h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

A couple of times recently I've had posts removed because I've quoted too much from another site.

I'm curious about three things:

1. Has h2g2 tightened up on this recently? I've always tended to post chunks of text from elsewhere, but don't remember getting modded for it until now.

2. Is it most likely I have been yikesed by a researcher (I can't imagine that the Mods or Eds are out looking for overquoting)? Has anyone else had this happen?

3. Can I quote freely from sites with a Creative Commons licence? (that might be a question for Feedback).


Here's the relevnant bit from the Mods' email:

>>>
Thank you for contributing to a BBC community site. Unfortunately we've had to remove your content below because it contravened one of our House Rules.

This decision has been made because it contains material on which the copyright appears to be owned by someone else. You can find out more about Intellectual Property Law at http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/hub/HouseRules-Copyright

Please do not post large chunks of text copied from other sources: this may be an infringement of copyright. Short quotes to illustrate a point may be permissible, although this is at our discretion.

If you wish to reference external sources of information, it's better to include a link to an appropriate external website. All external links included in postings must meet our editorial guidelines: http://www.bbc.co.uk/messageboards/newguide/popup_editorial_guidelines.html
<<<

Last time I checked we were still under reactive moderation, so if posts have been removed, they've been yiksed by someone or other.

As to licencing of texts...

My guess is that the moderators haven't the time or ability to check whether a particular text is under copyright or not - so if someone yikses a post and tells them it's copyright, they've got no choice but to remove it - and then it's up to you to respond to the e-mail and get the Italics involved.

It's always been against the rules to quote large chunks of text from other sites, and I would always yikes such a posting for possible copyright infringement if I saw it.

How big a chunk is too big in your opinion, Gnomon?


Here's one of the Creative Commons licences:

>>>
Attribution 2.5

You are free:

to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work
to make derivative works
to make commercial use of the work
Under the following conditions:


Attribution. You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor.
For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work.
Any of these conditions can be waived if you get permission from the copyright holder.
Your fair use and other rights are in no way affected by the above.
<<<

Creative Commons website

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/

And that extract, while substantial, is licenced under that attribution (meaning that website has given permission to use content from its site according to the above, so please don't yikes it).

I've also just started to read wiki's copyright policy, which seems to grant free access thus:

>>
The license Wikipedia uses grants free access to our content in the same sense as free software is licensed freely. This principle is known as copyleft. That is to say, Wikipedia content can be copied, modified, and redistributed so long as the new version grants the same freedoms to others and acknowledges the authors of the Wikipedia article used (a direct link back to the article satisfies our author credit requirement). Wikipedia articles therefore will remain free forever and can be used by anybody subject to certain restrictions, most of which serve to ensure that freedom.
<<<

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyrights


One of the posts I had modded was a wiki quote



I'm also looking at the various bbc pages that might affect this. Is it true that it's this bit that is the core of it, which basically says that everything you post here has to be your own work, irregardless if you have permission to post someone else's work?

>>>
Further to paragraph 9, by submitting your contribution to bbc.co.uk, you:
10.1 warrant that your contribution;

10.1.1 is your own original work and that you have the right to make it available to the BBC for all the purposes specified above;
<<<

http://www.bbc.co.uk/terms/

How big a chunk is too big in my opinion?

A small paragraph is ok, say six lines or so. Bigger than that is too big for comfort. Copyright laws allow you to quote small amounts for illustrative purposes. If I yikes the posting, it is up to the moderators to decide how big is too big.

Wikipedia's license is not compatible with BBC's terms. Wikipedia information is free to all, provided it is passed on with the same rights all along the way. But publishing something on h2g2 means that (a) it is your own work and (b) you are giving the BBC permission to do anything they like with it, which they are not allowed to do by the Wikipedia license.

So you should only quote small chunks of Wikipedia. But there's nothing to stop you using the information in Wikipedia, rewording it into your own words.

Ok, so the issue isn't really about concern over other people's rights, it's about the incompatibility between using legal offsite content and the bbc's ownership of what I post.

Even that doens't make sense though, because the bbc could just agree to use quoted text from free licences in the way they are designed to be used

Although I guess that would be too complicated for an already strained moderation system.

Pasting massive quotes from other sources is just a bit ugly to look at too, to be fair, and a lazy form of contributing. If you want to show people a page, why not paste a link to it (which you are allowed to do), with perhaps a short quote of no more than a line or two to illustrate which part you're directing people to?

The Mods won't spend time working out whether the piece is copyright-free or otherwise; they'll always err on the side of caution. But h2g2 is not a recepticle for the world-wide web, and it's just repetition if all we do is reproduce huge swathes of text when a simple link will suffice.

Additionally, if you paste text from another source that contains a word currently being searched by the profanity filter for legal reasons, you may find your post automatically referred to the Mods, which can also increase the likelihood that it's failed if it looks like it's been pasted in from another source.

The main issue is, we don't want to see how well you can find what other people are saying; we want *your* contributions, not Wikipedia's (Heck no, not Wikipedia's).

Oi Smij, it's Saturday. What the hell are you doing here? It feels like the parents are watching what we're up to!

My excuse is, I haven't been in the office for three of the last four weeks.