Last week, theSignpost was alerted toa blog in which a Cambridge researcher, ProfessorPeter Murray-Rust, observed thatSpringer Science+Business Media is taking Wikimedia content and asserting copyright over it. In his words, this is the "apparent systematic relicensing and relabeling" of Wikimedia content, "a breach of copyright and therefore illegal in most jurisdictions".
One commenter at Murray-Rust's blog sought to explain how this could have happened, rightly pointing out thecopyright transfer process: "Folks have been submitting articles to Springer, using Wikimedia images in them, and during upload have ticked a box saying they were the creator of all images. During this process, Springer likely requires you to assign copyright to them. Springer now slightly lazily assumes it owns copyright on the images. No great conspiracy." Murray-Rust responded, "But laziness is no defence in law. And Springer are SELLING these. If I appropriate someone's scholarly image I check. Springer [does not]."
Murray-Rust's accusations drew a sharp response from Springer's executive vice president, Wim van der Stelt, on theGoogle+SpringerOpen blog:
Mr [sic] Murray-Rust not only attributes the problem incorrectly to Springer Images, but also insinuates that Springer is selling commercial rights to use images that are alreadyopen access. This is not only outrageous and blatantly false, it also damages our reputation. ... The larger implication, that Springer is "stealing" copyright and the insinuation that Springer is attempting to profit from "ill-gotten gains" is false and we call upon Peter Murray-Rust to correct this allegation immediately.
Murray-Rust has indeedretracted his more trenchant allegations, including that of "copytheft". He told theSignpost, though, that the current position for Wikipedia and many other providers is that there are many instances of apparent rebadging of material inSpringerImages. While Springer has been informed of this, they have made no comment, and these images continue to be offered for resale. "A typical price is US$60 for re-use in teaching/coursepacks."
Murray-Rust's interest in uncovering the misappropriation of Wikimedia materials bySpringerImages was piqued when he discovered images there from apaper on which he was a co-author. He alsofoundcases in which content imported from other publishers such asWiley andPLoS—orin the public domain—was incorrectly labelled or licensed.
"I was personally affected", he said, "in that my CC BY content inBioMed Central journals had been copied and recopyrighted onto the Springer site. We've asked that at leastSpringerImages announce to the world that there's a problem, and they have failed to do this. I've found hundreds of such instances, including content from museums and other companies. I'd guess there are thousands of images onSpringerImages that have been rebadged."
However, the poor attribution and licensing of material from Wikimedia Commons and the Wikipedias are far more widespread than just Springer's practices suggest. Even though detailed help isavailable on Commons, many downloaders make no effort to comply with the terms of the licences. With the exception of public-domain content, the use of materials found on Wikimedia projects requires attribution of the copyright holders and either the text of or links to the original licence.
Daniel Mietchen,Wikimedian in Residence on Open Science, told theSignpost that it's disheartening to see freely licensed images with instructions like "Viewing this image requires a subscription. If you are a subscriber, please log in." But the Springer issue is just "the tip of the iceberg", he says. "Wikimedia Commons has adedicated category for cases in which uploaded files have been re-used externally in violation of these terms."
Currently, more than 1800 affected files are on the list, some of which have been used over 100 times outside Wikimedia platforms. The category's description reads "sometimes, media organizations just don't understand that in most cases, you just can't rip an image off Commons and just use it."
Mietchen says "media organizations are far from the only organizations and individuals misusing Commons' content." For example, theGerman Federal Archives (Bundesarchiv) declined to continue donating images to the Commons in 2010. Efforts by the German Wikimedia chapter had yielded a 100,000-image donation in 2008, the largest in Commons' history, but the results were troubling for the Bundesarchiv: "more than 90% of their images, while licensed correctly on the Commons, had been re-used without proper attribution across the Internet." In one notable case, more than 3,000 of the images, all available for free online, had been cropped to remove the attribution line and then listed for sale on Ebay as a "private collection" (Signpost coverage).
This is reflected on the individual level, too. Commons bureaucratUser:99of9 told theSignpost, "fewer than half of the files I've personally authored and uploaded to Commons have been attributed when re-used elsewhere on the internet; and fewer than 30% have appeared with the proper licence. Some Wikimedians have tried marking their files with a prominent notice about re-use in addition to the licence template, but this has been controversial at Commons. We've also trialled aclick to re-use this image button, but there were technical problems and it's not currently in use."
"The 1800 files in the"misused" category at Commons," he says, "are almost certainly a vast underestimate, and re-use is a persistent problem for the site." We asked whether the solution lies in refining the warnings and making it easier for the public to understand their responsibility as re-users. "Certainly we need to educate the public, and what you suggest may be part of the answer."
Mietchen says that improper licensing sometimes starts at the source, even with publishers. For example, PAGEPress has been labelling their articles as"This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Licence (by-nc 3.0)", i.e. with long and short forms of the licence text in contradiction—at one point witha bad typo—that has since beencorrected to CC BY-NC throughout, which renders the content ineligible for re-use on Wikimedia projects.
While the failure ofSpringerImages to comply withCreative Commons licensing terms had beenpointed out as early as 2009 by archivist Klaus Graf, Springer appears to have finally taken action to clean up the problem over the past few days. This has been done in part by removing any content generically attributed to "Wikipedia" (of which there had been368 results on Friday) and "Wikimedia" (157), with just one remaining watermarked "SpringerImages" andattributed to "Wikipaedia" [sic].
More than a day before this edition of theSignpost was published, the company's executive vice president of corporate communications, Eric Merkel-Sobotta, told us, "We have worked all weekend to solve the issues, and will be ready to make an announcement within 24 hours. I will make sure this is sent to you." TheSignpost has received no further correspondence from Springer.
SeeCopyfraud. --Ssilvers (talk)19:05, 12 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Springer just published astatement in response to these allegations --DarTar (talk)19:08, 12 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Springer has changed theURL for the statement.Tony(talk)00:17, 13 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Are you kidding me? Some person thinks he can claim copyright over a public domain? This is worse than Nintendo vs. Universal Studios!gtajaxoxo©®10:52, 13 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Has Wikipedia every violated the copyrights owned by Springer Verlag, Birkhauser, etc.?Kiefer.Wolfowitz22:10, 12 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Perhere this textbook has borrowed many thousands of words from us. The New York Times today has further details regarding the issue hereBook That Plagiarized From Wikipedia Is Pulled From Market published June 12th, 2012.
Response from the publisher
Doc James (talk ·contribs ·email)22:15, 12 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]Dear Dr. Heilman and Mr. Cohen
We have received your mails concerning text in Understanding and Management of Special Child in Pediatric Dentistry.We have taken the matter up with the editors of the book and the contributors to the chapter in question. We take care to ensure the veracity of texts, but in this case our systems appear to have failed. However, we have decided to permanently withdraw the book from sale, and we will remove the title from our website and recall the book from our wholesalers and distributors.Thank you for bringing this matter to my attention.Yours SincerelyTarun DunejaDirector:Publishing
Jaypee Brothers Medical Publishers Pvt Ltd
Agreed. I also want to draw all of your attention toBaidu Baike, the Chinese-equivalent wiki encyclopedia that agrees to censor by central Chinese government. We havedocumented their blatant copyright infringement. Since Baidu is actually listed on NASDAQ, I really believe that WMF can do something about this because both have operations in the US.OhanaUnitedTalk page14:58, 14 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Simply do an image search of any of our images with Google. Than bring your cursor over the image and click on "more sizes". Here is an example of an image of mine[1]. Has be borrowed by the like of the University of Iowa among others with no attribution given.Doc James (talk ·contribs ·email)22:23, 12 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Springer has generated profit for itself with our images. Perhaps it could grant a site license to us and benefit the work of Wikipedians. Since the Foundation is downright cheap when it comes to getting Wikipedians the resources they need such as access to JSTOR or Lexis-Nexis, we need to find other paths.--Wehwalt (talk)12:21, 13 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Various legal cases in the UK -- for instance, the recentHouse of Harlotcase, or last year'sDavid Hoffman case -- have awarded standardNational Union of Journalists'photography rates of at least £250 per photograph per annum for misused photographs -- even though the photographs in question were taken down straight away (Harlot), or had been used on the assurance of the website designer that they were copyright-cleared (Hoffman). In theHarlot case £675 was awarded for one photo, plus £50 for moral rights, plus costs. In theHoffman case £12,444.57 was awarded for 19 photographs, including interest.
Springer should be aware that an apology may not be sufficient -- this could get expensive.
As indeed so shouldwe be, if wrongly attributed or falsely licensed photographs are uploaded here. To some extent WP can rely on service provider notification-and-take-down safe harbour provisions; but this is an area that cannot be seen as something trivial, and must not be treated casually.Jheald (talk)12:24, 13 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
But all kinds of media and it happened to myself.
Compare this:commons:File:Wave_in_Lake_Ontario.jpg and this:[2] onNational Post in Canada.
I am the copyright holder of the said image for being the creator.SYSS Mouse (talk)17:08, 14 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
There was an incident about 2 years ago that wasdocumented by Signpost which also involved plagiarism/failure to attribute properly. Since then, the book publisher acknowledged the error on their part, recalled the book, and offered a 350 HKD (~45 USD) per non-wiki photo (i.e. Flickr, Panoramio, etc.) and 50 HKD (6.5 USD) per wiki photo as compensation as of February 2012.OhanaUnitedTalk page02:42, 15 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Not so much hiding, but on the file page putting them underneath the picture display in a bland grey box, couched in multiple bullets that fail to alert many downloaders. "It's free, isn't it?", is likely to be the default attitude. The actual constraints are likely to be buried in this ethic.
I believe there's some opposition among Commons editors to placingat the top a short, polite but firm reminder that thereare licencing and attribution requirements ("Please see these requirements below ...".) Apparently there's a fear that such a message at the top shifts perceptions too far towards author/photographer ownership.
The matter should be revisited, since the failure to correctly licence partly defeats our purpose, and the failure to name authors/photographers (where required) is both unfair and militates against donations.Tony(talk)00:23, 16 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
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