Talk:Censorship by copyright

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Lightburst talk 01:16, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

(

• Comment or view
• Article history

)

• ... that copyright can be used for censorship? Source: pretty much any source, ex. https://www.techdirt.com/2013/07/26/why-yes-copyright-can-be-used-to-censor-fair-use-creep-is-also-called-free-speech/
  • ALT1: ... that copyright has been used to censor reporters, activists, scholars and artists? Source: https://digitalfreedomfund.org/how-copyright-bots-are-governing-free-speech-online/2/ , https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/23/copyright-law-internet-mumsnet and https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4464300 should have enough examples to cover this
  • Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Here I Go Again (Legends of Tomorrow)
  • Comment: 2nd QPQ review: Template:Did you know nominations/History of Palestinian journalism

Created by Piotrus (talk).

Number of QPQs required: 2. DYK is currently in unreviewed backlog mode and nominator has 505 past nominations.

Post-promotion hook changes will be logged on the talk page; consider watching the nomination until the hook appears on the Main Page.

_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 06:02, 5 April 2024 (UTC).

General: Article is new enough and long enough
New enough: Long enough:

Policy: Article is sourced, neutral, and free of copyright problems
Adequate sourcing: Neutral: Free of copyright violations, plagiarism, and close paraphrasing:

Hook: Hook has been verified by provided inline citation
Cited: Interesting:

Image: Image is freely licensed, used in the article, and clear at 100px.
Freely licensed: Used in article: Clear at 100px:

QPQ: Done.

Overall: Article newly created; 2 QPQ done; no issues in article; I think ALT1 is more interesting so I would go with that; looks good to go. Makeandtoss (talk) 14:05, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

@Makeandtoss and Piotrus: We have to figure out why we have a 53% Earwig score. Lightburst (talk) 17:34, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

Lightburst, See edit summaries. I did reuse some properly licenced content from websites under CC-BY-SA (that are also used as relevant references). EFF mostly. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 22:22, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

Change article name

I suggest changing the name of the article to include “United States” in the title as it is almost entirely focused on that country. Newzild (talk) 20:51, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

Nope. Examples from other countries are discussed to. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 09:43, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

Cartoons

@Piotrus: Greetings! Regarding the revert of cartoon removal in this edit, with the edit summary "images do not have to be neutral, particularly when they represent activism": There's no exception to WP:NPOV for images. They should reflect the due weight of various points of view. Both cartoons are anti-copyright; unless there are also pro-copyright cartoons added to the article, it ends up looking quite imbalanced. Another problem with these images is that they are off-topic. This article is about the practice of abusing copyright law to censor unfavorable content. The cartoons are criticizing the normal use of copyright - preventing unauthorized copying to enforce an economic monopoly - by comparing it to censorship. These cartoons would be more on-topic for the articles Copyright abolition or Criticism of copyright. -- Beland (talk) 21:00, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

@Beland I do appreciate you explaining things here. As I said earlier, I believe the images are fine here as illustrating activism related to criticism of censorship by copyright practice. Now, I do think it would be good to add articles illustrating the "other side", and in fact the text here is arguably mostly critical of the practice - the entire article could benefit from some expansion. But I'd favor keeping the images as they are relevant and otherwise the article will be not illustrated. Perhaps adjusting captions to note those images come from activism critical of the practice would address your concerns? Otherwise a WP:RFC might be good to gauge the wider opinion. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 22:50, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

@Piotrus: I don't think adjusting the captions makes the cartoons any more on-topic for this article; it seems like they are only here because they contain the words "censorship" and "copyright" without any consideration to how those words are being used. I'd certainly welcome additional opinions. -- Beland (talk) 01:44, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

@Beland "without any consideration to how those words are being used" - well, they are not images that contain those words randomly. They are images from activists who are critical or the concept of censorship by copyright, and as such I think they are WP:DUE here. But yes, let's see if others have some thoughts. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 01:48, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

The first caption now claims that Nina Paley in this cartoon is criticizing the practices of censorship by copyright as described in this article. From my reading of the comic, I don't think that is a correct interpretation. I think we'd want a secondary source to confirm that in order to avoid making an original analysis.

(It is criticizing "silencing you because I can make more money that way" which is not what censorship-by-copyright is defined by this article to be.)

Plenty of articles are unillustrated; I think no illustration would be preferable to an off-topic illustration added just for the sake of having a picture. An on-topic picture would for example be a picture or video frame that was taken down by a DMCA request despite there being no valid claim of infringement, or a cartoon criticizing the attempted removal of a picture just because it made a politician look bad. -- Beland (talk) 01:59, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

Such media may or may not be justifiable under fair use. I see no reason not to use perfectly fine, freely licensed images made by activists. You are more then welcome to adjust the captions if my attempt to address the issues you raise was not satisfactory. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 04:13, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

Well, an accurate caption should make clear that the comics are not necessarily addressing the topic of this article, but if that's true then the images should just be removed from the article. So I think we just need to get consensus on the underlying questions. If we're doing an RFC, are these the questions we'd want answered?

• Are the cartoons A.) criticizing the specific practice of censoring unwanted speech by abusing copyright, B.) criticizing the general practice of enforcing economic monopolies by copyright, or C.) ambiguous? If B or C, does that mean they should be removed or moved to Criticism of copyright or Copyright abolition?
• Should neutrality be achieved by removing the cartoons, or by adding one or two pro-copyright images? Do such images exist and can we find them now?

Are we agreed to leave the article tagged as non-neutral regardless of what happens with the cartoons because the text is unbalanced?

-- Beland (talk) 16:54, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

The questions you designed seem fine - thank you for taking the time to draft neutral RfC; I am fine with you going ahead and starting said RfC using the outline above. While we wait for the RfC outcome, a npov tag or such seems reasonable as well. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 01:49, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

Request for comment on cartoons

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

There are two questions:

• Are the cartoons A.) criticizing the specific practice of censoring unwanted speech by abusing copyright, B.) criticizing the general practice of enforcing economic monopolies by copyright, or C.) ambiguous? If B or C, does that mean they should be removed or moved to Criticism of copyright or Copyright abolition?
• Should neutrality be achieved by removing the cartoons, or by adding one or two pro-copyright images? Do such images exist and can we find them now?

-- Beland (talk) 01:45, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

They seem to be A. The cartoons are also very similar to each other. For balance, I would keep only the second one for now, not in the lead. The article can be expanded to include counterarguments if possible. Senorangel (talk) 05:38, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

Per my thoughts pre-RfC (and as the article's creator): A. Neutrality is already achieved, but of course adding more images would be fine, if anything relevant can be located. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 03:14, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

• In my view, there's some ambiguity (i.e., C). Possibly leaning B, since, on my reading, the cartoons don't seem to distinguish between legitimate use of copyright, and abuse of copyright (the implication of both is that copyright is a means of/tool of censorship). As to question 2, is there not a certain irony in relying on fair use to put a pro-copyright cartoon on Wikipedia (the free encyclopedia)? I think having one of the current cartoons is sufficient. The first cartoon is succinct and gets the point across. The article is about "criticism of", so as long as the caption makes clear that this is a description of the criticism, and not the article's position, I don't see a neutrality issue. WillowCity^(talk) 23:30, 23 May 2024 (UTC) Pinged for this RfC by FRS

I do not think that the cartoon needs to be neutral as long as the article presents it in a neutral way... e.g.: by announcing it as an opinion taking a stance so that it is not presented as an objective fact though I have no idea how anyone would take it that way. Jorahm (talk) 17:26, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.