Wikipedia talk:Copyright problems

This is the talk page for discussing Copyright problems and anything related to its purposes and tasks.

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Advice pages rework

I've been working on rewriting WP:CPAA to be much less wordy and noticed that the /Advice for clerks page is basically the exact same as the /Advice for admins page and the only difference is that the clerks one tells you how to request admins to do things for you. I'm going to merge them together and rename it; something like Wikipedia:Copyright problems/Instructions? Sennecaster (Chat) 21:44, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hi all, I've updated the instructions page and redirected the clerks page to it. Please give it a lookover. I feel like I've adequately captured most of what we do to clean up articles, but would appreciate feedback. Sennecaster (Chat) 15:30, 30 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

3rd Opinion needed urgently

Please advise and provide an outside judgment at Talk:Nose cone design#Copyvio cleanup, where Andy Dingley disputes my removal and the tagging of the article as a copyvio. Sennecaster (Chat) 20:21, 15 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Fair use of OpenCritic

I recently tagged this as a copyvio for quoting the entire OpenCritic consensus, which I think constitutes a "substabtial portion of the work" and therefore isn't fair use. This was the response. If it is true that this is a common practice, does that indicate a significant cleanup operation is necessary, or is my interpretation of fair use flawed? lp0 on fire () 19:31, 11 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Lp0 on fire; overusage of quotes is something we will remove under NFC and copyright grounds; I checked that article and there is a substantial amount of quotation in that article that even if it doesn't foul copyright and NFC policy, is not encyclopedic. I believe you're correct here in that significant cleanup is needed. This isn't considered good practice and it shouldn't be across articles with review sections. Review sections like the one you've linked don't survive GAN or FAC, for instance. Sennecaster (Chat) 21:13, 11 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Sennecaster: thanks. To confirm, this tagging is correct? I feel awful requesting revdel for a year of history. lp0 on fire () 22:00, 11 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, it's correct, although I've declined it as being too many diffs to hide proportionate to the amount of text removed. It's not an exact science, but I suspect most people would have declined that one. It's a bit of an art to get down, figuring out how large of a removal warrants a request when the revision count is quite high on a page and the insertion of copyvio is quite far back. Sennecaster (Chat) 23:46, 11 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Ah okay; thanks. We're allowed to just… not delete it if we don't want to? I was under the impression violations aren't allowed to exist at all anywhere in the history. lp0 on fire () 07:34, 12 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Lp0 on fire Are they meant to exist at all? Probably not. I mean, I'd imagine that if the copyright holder sends a takedown notice to the Wikimedia Foundation (or puts up enough of a fuss), then it will go - but removing history really does interfere with the ability of other editors to use page history. So us volunteers (who are not, at the end of the day, responsible for other people's copyright violations) aren't going to always want to press the revdel button. (Sort of how like we could revdel for unattributed copying from CC sources - but we opt to repair instead. Again, push comes to shove, the copyright owner could probably make the WMF nuke the history, depending on the exact license, but once it's been repaired, there's a lot less incentive to do that.) GreenLipstickLesbian 💌🧸 07:45, 12 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks; that makes a lot of sense. lp0 on fire () 07:48, 12 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Copyright concern at Suprabhatam#Śrī_Venkaṭeśa_Suprabhātam

I had started a talk at Talk:Suprabhatam#Including_all_verses_of_Suprabhatam_or_Strotram with my concerns - including concern for large amount of content copied from a primary source. After I had removed, seems an IP has restored the content. It would be helpful if someone else here could also look at this. Thanks. Asteramellus (talk) 00:20, 17 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Responded on the talk page Sennecaster (Chat) 20:18, 17 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Revdel requested for Árni Björnsson

This page was listed as needing CV revdel, but on closer look only two sentences are actual violations (these are clear violations in that they are unattributed, but the violation is 30 words long). Would revdel be overkill? I'm asking because usually, entire paragraphs of violations do get suppressed, but this passage is short enough to take up just one line on my screen. – Epicgenius (talk) 04:42, 25 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I made the cv-revdel request. My reading of Wikipedia:Copyright violations § Parts of article violate copyright is that cv-revdel should always be requested if there is a violation. There is nothing about the amount of infringing material. Cheers, SunloungerFrog (talk) 05:20, 25 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@SunloungerFrog, thanks for chiming in. I was leaning toward declining the request because the violation is extremely short (we regularly allow correctly-attributed quotes of the same length to remain on Wikipedia without revdeling them). Additionally, the admin guide on this recommends that "Oftentimes, for non-immediate reverts, a minimum of 500 bytes of removed text is used and scales with the amount of revisions to hide". You didn't do anything wrong; I wanted to get another admin's feedback before taking any action. – Epicgenius (talk) 05:33, 25 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Looks like another admin has carried out the revdel anyway. Cheers, SunloungerFrog (talk) 06:43, 25 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I appreciate the update. As for the general cases regarding revdeling short passages, I've gotten feedback in that regard as well, so this thread can be considered settled. – Epicgenius (talk) 15:38, 25 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]