User talk:Waukegan

'Welcome!' (We can't say that loudly enough!)

Hello, Waukegan, and welcome to Wikipedia! I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages you might find helpful:

• Be Bold!
• Meet other new users
• Learn from others
• Play nicely with others
• Contribute, Contribute, Contribute!
• Tell us about you

If you have any questions or problems, no matter what they are, leave me a message on my talk page. Or, please come to the new contributors' help page, where experienced Wikipedians can answer any queries you have! Or, you can just type {{helpme}} on your user page, and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions.

Please sign your name on talk pages and votes by typing ~~~~; our software automatically converts it to your username and the date.  

We're so glad you're here! Luksuh 05:39, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Help request

{{helpme}}

Thank you for the kind welcome. I'm rather new to this and have been doing a lot of 'monkey see monkey do'.

I'm rather puzzled about where you get images, I found the things a bit confusing. Is there a list of things you have available (such as film posters) or do you send things in yourself?

I'm rather worried about rights to things, don't want you or I to be in trouble. Let's say I've a European pressbook from an obscure 1968 film I would like to send in to illustrate an article, do I (or have someone else) scan the image and send it in hoping it's in the public domain or do you have some list of things someone can select from?

Hope to hear from you. Here's other questions, how do I get a redirect. For example I would like the phrase 'Shanghai International Police' to go straight to the 'Shanghai Municpal Police' thing but I suppose pranksters have been doing meaningless redirections so you may have something to do to approve it.

I'm curious about footnotes for references, do I have to have the author or publishing house's permission?

Thank you

Waukegan (I'm in Sydney)

Hi there! Hopefully I can provide some answers to your questions. If I leave anything unclear, feel free to replace {{tnull|helpme}} with {{helpme}} and another helper will come to assist. Images on Wikipedia are uploaded by users. We have rather strict image policies, though, to ensure that we do not infringe on any copyrights. Images licensed under the GFDL or similar free license, or which are in the public domain can be uploaded at any time and tagged as such. Images that are copyrighted can be uploaded only if they conform to Wikipedia's Non-free content guidelines (also see WP:NFCC). For details on how to upload images and choose which licensing tag to put on the image page, see Wikipedia:Uploading images.

As for redirects, you can create a redirect at any time; there is no process to go through. Simply "create" the article that you want to serve as a redirect and tag it with

#REDIRECT [[ArticleName]]

where ArticleName is the name of the article you want it to redirect to.

Finally, you do not need permission to use a site or published material as a reference. The only thing is that you cannot copy text directly from copyrighted sources. It is not the information contained in the text in a copyrighted website/publication that is copyrighted, it is the text itself.

Again, I hope I've answered everything well. If you have any further concerns, please feel free to use the {{helpme}} template again. --Nick—^Contact/_Contribs 06:43, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

WOW!!! My head is still swimming. Thanks Nick and all of you! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Waukegan (talk • contribs) 07:00:07, August 19, 2007 (UTC).

STILL CONFUSED AGAIN

Thank you for your help. I'm still rather puzzled by image use.

To be more specific I was looking at Google images especially images of a record album 'Ballad of the Green Berets' that is also featured in your Wikipedia.

Now in the case of an image taken by a photographer or drawn by a recognised artist I can see the logic of contacting the source for permission. However when looking at the Google images several websites have copied the same record album cover. My query is

1)would I have to contact each address of the image and ask their permission to use it? even though they no doubt scanned the image of an album cover

2) If I found the same record album cover (or film poster) and scanned it myself have I violated some copyright (we are talking about album covers or film posters from the 1960's)

3) If I see the same image I would like to use in another Wikipedia article am I allowed to copy it and reuse it in another Wikipedia article?

I know certain motion picture stars have their images copyrighted, but is a poster from outside America considred part of their domain?

Hope I haven't confused you too much.

Thanx

I'm unable to answer all your questions, but I'll try to help:

1. There was once some controversy over a museum/library that took pictures of paintings, and somebody came and used the pictures - the issue was this: We all know that the paintings might be copyrighted (restrictions on reproducing the painting), but what about the copyright of the person that took the image himself/herself? What if you had a painting from 150 years ago that would now be in the public domain, but somebody went to the effort of taking a picture of it? Does that person have any copyrights over their picture of the painting (in this example not the painting itself, but rather the picture)? Well as far as I can recall the courts ruled that since there was no intellectual property in taking the photo or artistic design, I believe they ruled that out. But there's a catch. What I've just told you shows that people that scan in an album cover (generally) can't do anything if you copy his photo. However, the people that designed the album cover themselves are the ones that used artistic design and intellectual property and therefore they are the ones that need to license you to reproduce the image. Therefore, you do not need permission from whoever scanned the album cover in, instead you need permission from the copyright-holders of the album cover. I hope that clears things up.

2. By scanning in something you may be reproducing it so technically it might be a violation of copyright, however, seen as it may be for personal use (in other words you are only reproducing for yourself and only using it yourself and showing it to yourself) there should be no problem. But to reproduce it on the internet, i.e. by scanning it and posting it on the internet is a reproduction of the copyrighted work and therefore there may be some restrictions. Therefore in that case you would need to seek a copyright license to reproduce those film posters/covers on Wikipedia.

3. "images" aren't actually part of any wikipedia article. Instead images get uploaded on their own, and stored separately from the article. In this way, more than one article can use an image. Now, if you do find an image in an article that you want to use, just look at the wiki-sourcecode and you'll see something like this: [[Image:Example.jpg]]. Simply copy that, and paste it in the new article where you want to display this image. Back in the original article, you can even click on the image to see its copyright license. So the answer to your question is yes, you can simply copy an existing image on Wikipedia and use it in another article. however if somebody finds that the image violates any copyright, or has no copyright license, it might be removed.

You might want to look at WP:COPYRIGHT, and Wikipedia:Image copyright tags and Wikipedia:Image use policy.

Hope this helps. If so, please remove your helpme tag.

Rfwoolf 14:47, 23 August 2007 (UTC)