Talk:Panay incident

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A very large block of text is a copy directly from http://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/summer_2001_two_japans_1.html. According to the copyright notice on that page, free use is not confirmed. I have pulled all the copied text (which is unfortunate because it was really good). If someone can confirm that we are allowed to use the text as is, please source your confirmation of copyright on this page and add the text back to the article. Rossami 23:16, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC)

See Copyright if you dont fully understand why it is ok to copy text directly from http://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/summer_2001_two_japans_1.html . Perl 23:45, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Not only have I read the Wikipedia article on copyrights, I have also read the relevant US law. I refer you specifically to the copyright clauses on the National Archives website including

• "Generally, materials produced by Federal agencies are in the public domain and may be reproduced without permission. However, not all materials appearing on this website are in the public domain. Some materials have been donated or obtained from individuals or organizations and may be subject to restrictions on use." (emphasis added)
• "we can not confirm copyright status for any item."
• "Please note that because we cannot guaranty the status of specific items, you use materials found in our holdings at your own risk." and
• "We request that you link to our site rather than downloading portions of it...".

Add to those disclaimers the facts that

• the NARA article is specifically attributed to an individual (Trevor K Plante)
• the Wikipedia article was virtually 100% cut and paste from their article (even down to the footnote numbers, though the footnotes themselves were not brought over).

With all that, I do not believe that Wikipedia automatically falls under the fair use clause. If you are qualified to give a legal opinion based on the available evidence, please do so. Otherwise, I ask again for affirmative evidence that the cut text did not constitute a copyright violation. Rossami 04:36, 9 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Note that the "we can not confirm copyright status for any item." statement (and the others like it) applies to the numerous items contained within the National Archives. I'm pretty sure they'd be willing to confirm the copyright status of their own publication. -- Cyrius 05:46, 9 Mar 2004 (UTC)

US Government material is copyright free unless they indicate otherwise. Perl 19:20, 9 Mar 2004 (UTC)

The question is, does that material belong to the US government, or does it belong to Mr. Plante. While I believe it is public domain (given that Mr. Plante is a NARA employee, and it is a NARA publication), the online version of Prologue does not contain any information to clear up who has the rights to what. It won't hurt anything for you to ask them. -- Cyrius 21:50, 9 Mar 2004 (UTC)

If Mr. Plante is an employee of the US government, then it IS public domain. Perl 21:59, 9 Mar 2004 (UTC)

If you mean that statement to be an absolute rule, it is not true. Read the law. It is true only of materials created in his official capacity as an employee. He retains personal rights to anything he creates in his free time even if he later donates it (which he could do with restrictions) to his employer. While I agree with you that the source is probably in the public domain, the only way to know for sure is to ask NARA. I have not been able to get through (and have not had much time to try). Have you? Rossami 16:54, 10 Mar 2004 (UTC)

By the way, the law also says that they do not have to mark the copyrighted material as copyrighted anymore. The responsibility of confirming fair use is now on the user. Rossami

[edit] Public domain

I got tired of the useless assertations, so I took an entirely radical and unthinkable step to solve the problem. I asked them.

Features written by NARA staff are in the public domain. Prologue does not hold any copyright, but individual authors may choose to copyright. Trevor Plante is a NARA archivist, and therefore his article is in the public domain. Copyrighted articles are indicated by the (c) symbol after the author's name.

Even though there is no copyright, we are interested to know where Prologue features are reprinted and ask that, as a courtesy, Prologue is given as the source.

Thank you for inquiring.

Mary C. Ryan

Policy & Communications Staff - NPOL

NPOL being the policy branch of NARA. There's an email address and a phone number attached, but I'm not putting them up unless requested to do so.

There, was that really so hard? -- Cyrius 20:10, 10 Mar 2004 (UTC)