User:Marshallsumter/Attribution and copyright policy

Attribution or credit means to let everyone know where a piece of knowledge, even as small as a "least publishable unit", is from.

Notation
To help with definitions, their meanings and intents, there is the learning resource theory of definitionl.

Notation: Let the letters "Def." indicate that a definition is following.

Least publishable unit
A "least publishable unit" (LPU) is an older expression for the smallest possible fact that has been determined to be a fact that just might be publishable, and has not as yet been published.

LPUs seem to be everywhere yet each one probably has an originator who may have included it in a published context somewhere. When one occurs in a text without attribution to an earlier source, the author including it usually gets the credit, and the honor, of introducing that little fact to everyone.

Some LPUs require extensive research and exploration to determine what they are and prove that they are. The phrase "dominant group" initially appears to be an LPU. Its earliest origin on Wikipedia is not known.

Plagiarism
Here's a simple example: from Edmond Halley, "In 1718 he discovered the proper motion of the "fixed" stars by comparing his astrometric measurements with those given in Ptolemy's Almagest." A least publishable unit is that Halley had a copy of the Almagest available to him that he compared his efforts to. While it makes sense considering his position at the University of Oxford, he'd have access, but how did anyone know that he made this comparison? This little tiny fact (hopefully) has no attribution or citation. Okay, maybe the fact is in the PUBLIC DOMAIN. I don't care. I want to know who found that out or where that little fact came from. While it may not be plagiarism that no citation for this little fact is given (I think it may be), I may have to search high and low to find out. Worse, let's say someone just found this out by reviewing an old handwritten note left in the University of Oxford archives that Halley really did this. Who ever found this out has had a part of his/her soul stolen and appropriated by whomever put this in the article without a citation. Not a big deal - Yes it is!

"If you have referred material from the writings of earlier scholars, please be bold enough to give the reference. Not doing so is plagiarism - an academic sin which must be avoided at all costs." "The act of stealing from the writings of another person and passing the material off as one’s own is a form of intellectual property theft. In other words, plagiarism is an act of fraud. It involves both stealing someone else’s work and pretending that this is to be one’s own and, lying about it afterward."

“Plagiarism is the act of using the words of another without giving the originator credit.” Yes, but more importantly is the phrase "put it into your own words". Briefly this means some kind of factual synonymy. Beautiful! But, the 'synonymizer' didn't determine the fact, the apparent originator who put it in the literature did. "Within these quotes is a short sentence that may contain a fact, even a little tiny inconspicuous fact."[1] Let's say the quotes were left off, who cares why, but the citation [1] is still there. Credit has been given! No plagiarism. It's better with the quotes there but in the past and in some disciplines quotes are forbidden, but the citation is not. What about the synonymy "put it in your own words". Not an excuse to uncite anything. I don't care whether the synonymizer understands the fact or not. I want to know where the synonymizer got it from. And, the person who determined that fact is going to want to know why the cite was left off.

Some authors, editors, writers, article creators "think that changing the words is sufficient to avoid plagiarism." So they leave off the citation. Wrong!

"Plagiarism also can be an unintentional or accidental [act] when there is careless omission of citations and failure in using quotation marks".

Everyone makes mistakes too! But, here's the important part. Let's say someone writes 100 sentences that should have an attribution or citation after them or within them somewhere and misses one. Is that plagiarism? Well, for that one sentence, yes. But, the other 99 are cited. The rule of thumb is "beyond reasonable doubt", that's better than 98% certainty. So is it beyond reasonable doubt that the author who wrote those 100 sentences is not plagiarizing. Yes! Should we shoot the author for that one - no! But if you find it let the author know so it can be cited. If you don't, you could be considered an accessory after the fact. In addition, give the author the benefit of the doubt (assume good faith, AGF). It's not only the good thing to do, in many countries it's the law - to do anything else may be a serious crime! When the author is no longer with Wikipedia, Wikiversity, or other Wikimedia resources, then it's up to you. You found it, please have the courage to fix it (be bold). At the other extreme is to put the whole page up for deletion (AfD) on Wikipedia, (RfD) on Wikiversity, where each Wikimedia resource may have its own version.

Copyright violation
“One of the least understood laws that affects or potentially affects perhaps 90% of the school teachers in the country is the Copyright Act.” “The primary violations are of two types: illegal copying and illegal display or performance.” “Illegal copying occurs when public educators copy music, poetry, literature, current news articles, and computer software without permission of the copyright holder.”

Often a copyright notice will say "whole or in part", so how much is that? Whole is the easy one. So don't copy the whole thing without permission, unless it's been proven to be in the PUBLIC DOMAIN. Even when it is I still like to give credit with a Credit: line, as for images. There are arguments pro and con about copyright and payment. Usually there's an initial lump sum, salary, or wage, sometimes followed by a royalty, say 5% for each individual reuse of the whole thing, or for a neat part design the assembly line manufacture of which is being used on automobiles. But not forever with every penny you have.

What about the 'part' part? Usually, that refers to one page of many. Of course, if the entire thing is one page, then copying it is a violation without consent, when it's copyrighted. But, sentences that are cited with or without quotes are a part. Here again I use the "beyond reasonable doubt" principle. Let's say an article has 10,000 words and I quote 150 in ten sentences either all together or scattered about. And, I cite them. The part used is less than 2%. Is it a copyright violation? I say no. It's Fair Use. Even more than that is something most don't think about. I'm citing the source. The usual argument is that by taking any small part I've lowered the value of the creator's work. No, what I've done is increase the value of the creator's work. Because anyone who reads what I've written knows where it came from and can check it out. Every time that happens, the original and its creator have their value increased. From an author's perspective, the worst that can happen is no one reads what you've written any more. Now that's zero value or even negative value. It's just a journal on a shelf, now in microfiche, or in a memory chip somewhere, maybe.

It has been written that “any work can be reduced to plagiarism if enough research is done.” Paraphrasing this regarding copyright, 'any work can be reduced to copyright violation if enough research is done.' This is where the nebulous concepts of 'fair' and 'reasonable'; hence, fair use, come in. Also, within fair use is the idea of "likely to be replaceable by public domain material." This is better providing the PUBLIC DOMAIN text serves the exact same purposes. If it does not, then the referenced source should remain.

Wikipedia and to a lesser extent Wikiversity have an added problem as I see it. Free use suggests that someone eager to make a profit can take anything from these websites with almost no cost and become billionaires. Maybe not! Each such commercial user had better have someone perform due diligence just in case. Do the wikis have a responsibility to profiters or non-profiters to ensure that whatever they take from the wikis is free? Perhaps; hence, the rules in use. Prefer to do no harm and strive for the better good. Unpaid, unsolicited contributory efforts are covered by the 'good samaritan' principle. Does that mean someone won't try to take the contributor to court and take their every dime? No, it means that if they try, the contributor can counter sue them and hopefully win, and collect lawyers fees from them. And the contributor should! But wikimedia will be sued! There is a legal way to separate wikimedia from contributor's efforts and for the contributor to go after the suer.

Short quotation
Here the word 'short' means something less than quoting the full written work. "[T]he right of quotation and criticism ... is a basic prerequisite of any journalist's or scientist's works." "This right should also be effectively protected under the conditions of DRM [Digital Rights Management] and access to the relevant information should not be prevented by technical measures."

"According to Copyright Law of the United States: ... Short quotations of a copyrighted publication may be reproduced without permission in books, articles, and other publications. This is often interpreted as fewer than 250 words (in total) from a book-length work or less than 5% of a journal article." Just to illustrate: all of the quotes from More total 160 words of a total of 5704; i.e., 2.81%. While this is above my preferred less than 2% rule, it is below the 285 words of the 5% rule indicated.

"[T]he French copyright act recognise[s] a right of short quotation". But, "the complete representation of a protected work [is] not covered by the right to make short quotations."

An older ruling by the Landgericht Berlin (District Court) in 1960 indicated that there are "statutory exceptions for quotation" with respect to copyright law. But, "the German Copyright Act [does] not allow quoting protected works in their integrity in the press." "[A]n integral reproduction of caricatures must be allowed under special circumstances, such as political debates, where the possibility to quote the political adversary is necessary."

From the German Constitutional Court back in 1978, of the legislator, "He shall bring into just equation and balance the constitutionally guaranteed requirement of a reasonable use of the creative accomplishment and the interests of the general public worthy of protection". This statement is to provide guidance for resolving conflicts "between the individual proprietary interests and the general cultural, social and political interests arising in the digital environment."

"Considering that DRM systems will most probably affect the general conditions of intellectual freedom in democratic societies this issue is too important to be left to the industry to determine." The Supreme Court of Austria "the (OGH) on 3 October 2000" noted "the exception for the use of copyright protected works in quotations." in the Austrian Copyright Act.

Over on Wikiquote are several quotation guidelines (unreferenced):
 * 1) Length of quotes - "a maximum of 250 words per quote", that's about 20-25 lines from a journal article,
 * 2) Books - "[a] recommended maximum of five lines of prose or eight lines of poetry for every ten pages of a book not in the public domain. This is equal to about 1.25% of the total content of a book."
 * 3) "Adding unsourced quotes to articles will be reverted." - plagiarism!

On Harper & Row v. Nation Enterprises/Dissent Brennan are many excellent points regarding use of quotations (Fair Use) by Supreme Court Justice Brennan. Also, Harper & Row v. Nation Enterprises/Opinion of the Court contains a few additional, albeit limited points. The case was actually focused on using quotes prior to original publication as a violation of copyright, but the justices took the opportunity to clarify the fair use issue to some extent.

Policy and law
All of the following points are at present opinion only.

"True copyright violation is a matter of policy".


 * 1) Within the boundaries of the United States of America, excepting ambassadorial stations, no entity, corporate, non-profit, or otherwise, can legislate (make policy) against the Constitution, Bill of Rights, constitutional legislative law, or case law.
 * 2) Standard operating procedures (SOPs), statements of policy (SoPs), or other similar internal policies cannot contradict, suggest, or appear to suggest contradiction to point 1 above. They are considered legal documents that indicate entity compliance with stated laws.

Calumny
From the article Defamation: "Defamation—also called calumny, vilification, traducement, slander (for transitory statements), and libel (for written, broadcast, or otherwise published words)—is the communication of a statement that makes a claim, expressly stated or implied to be factual, that may give an individual, business, product, group, government, or nation a negative image. It is usually a requirement that this claim be false and that the publication is communicated to someone other than the person defamed (the claimant). False:
 * Ron Hankin, Navigating the Legal Minefield of Private Investigations: A Career-Saving Guide for Private Investigators, Detectives, And Security Police, Looseleaf Law Publications, 2008, p. 59. "There are five essential elements to defamation: (1) The accusation is false; and (2) it impeaches the subject's character; and (3) it is published to a third person; and (4) it damages the reputation of the subject; and (5) that the accusation is done intentionally or with fault such as wanton disregard of facts."
 * Roger LeRoy Miller, Gaylord A. Jentz, Business Law Today: The Essentials, Cengage Learning, 2007, p. 115. "In other words, making a negative statement about another person is not defamation unless the statement is false and represents something as a fact (for example, 'Vladik cheats on his taxes') rather than a personal opinion (for example, 'Vladik is a jerk')."
 * Michael G. Parkinson, L. Marie Parkinson, Law for advertising, broadcasting, journalism, and public relations, Routledge, 2006, p. 273. "Simplifying a very complicated decision, the court said that because the plaintiff must prove a statement is false in order to win an action in defamation, it is impossible to win an action in defamation if the statement, by its very nature, cannot be proven false."
 * Edward Lee Lamoureux, Steven L. Baron, Claire Stewart, Intellectual property law and interactive media: free for a fee, Peter Lang, 2009, p. 190. "A statement can only be defamatory if it is false; therefore true statements of fact about others, regardless of the damage rendered, are not defamatory (although such comments might represent other sorts of privacy or hate speech violations). Defamation may occur when one party (the eventual defendant if a case goes forward) writes or says something that is false about a second party (plaintiff) such that some third party "receives" the communication, and the communication of false information damages the plaintiff". "

Libel
From the article Defamation: "[L]ibel refers to any other form of communication such as written words or images. Most jurisdictions allow legal actions, civil and/or criminal, to deter various kinds of defamation and retaliate against groundless criticism."

From the article Defamation: "False light laws are "intended primarily to protect the plaintiff's mental or emotional well-being." If a publication of information is false, then a tort of defamation might have occurred. If that communication is not technically false but is still misleading, then a tort of false light might have occurred. "

From the article Defamation: "In most civil law jurisdictions, defamation is dealt with as a crime rather than a tort. "

From the article Defamation: "Libel is defined as defamation by written or printed words, pictures, or in any form other than by spoken words or gestures. The law of libel originated in the 17th century in England. With the growth of publication came the growth of libel and development of the tort of libel. "

From the article Defamation: "There are several ways a person must go about proving that libel has taken place. For example, in the United States, the person first must prove that the statement was false. Second, that person must prove that the statement caused harm. And, third, they must prove that the statement was made without adequate research into the truthfulness of the statement. These steps are for an ordinary citizen."

Usurpation
If "warranted neither by the letter nor by the spirit of the supreme law of the land and is, therefore, rank usurpation."

From Ultra vires: "Under constitutional law, particularly in Canada and the United States, constitutions give federal and provincial or state governments various powers. To go outside those powers would be ultra vires".

Consensus and majority rule:

While usually majority or plurality rule is acceptable, it cannot violate point 1 above. Nor can any majority, plurality, or consensus determination force any group, minority, or individual against point 1.

Written expression in defense of civil or individual liberties guaranteed by point 1 above cannot be abridged by majority, plurality, consensus, group, minority, or individual.