Forums > Senate Hall archive > SH:Lyrics and copyrights
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. Toprawa and Ralltiir 07:58, February 25, 2012 (UTC)
So, during the fixing-to-close CT on a music layout guide, the problem of copyrights and lyrics came up. We currently have articles containing all the lyrics for songs, but this seems to be a copyright violation, which is against Wookieepedia policy. Basically, we need to decide how we should handle this. Should we use the in-line text citation template? Should we add complete lyrics? Just the chorus? Ideas? MasterFred
(Whatever) 04:19, December 16, 2011 (UTC)
- My opinion is that a prose section titled "Lyrics" that discusses the lyrics in an encyclopedic fashion with a limited number of quotes would be OK, but otherwise we shouldn't be listing them at all. Master Jonathan — Jedi Council Chambers Friday, December 16, 2011, 16:50 UTC
- That could work. MasterFred
(Whatever) 17:25, December 16, 2011 (UTC)
- That could work. MasterFred
- Well, we already violate the criteria for fair use all over the place with images. Half of our images probably don't qualify as fair use, as many are only used as pure decoration in our articles. And uploading the highest quality versions we can find of these images probably also doesn't count as fair use. So I'm not so sure that we really have to be so strict when it comes to lyrics. --Craven 02:54, December 17, 2011 (UTC)
- I agree with Craven. This whole site is basically here at the mercy of Lucasfilm, as Castle Rock Entertainment, Inc. v. Carol Publishing Group attests. In that case, the publishers of a Seinfeld trivia book were found in violation of Castle Rock's copyright and trademark since all of the book's material was based on Castle Rock's intellectual property (the Seinfeld show). We basically do the same with Star Wars. In other words, if we're going to keep full lyrics off pages, we should do it because we don't think it's encyclopedic, not because we're afraid of fair use violation, in my (not-a-lawyer-mind-you) opinion. Personally, I think including full lyrics is a bit like an overly play-by-play plot summary. It's better to just quote the bits you need or the bits that you have something extra to say about. ~Savage
05:53, December 19, 2011 (UTC)
- I agree with Craven. This whole site is basically here at the mercy of Lucasfilm, as Castle Rock Entertainment, Inc. v. Carol Publishing Group attests. In that case, the publishers of a Seinfeld trivia book were found in violation of Castle Rock's copyright and trademark since all of the book's material was based on Castle Rock's intellectual property (the Seinfeld show). We basically do the same with Star Wars. In other words, if we're going to keep full lyrics off pages, we should do it because we don't think it's encyclopedic, not because we're afraid of fair use violation, in my (not-a-lawyer-mind-you) opinion. Personally, I think including full lyrics is a bit like an overly play-by-play plot summary. It's better to just quote the bits you need or the bits that you have something extra to say about. ~Savage
- With all due respect, I don't fully buy that. We don't allow people to copy and paste stuff off the official site because it's a copyvio, so what's the difference between that and this? The answer is "nothing"; both actions are large-scale copying of copyrighted material, yet mysteriously one is allowed and the other isn't. It's time to end the double standard, and banning full lyrics is infinitely less likely to piss off Lucasfilm than allowing copy-and-paste off SW.com. Also, just because "Lucasfilm can shut us down whenever they want" isn't a reason to allow blatant copyvios. We may be OK now with our current rules against copyvios, but in such a precarious situation, it's best not to abuse the good will of the company that has the power to shut you down. Master Jonathan — Jedi Council Chambers Monday, December 19, 2011, 17:39 UTC
- But what's the difference between a full set of lyrics and a full image used only for decorative purposes? I mean, our image usage is pretty liberal, and it would be hard to argue that, say, our Death Star logo, the images next to our search box, or any of probably thousands of other images we use are fair use. Lucasfilm has a liberal policy with regard to fan use of their intellectual property because they realize it helps keep us galvanized as a community who will continue to buy the stuff they put out. I just don't see lyrics as that different from images, so I'm not sure the fair use argument against their inclusion is the strongest. It's an argument, and part of the total calculus, sure. But at the end of the day, I think putting full lyrics is a bad idea because it's not entirely encyclopedic, so we seem to be on the same side. :) ~Savage
17:45, December 19, 2011 (UTC)
- But what's the difference between a full set of lyrics and a full image used only for decorative purposes? I mean, our image usage is pretty liberal, and it would be hard to argue that, say, our Death Star logo, the images next to our search box, or any of probably thousands of other images we use are fair use. Lucasfilm has a liberal policy with regard to fan use of their intellectual property because they realize it helps keep us galvanized as a community who will continue to buy the stuff they put out. I just don't see lyrics as that different from images, so I'm not sure the fair use argument against their inclusion is the strongest. It's an argument, and part of the total calculus, sure. But at the end of the day, I think putting full lyrics is a bad idea because it's not entirely encyclopedic, so we seem to be on the same side. :) ~Savage
- With all due respect, I don't fully buy that. We don't allow people to copy and paste stuff off the official site because it's a copyvio, so what's the difference between that and this? The answer is "nothing"; both actions are large-scale copying of copyrighted material, yet mysteriously one is allowed and the other isn't. It's time to end the double standard, and banning full lyrics is infinitely less likely to piss off Lucasfilm than allowing copy-and-paste off SW.com. Also, just because "Lucasfilm can shut us down whenever they want" isn't a reason to allow blatant copyvios. We may be OK now with our current rules against copyvios, but in such a precarious situation, it's best not to abuse the good will of the company that has the power to shut you down. Master Jonathan — Jedi Council Chambers Monday, December 19, 2011, 17:39 UTC
- As for it being unencyclopedic, I fail to see how that is so. It is information that is completely relevant to the topic and it's something that people wanting info on the topic will probably want to know. As for copyrights, sure, Lucasfilm may not have a problem with it, but not all the songs on this wiki are under their shadow of copyrights. We have songs (The Saga Begins, for example) that are not Lucasfilm's. MasterFred(Whatever) 17:55, December 19, 2011 (UTC)
- As for it being unencyclopedic, I fail to see how that is so. It is information that is completely relevant to the topic and it's something that people wanting info on the topic will probably want to know. As for copyrights, sure, Lucasfilm may not have a problem with it, but not all the songs on this wiki are under their shadow of copyrights. We have songs (The Saga Begins, for example) that are not Lucasfilm's. MasterFred
- Good point. Just because Lucasfilm doesn't care doesn't mean Weird Al doesn't care. Where Lucasfilm may ignore us, someone else could get upset and send a takedown notice to Wikia. Since it doesn't make sense to have two sets of rules, we should ban them across the board.
- As for images, I believe we obtained Lucasfilm's permission for our logo (note that File:Wiki.png is under a free license), so that argument is out. Search images are questionable, but aren't purely decorative, as they do allow the user to click through to the article for the depicted subject. In terms of images used in articles, as long as the image is relevant to the subject or adjacent text, we can arguably make a fair use claim that they serve the purpose of illustrating the article and thereby helping the reader to understand it better. So I don't really think we have the same problem with "decorative images" as we do with full lyrics; the lyrics are blatantly illegal, while the images are at least questionable. The only real problem we have with images is insisting on the highest resolution possible, which really should be limited to around 400–500px for most images, but that's still not the blatant issue that the lyrics are. Master Jonathan — Jedi Council Chambers Monday, December 19, 2011, 18:31 UTC
- Edit conflict: Think of lyrics to a song like the text of a book, or like a full MP3 of the song. Our readers might be happy if we provided them with full texts from novels or full MP3s, but that's not our mission: our mission is to summarize and, where appropriate, provide commentary from VIPs, creators, etc. So, for an out-of-universe article about a song, the lyrics themselves are not all that relevant; what we say about them and how we summarize them are, in my view. ~Savage 18:35, December 19, 2011 (UTC)
- And to MJ: I'm not disagreeing with you completely; I think full lyrics are a copyvio. I'm just saying that it's a double standard to ban them strictly because of that. As for images, I used to be fairly active on Wikipedia, and there, the standard of fair use is generally held to be, "Is this image essential to reader understanding of the subject of the article?" I think we're much more lax that than. That said, if we start a CT on banning lyrics, I'm, at the end of the day, simply arguing that fair use/copyvio should not be the sole criterion for such a ban. Encyclopedic aims should be given some weight too. ~Savage 18:39, December 19, 2011 (UTC)
- I'm semi-active on Wikipedia as well, and am somewhat familiar with their non-free content criteria. Those criteria are deliberately stricter than the American legal defintion of fair use, in part to minimize the chance of someone coming in and claiming that something's not fair use. We're already on shaky ground legally, so of course we can be more lax with images, and I think the vast majority of our images are arguably fair use. So unless you can show me images on here that are unquestionably not fair use, I don't see the double standard you're referring to. (FWIW, I agree with your points about full lyrics be unencyclopedic; I just think the copyright issues are more important here.) Master Jonathan — Jedi Council Chambers Monday, December 19, 2011, 19:12 UTC
- (Sorry to break in, but wanted to reply to MJ): I think our Mr. and Mrs. Star Wars contests are hard to justify as fair use when you get right down to it, with huge galleries of images for a silly contest. (I like the contest, mind you. I just don't think we'd be able to justify it if an LFL official told us to end it.) And, again, images were just my example; our entire site is arguably in violation of fair use, per the standard set in the Castle Rock Seinfeld case. But it sounds like folks are backing down on full lyrics anyway, so it's probably a moot point to continuing this thread of the discussion. ~Savage 02:30, December 20, 2011 (UTC)
- OK, how about this? We have a section titled "Lyrics" that has the chorus or the most well-known section of the lyrics used as a quote followed by prose that describes the lyrics, their meaning, and so on. MasterFred(Whatever) 19:54, December 19, 2011 (UTC)
- I'm curious, what is the difference between posting two paragraphs-worth of lyrics and two paragraphs worth of text from the The Old Republic Chronicles, as seen on our {{Excerpt}} template? Would lyrics, like those on the Ballad of Cham Syndulla, be permissible if we utilized the template? I don't care much for the OOU article conversation, but for IU works, does the excerpt template allow for full listings of the lyrics? Darth Trayus(Trayus Academy) 20:03, December 19, 2011 (UTC)
- (Sorry to break in, but wanted to reply to MJ): I think our Mr. and Mrs. Star Wars contests are hard to justify as fair use when you get right down to it, with huge galleries of images for a silly contest. (I like the contest, mind you. I just don't think we'd be able to justify it if an LFL official told us to end it.) And, again, images were just my example; our entire site is arguably in violation of fair use, per the standard set in the Castle Rock Seinfeld case. But it sounds like folks are backing down on full lyrics anyway, so it's probably a moot point to continuing this thread of the discussion. ~Savage
- I'm semi-active on Wikipedia as well, and am somewhat familiar with their non-free content criteria. Those criteria are deliberately stricter than the American legal defintion of fair use, in part to minimize the chance of someone coming in and claiming that something's not fair use. We're already on shaky ground legally, so of course we can be more lax with images, and I think the vast majority of our images are arguably fair use. So unless you can show me images on here that are unquestionably not fair use, I don't see the double standard you're referring to. (FWIW, I agree with your points about full lyrics be unencyclopedic; I just think the copyright issues are more important here.) Master Jonathan — Jedi Council Chambers Monday, December 19, 2011, 19:12 UTC
- And to MJ: I'm not disagreeing with you completely; I think full lyrics are a copyvio. I'm just saying that it's a double standard to ban them strictly because of that. As for images, I used to be fairly active on Wikipedia, and there, the standard of fair use is generally held to be, "Is this image essential to reader understanding of the subject of the article?" I think we're much more lax that than. That said, if we start a CT on banning lyrics, I'm, at the end of the day, simply arguing that fair use/copyvio should not be the sole criterion for such a ban. Encyclopedic aims should be given some weight too. ~Savage
- (outdent) (to Fred) That would probably be best. (to Trayus) Using a template that claims fair use doesn't make it fair use. The point above is that we can't make a legitimate fair use claim on full lyrics. No amount of prettying it up with attribution, source, fair use statement, etc. can change that. As for the example on the template page, I'm going to replace that with some lorum ipsum here in a few minutes to eliminate the fair use issue. Master Jonathan — Jedi Council Chambers Monday, December 19, 2011, 20:47 UTC
- I think Fred's proposal is good as well. ~Savage 02:30, December 20, 2011 (UTC)
- I think Fred's proposal is good as well. ~Savage
The one problem I see with any usage of lyrics is that they might conceivably be subject to the whims of copyright holders other than Lucasfilm. We can be relatively sure that LFL will turn a blind eye, but if we get noticed by, say, Sony, then we're utterly screwed. -- Darth Culator (Talk) 02:40, December 20, 2011 (UTC)
- Yeah, but I doubt anyone is gonna say anything if we just quote the chorus or something small. MasterFred(Whatever) 06:14, December 20, 2011 (UTC)
- SOPA, if passed, would allow the US government to block any website even suspected of copyright infringement of any sort, which is exactly what we would be doing, no matter how minor. Are you willing to run the risk that Wookieepedia becomes blocked to American Internet users because of this? I'm certainly not. Toprawa and Ralltiir 06:22, December 20, 2011 (UTC)
- There goes most of the Internet. :P Well, if passed, we should definitely make sure whatever we do is perfectly legal. MasterFred(Whatever) 06:28, December 20, 2011 (UTC)
- As humorous as it may sound, in all seriousness "there goes most of the Internet" may not be too far from reality in some respects. There are serious efforts underway by major Internet companies (Amazon, eBay, Facebook, etc.) to stop this legislation from passing because so many websites would be at instant jeopardy of being shut down. Facebook, for example, would be under serious legal pressure simply if one of its users posts a link to a pirated download, so you can imagine the level of paranoid monitoring that will be going on. It is most definitely within our best interests to ensure we follow the letter of the law in this case as best as we can. Toprawa and Ralltiir 06:38, December 20, 2011 (UTC)
- I am not enjoying the idea of SOPA destroying the fabric of the internet in one felt swoop. Granted if it does pass and someone has their way, one could argue that Wikimedia itself could be destroyed. -- Riffsyphon1024 08:10, December 20, 2011 (UTC)
- Indeed, there is a whole project page on Wikipedia discussing what steps to take for a protest, up to and including completely blanking the entire site and locking the database. That page also has comments and notes from the Wikimedia Foundation general counsel on just what kind of impact SOPA would have. Master Jonathan — Jedi Council Chambers Tuesday, December 20, 2011, 17:06 UTC
- I am not enjoying the idea of SOPA destroying the fabric of the internet in one felt swoop. Granted if it does pass and someone has their way, one could argue that Wikimedia itself could be destroyed. -- Riffsyphon1024 08:10, December 20, 2011 (UTC)
- As humorous as it may sound, in all seriousness "there goes most of the Internet" may not be too far from reality in some respects. There are serious efforts underway by major Internet companies (Amazon, eBay, Facebook, etc.) to stop this legislation from passing because so many websites would be at instant jeopardy of being shut down. Facebook, for example, would be under serious legal pressure simply if one of its users posts a link to a pirated download, so you can imagine the level of paranoid monitoring that will be going on. It is most definitely within our best interests to ensure we follow the letter of the law in this case as best as we can. Toprawa and Ralltiir 06:38, December 20, 2011 (UTC)
- There goes most of the Internet. :P Well, if passed, we should definitely make sure whatever we do is perfectly legal. MasterFred
- SOPA, if passed, would allow the US government to block any website even suspected of copyright infringement of any sort, which is exactly what we would be doing, no matter how minor. Are you willing to run the risk that Wookieepedia becomes blocked to American Internet users because of this? I'm certainly not. Toprawa and Ralltiir 06:22, December 20, 2011 (UTC)