWiki in the "Further reading" section and in the infobox. MasterFredCommerce Guild(Whatever) 19:38, November 19, 2012 (UTC)
              • Let me see if I got this totally straight: You would omit the lyrics in full, but leave a link to the lyrics wiki, correct? Would you still include a section where you would explain the lyrics?—Cal JediInfinite Empire (Personal Comm Channel) 14:37, November 20, 2012 (UTC)
                • I would remove the section entirely. And no such description is necessary. The lyrics are discussed in the "Conception and development" section by default since they must be discussed in the writing process. Again, see Duel of the Fates. Anything more than that is assumption on the writer's part unless an official explanation of the lyrics has been given by an official source, which I have yet to come across for any piece. MasterFredCommerce Guild(Whatever) 15:27, November 20, 2012 (UTC)