This page is an archive of a community-wide discussion. This page is no longer live. Further comments or questions on this topic should be made in a new Senate Hall page rather than here so that this page is preserved as a historic record. JocastaBot (talk) 14:57, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
Forums > Senate Hall archive > SH:Bantha Tracks template and archive links
Looking at the citing of certain old articles in Bantha Tracks, it looks to me like a template similar to the InsiderCite template may be helpful. Some articles use the Hyperspace template because the old Bantha Tracks issues were once available there, but those obviously link to nowhere now. --JMM (talk) 15:25, 9 December 2021 (UTC)
- Sure, why not. And there's a pdf archives of them on jeditemplearchives.com for us to provide archivelink to them. So, since InsiderCite is a bit outdated (its using nondefined parameters), how about something like {{BanthaCite|issue=|article=|formatted=|archivedate=}} I'm leaving out "link=" which was used on InsiderCite for compilation. Archivedate could be used if we hardcode https://www.jeditemplearchives.com/specialreports/banthatracks/archives/banthatracks**.pdf in the code, with ** depending on what's in "issue=". --NanoLuukeCloning facility 15:48, 9 December 2021 (UTC)
- That sounds about right. I'm not a template creator, so I'd rather not attempt that. Maybe someone more experienced can do that. --JMM (talk) 17:00, 12 December 2021 (UTC)
- Is that jeditemplearchives.com archive licensed? I do find it handy for research purposes, but we shouldn't link to content posted without the copyright holder's permission. Asithol (talk) 07:48, 14 December 2021 (UTC)
- I'm sure it's not a licensed archive, but would it matter on something out of print for so long? Either way, that link to the actual PDF isn't necessary for the template. And individual issue pages already have external links to that archive page. --JMM (talk) 13:54, 14 December 2021 (UTC)
- Might not matter to you or me, but the copyright holder might have different ideas, and unless their stance is documented somewhere, we shouldn't presume they're OK with their content being pirated just because a couple decades have elapsed. US copyrights have very long lifespans. Those existing links should probably be removed. Asithol (talk) 16:53, 14 December 2021 (UTC)
- I'm going to have to disagree with Asithol. A lot of our work is arguably liable to copyright infrigment, no amoung of "Fair Use" argumentation could hide the fact that Lucasfilm has always been very lenient toward us in our use of the thousands and thousangs of images we're hosting. You just have to check the difference between our policy versus Wikipedia copyright policy to understand how liberal we are with "Fair Use" (should I remind that our host, Fandom, is a commercial venture?). Let's not fool ourself by thinking Lucasfilm isn't aware of that: they have allowed it indirectly. And, there will never be any statement in that regard, because that would be a liability for them. That just how legal corporate work. It's a legal grey area, that's what it is, and as long as we're not doing anything stupid, we'll be fine. Copyright laws only are enforced by copyright owners, and I've witness countless time in the past what happen when they want to enforce it. That's the only statement there will either be. Now, let's de-escalate, and think about what we're talking here: a newsletter from 78 to 87, of little commercial value. Furthermore, what's JediTempleArchives as been doing isn't even remotly different from the magazines archives on Archive.org, that we're also linking too on various occasion. In the end, my only concern would be "is it moral"? And I can't think of any reason how us sharing a link to that content is ever going to hurt anyone. Again, we'll be fine. --NanoLuukeCloning facility 09:01, 17 December 2021 (UTC)
- There's a world of difference—legally and ethically—between what we do, which is summarize copyrighted material and provide representative images thereof, and a site that reproduces entire issues of magazines or newsletters. Whether a court would deem our work Fair Use is an open question, and one Lucasfilm clearly has no interest in pursuing, but our work tries to follow the spirit of Fair Use. The Bantha Tracks archive does not. This is not a condemnation of them, or a call for them to take their material down, just a simple request that we not link directly to it, to not knowingly promote outright copyright violation. It won't make their archive go away, and anyone with a Google search box can find the material in less than 30 seconds. But as a general principle, I believe we ought not link to copyright violations, and I don't think we ought to abandon a principle merely because these newsletters are old and of little commerical value.
I'm not sure what you're asking to de-escalate; I'm not trying to escalate anything, or trying to get any other sites shut down, or claiming we or anyone else is likely to get in trouble with The Law over this, merely expressing a (hopefully somewhat informed) opinion about what we ought to link to. I welcome your and all other dissenting opinions. Asithol (talk) 09:41, 17 December 2021 (UTC)- I'd say, forget about adding a link to the archive in the citation template. It's not really necessary for what we want to do here. Though I think having a link to the archive as part of "External Links" in an article is okay because that's that website's problem, not ours. :) --JMM (talk) 13:57, 17 December 2021 (UTC)
- There's a world of difference—legally and ethically—between what we do, which is summarize copyrighted material and provide representative images thereof, and a site that reproduces entire issues of magazines or newsletters. Whether a court would deem our work Fair Use is an open question, and one Lucasfilm clearly has no interest in pursuing, but our work tries to follow the spirit of Fair Use. The Bantha Tracks archive does not. This is not a condemnation of them, or a call for them to take their material down, just a simple request that we not link directly to it, to not knowingly promote outright copyright violation. It won't make their archive go away, and anyone with a Google search box can find the material in less than 30 seconds. But as a general principle, I believe we ought not link to copyright violations, and I don't think we ought to abandon a principle merely because these newsletters are old and of little commerical value.
- I'm going to have to disagree with Asithol. A lot of our work is arguably liable to copyright infrigment, no amoung of "Fair Use" argumentation could hide the fact that Lucasfilm has always been very lenient toward us in our use of the thousands and thousangs of images we're hosting. You just have to check the difference between our policy versus Wikipedia copyright policy to understand how liberal we are with "Fair Use" (should I remind that our host, Fandom, is a commercial venture?). Let's not fool ourself by thinking Lucasfilm isn't aware of that: they have allowed it indirectly. And, there will never be any statement in that regard, because that would be a liability for them. That just how legal corporate work. It's a legal grey area, that's what it is, and as long as we're not doing anything stupid, we'll be fine. Copyright laws only are enforced by copyright owners, and I've witness countless time in the past what happen when they want to enforce it. That's the only statement there will either be. Now, let's de-escalate, and think about what we're talking here: a newsletter from 78 to 87, of little commercial value. Furthermore, what's JediTempleArchives as been doing isn't even remotly different from the magazines archives on Archive.org, that we're also linking too on various occasion. In the end, my only concern would be "is it moral"? And I can't think of any reason how us sharing a link to that content is ever going to hurt anyone. Again, we'll be fine. --NanoLuukeCloning facility 09:01, 17 December 2021 (UTC)
- Might not matter to you or me, but the copyright holder might have different ideas, and unless their stance is documented somewhere, we shouldn't presume they're OK with their content being pirated just because a couple decades have elapsed. US copyrights have very long lifespans. Those existing links should probably be removed. Asithol (talk) 16:53, 14 December 2021 (UTC)
- I'm sure it's not a licensed archive, but would it matter on something out of print for so long? Either way, that link to the actual PDF isn't necessary for the template. And individual issue pages already have external links to that archive page. --JMM (talk) 13:54, 14 December 2021 (UTC)
- Is that jeditemplearchives.com archive licensed? I do find it handy for research purposes, but we shouldn't link to content posted without the copyright holder's permission. Asithol (talk) 07:48, 14 December 2021 (UTC)
- That sounds about right. I'm not a template creator, so I'd rather not attempt that. Maybe someone more experienced can do that. --JMM (talk) 17:00, 12 December 2021 (UTC)