User talk:MinutiaeMan

Welcome to Wikipedia! I hope you're liking what you see here. You can find tips on editing at Wikipedia:How to edit a page, and you can practice, if you want, at Wikipedia:Sandbox. If you have questions, ask me here or ask in general at the Village pump. I also wanted to note that I appreciated your work at Alpha Cenaturi, but wanted to note that we already had the article at Alpha Centauri, which is where Alpha Cenaturi now points. I hope you won't mind, and will keep making valuable contributions! Best wishes, Jwrosenzweig 21:24, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

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Hey Dan - wow, never thought I'd meet another UD student here ;) And we've even edited the same science fiction articles! →Raul654 02:02, Feb 24, 2004 (UTC)~

Memory Alpha

Hi, I stupidly assumed that Memory Alpha would use the same license we do. Are you sure Creative Commons does not allow my usage? According to CC:

"Collective Work" means a work, such as a periodical issue, anthology or encyclopedia, in which the Work in its entirety in unmodified form, along with a number of other contributions, constituting separate and independent works in themselves, are assembled into a collective whole. A work that constitutes a Collective Work will not be considered a Derivative Work (as defined below) for the purposes of this License.

Subject to the terms and conditions of this License, Licensor hereby grants You a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive, perpetual (for the duration of the applicable copyright) license to exercise the rights in the Work as stated below:

1. to reproduce the Work, to incorporate the Work into one or more Collective Works, and to reproduce the Work as incorporated in the Collective Works;

What, precisely, seems to be the problem? I made sure to link back to specified Memory Alpha entry in each article taken.EDGE 02:56, Sep 29, 2004 (UTC)

Futhermore (from Memory Alpha (http://www.memory-alpha.org/en/index.php/Memory_Alpha:Copyrights))

Anyone is free to use the text content of Memory Alpha in websites, articles, or other publications, provided you follow the guidelines of the designated Creative Commons License, which establishes the following requirements:

• you may not use the works for commercial purposes,
• you must acknowledge the authorship of the original article, and
• for any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work.

If you are simply duplicating the Memory Alpha article, the second and third obligations can be fulfilled by providing a conspicuous direct link back to the Memory Alpha article hosted on this website. EDGE 03:09, Sep 29, 2004 (UTC)

Slander

You have stated:

The following Star Trek-related articles have been copied from Memory Alpha (http://www.memory-alpha.org/) without permission. Memory Alpha's Creative Commons License (by-nc) is incompatible with the GFDL. As far as I am aware, all of these articles were duplicated by EDGE. -- Dan Carlson 20:53, Sep 28, 2004 (UTC) link (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyright_problems#September_29)

Please review the Creative Commons License. One does not need permission from Alpha Memory to copy content so long as it is done in accordance to the rest of the Creative Common License. The real issue is that it is not compatible with Wikipedia's policy (http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2004-April/012133.html) as set by Jimbo Wales. Your statement above is wrong, and I would like you to change it to reflect this. Failure to comply will be considered an unwarranted personal attack. EDGE 04:55, Sep 29, 2004 (UTC)

Why copying from Memory Alpha to Wikipedia is wrong

EDGE, the reason that I'm complaining about the lack of permission is because of Wikipedia's policy: All contributions to Wikipedia are released under the GNU Free Documentation License. This statement is clearly visible at the bottom of every edit page. The Memory Alpha content which you have copied is governed by the CC by-nc license, not the GNU FDL. In order for the MA content to be released under the GFDL, you must be granted specific permission for the content in question. This is because the GFDL is incompatible with the CCL -- the CCL that MA uses has the additional "non-commercial" stipulation, while the GFDL specifically permits commercial use of its licensed content.

Therefore, although Memory Alpha does in general permit the copying of its content, in the case of Wikipedia (and other GFDL-licensed works), MA content cannot be directly copied into Wikipedia without specific permission from every contributor to the article in question. (I know, because I wrote those copyright notices for Memory Alpha myself!)

I'm sorry if you feel that my raising of this issue constitutes a personal attack, but I think that your defensive response is completely unjustified. All I'm trying to do is protect the letter of the copyright terms that Memory Alpha's content is governed by. I'm always glad to see new people get interested in the project that I helped start, but I want to make sure that our work is protected under the terms that we have established for our community.

If this response doesn't answer all your questions, I'm still willing to work with you on this. -- Dan Carlson 14:38, Sep 29, 2004 (UTC)

=== My beef with you ===

I agree that putting Memory Alpha`s work on Wikipedia contradicts Wikipedian policy. I have stated as much above, even providing a link to the relevant policy document.

However, that is not initially what you accused me of. You accused me of stealing Alpha Memory's work in not respect its Creative Commons copyright policy. According to my understanding of the Creative Commons, I did not do this, and have still not seen you back that assertion up. Furthermore, you claim on the copyright violation page that I am stealing copyrighted work. This is wrong.

My actions were ultimately against Wikipedia's policy, but they do not contravene Memory Alpha's policy, notably the Creative Commons license. And yet I am accused of ripping Memory Alpha off.

Please review the text you posted on my talk page and the text posted on the copyright violation page. Do you not see where I am coming from? They are both very misleading and put me in a very bad light. I am pooled as a thief of other`s copyrighted works, while all I did was contravene a policy set out by Jimbo Wales concerning usage of Creative Commons.

Please make the appropriate corrections.

EDGE, I don't think that you read my message thoroughly enough. I said that, by submitting Memory Alpha's content to Wikipedia, you are claiming that you have the right to release that material under the GNU FDL, which is most definitely not the case. Memory Alpha content is governed by the CCL, not the GFDL. Therefore, what you have done does indeed constitute "theft" in that you are releasing material that does not belong to you under a license that you are not authorized to grant. I'm not arguing about Wikipedia policy here at all, it's the simple fact that the copyrights aren't compatible.

Yes, it is true that Memory Alpha content may be copied freely, as long as it is under the conditions of the CC by-nc license. You have changed that by adding the content to Wikipedia -- in effect changing the CCL into the GFDL, which is something you can't do without permission. That is what I'm saying is the problem here.

I wasn't trying to make a big stink about this, I was just trying to point out your mistake in a friendly way so that it can be fixed. In the future, you might want to be more careful and not assume people are trying to attack you personally! -- Dan Carlson 01:55, Sep 30, 2004 (UTC)

I'm glad we've worked that out. I found your language unecessarily strong. If you had first come to me and said: Hey, Memory Alpha is creative commons and you cannot release it via Wikipedia because this effectively changes the license.. I would have said: "oh, no problem. Thanks for the notice."

When I first checked the copyright violation page, I read: EDGE is going around stealing articles and violating copyrights.. this is fairly harsh language for what was, in short, a confusion involving copyright licenses. I am not the most knowledgeable person in this field, and as I first said, I stupidly assumed Memory Alpha used the same copyright as Wikipedia because they are both wikis. Kind of silly in retrospect, but I hope you can forgive my ignorance. In beauty, EDGE 02:37, Sep 30, 2004 (UTC)