Talk:Wikimedia Apps/Share a fact

Previous discussion
The following is a copy from Stephen LaPorte's talk page. (He was named as responsible for the legal aspects of the ‘Share A Fact’ feature of the Wikipedia Android app.] --Martina Nolte (talk) 18:20, 21 April 2015 (UTC)



Hi Stephen! Dan Garry named you as responsible for the legal aspects of the ‘Share A Fact’ feature of the Wikipedia Android app. As most of the free licenses used on Commons require an attribution, most pictures created by this feature are a copyright violation if shared without further notice. As far as I see, the users are not informed that they have to add additional information (author, source, license …) if they want to publish the image. Therefore I’m surprised that the Legal Team gave a ‘full legal signoff’. While the Wikimedia Foundation itself does not violate rights, the app encourages its users to do so. Could you please provide some more information why you think that this feature is alright? Thanks in advance! Regards, Ireas (talk) 23:10, 4 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Hi Ireas, thanks for the question. The "share-a-fact" feature provides two indicators of its legal status. First, it has the CC BY-SA icons in the lower left part of the card, which describes the license of the Wikipedia article that is the source of the card. Second, the app generates a URL for the article (as text that accompanies the image), so users can follow the URL to find the full license information for the photo or the text. Our goal is to provide a reasonable amount of accessible information within a small card, so that users can share and remix content as encouraged by Creative Commons and other free licenses. Just as a note, a photo is not necessarily a copyright violation just because it does not include a comprehensive legal notice. The best practice for Creative Commons attribution is to provide reasonable attribution for the medium. In the future, I hope that a better structured data system on Wikimedia projects will enable even more creative ways of providing informative (but not overly intrusive) licensing information. Best, Stephen LaPorte (WMF) (talk) 00:33, 5 April 2015 (UTC)
 * But in the exact same paragraph stands also "That being said, you still have to include attribution requirements somehow, even if it's just a link to an About page that has that info." if the pictures of the article change, it is just possible by searching the old versions of the article to even get to a link that provides the info of the licence of the picture, which also are not every time cc licences. I don't understand your decision.--CennoxX (talk) 04:44, 5 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your fast answer, Stephen!
 * I still doubt that a link to the Wikipedia article is an appropriate attribution. As CennoxX already pointed out, the picture can be removed from the page. And even if it’s available, you still have to find it – looking at your Strassbourg example, it’s not that obvious which picture was used.
 * You also have to consider that not all images are CC-by-sa. If the picture is realeased under the GFDL, the CC-by-sa tag is misleading and no appropriate attribution.
 * In conclusion, I fear that this feature – especially if brought to the desktop UI as proposed in T94998 – is a bad signal towards the photographers in the Wikimedia projects and is dangerous for reusers if the attribution is not changed. Imagine what will happen if a photographer sues someone who used the ‘Share A Fact’ feature.
 * In my opinon, the Wikimedia projects, the Wikimedia chapters and the Wikimedia Foundation should not operate at in the grey zone between correct and incorrect reuse. They should set an example how to correctly reuse free material, being an ideal for everyone else and promoting free licenses. Ireas (talk) 07:57, 5 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Many thanks for your thoughts on this, Ireas. You raise a good point about the possibility of the photo being removed from the article. Although the link to the photo is always preserved in the revision history of the article, this is a scenario that would be improved with a simple permalink back to the article as it exists when it generated the card.
 * I have posted more details on how we provide attribution as required under the CC license. I disagree that the reasonable standard is a legal "grey zone", as the CC license itself is designed to accommodate flexible forms of attribution (including via URLs). I believe this is an important and powerful feature in CC licenses, so that they can stay relevant as technologies and interfaces change. I would like to see more features that proactively provide license info, such as URLs or authorship data, when someone shares content from Wikipedia. Following the CC licenses is always the users responsibility when they download content, and I am that features like share-a-fact and the stock photo gadget make it easy to comply with the licenses. Thanks, Slaporte (WMF) (talk) 23:13, 21 April 2015 (UTC)
 * +1 to Ireas. In addition to that I want to express that I am stunned that after having had quite the same discussion with the pre-alpha media viewer WMF once again does not show interest in licensing issues. With distressed regards, → «« Man77 »» [de] 13:20, 5 April 2015 (UTC)
 * +1 to Ireas. And another point: The deep of the problem increases when the created image is reused outside of the Twitter context. As standalone image w/o link to the article. Raymond (talk) 17:45, 5 April 2015 (UTC)
 * +1 to Ireas. What you are practicing here is no reasonable manner to attribute an image. In case of CC=BY-SA-4.0, if you provide a link, it should point directly to a page with all necessary information. See section 3 (a) 2. For example, it may be reasonable to satisfy the conditions by providing a URI or hyperlink to a resource that includes the required information. This means that in case of CC-BY-SA-4.0 one link is acceptable but not a series of links where it is not even obvious where the next link is to be found. In consequence, a link to an article is not sufficient, as it takes usually two further links until you will find the full information, provided you are still able to find the image in the article. The first link from the article leads you by default to the MediaViewer which is still not able to provide full copyright information (example in MediaViewer with incomplete information, regular Commons file description with full information). Only the second link that leads to the corresponding file description at Wikimedia Commons provides the full information. All this gets worse whenever you have a different license like GFDL-1.2-only. --AFBorchert (talk) 21:38, 5 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Hi AFBorchert, I do not believe that the CC license requires a direct link to a resource in order to provide attribution.
 * +1 to all the above. I'm stunned that this is the official WMF position on how to correctly re-use content published under free licenses.--Cirdan (talk) 16:44, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
 * +1 to all the above. --Geolina163 (talk) 17:50, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
 * + to all the above as well. The next rushed, not well-thought-out move towards facebookisation of the Wikiverse by WMF against the current policies. ♫ Sänger - Talk - superputsch must go 17:57, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
 * +1 // Martin Kraft (talk) 12:32, 9 April 2015 (UTC)
 * I agree. This is a totally inappropriate one size fits all approach. I tested it (using one of my own Commons uploads to avoid breaching any license): from the email I sent myself to the attribution page I had to click three links. (Email -> article -> Media Viewer -> file page.) This clearly violates the terms of the CC-BY-SA-4 license I use and this is completely unacceptable. I cannot see any reasonable legal justification for the lack of attribution provided in this "feature". BethNaught (talk) 19:26, 20 April 2015 (UTC)
 * An other point made by Atlasowa on dewiki is that back in 2012, you argued that sharing third party CC-by-sa content on Facebook is not allowed. Did things change since then? This would make the ‘Share A Fact’ feature even more problematic. Ireas (talk) 21:44, 5 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Hi AFBorchert, thanks pointing this out. Ideally, Facebook (and other service providers) would explicitly support CC-licensed content from their users. I am not sure if Facebook ever removes CC-licensed media to enforce this provision in their terms of use, and it's likely that they may allow some media that is shared as a fair use. Ultimately, it's up to Facebook to determine if they will be strict on this point. Thanks, Slaporte (WMF) (talk) 23:13, 21 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Hi Ireas and all, thanks for the feedback. I will review the topics in detail and discuss them with Dan Garry's team. Best, Stephen LaPorte (WMF) (talk) 23:15, 5 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Stephen! As a workaround, I’d suggest these changes depending on the picture’s license:
 * public domain
 * remove the misleading CC-by-sa icon
 * CC-0
 * replace the CC-by-sa icon with the CC-0 icon
 * CC-by
 * replace the CC-by-sa icon with the CC-by icon
 * add the author’s name to the picture
 * CC-by-sa
 * add the author’s name to the picture
 * add the license name (e. g. CC-by-sa 3.0 DE or CC-by-sa 4.0) to the picture
 * add a link to the source file to the sharing message (Tweet/Facebook post/…)
 * other licenses
 * don’t use these pictures as a correct attribution is too complicated
 * This is no perfect solution, but in my opinion, it would really improve the copyright situation. (Of course, this only applies if the text snippet is below the threshold of originality.) Regards, Ireas (talk) 09:58, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Hi Ireas, thanks for this suggestion. The goal of the CC BY SA icons in the card is to indicate that the card is freely licensed, and it's based on the license of the article that generated the card (which is consistently CC BY-SA 3.0, on Wikipedia). Background photos that are in the public domain or a free license that is compatible with CC BY-SA can be used within a CC BY-SA work. I see your point that icons may be read to suggest that the photos are always CC BY-SA, so I will see if it's possible to use a system as you suggest to clearly prefer CC-licensed content. Thanks, Slaporte (WMF) (talk) 23:13, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

Hi Stephen, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter require sub-licensing of content submitted to their services. Eventually there are more services with the same requirement. Given that these services are widely used, share a fact users are likely to use these platforms. Creative Commons licences, the most common type of licenses on Wikimedia Commons, usually prohibit sub-licensing. Noticing the statement about Facebook as mentioned above, I'm sure you and the legal team are well aware of the sub-licensing issue. I was wondering if this was taken into consideration before giving "full legal sign-off"? It seems to me like there's a rather slim chance for share a fact users to comply with license requirements and terms of services. I'd appreciate your comment on this issue. Regards, Christoph Braun (talk) 14:47, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Hi Christoph Braun, it's possible to comply with a service's Terms of Service and provide fair use content. I agree completely that ideally these services would specifically allow CC-licensed content from their users (as they likely tolerate CC content on their services already). Thanks, Slaporte (WMF) (talk) 23:13, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

Hi Stephen, could you give us an idea of your time plan for reviewieng the app in regard to copyright and for responding to our concerns? --Martina Nolte (talk) 21:14, 10 April 2015 (UTC)


 * Hello Folks, Stephen is working on a legal note, and I am working on starting a some discussions on the broader issue of attributions in media sharing outside our projects. More links will follow this week. Thanks  --Melamrawy (WMF) (talk) 22:56, 13 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Good to hear. I would like to add that I share the concerns brought up here, especially over the sub-licensing issue. It's not just about the attribution, but - as Stephen himself posted at meta:Legal/CC-BY-SA on Facebook - the main issue seems to be that you just can't legally post CC-BY-SA content that a third party produced on Facebook (and probably other popular services), as Facebook requires you grant them "a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook"; a thing one isn't able to do for third-party CC-BY-SA content. As I see it, that's nothing Wikimedia or Creative Commons can change - unless you manage to convince Facebook that they change their licensing terms ;-) Gestumblindi (talk) 19:44, 15 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Good to hear indeed, looking forward to both the legal note and the discussion about attribution in media sharing (there has been much discussion about this in the past years, eg in Bugzilla − happy to give pointers if needed). Please keep up updated :) Thanks, Jean-Fred (talk) 21:47, 17 April 2015 (UTC)
 * So, this should expand here Stephen and myself will add more info very shortly (please, ..please excuse the delay, this is my bad!), then this will expand a bit more to cover further similar discussions. Meanwhile, please feel free to add questions, comments, pointers there.  Thank you! --Melamrawy (WMF) (talk) 23:20, 17 April 2015 (UTC)
 * As part of the explanation, can someone please say why the lessons from the Media Viewer debacle regarding new features which fail to comply with licensing terms were not apparently learned? BethNaught (talk) 19:27, 20 April 2015 (UTC)
 * +1. And it wasn't just the MediaViewer but also the mobile imageviewer that had the same discussion last year (T71656 Lack of attribution in mobile image viewer), plus a mail by Erik Moeller to the mobile team on how to not repeat this in the future: . And yet here we are, having the same discussion all over again, with the same charming "we have signoff from legal, forget it, case closed"-attitude.


 * BTW, if the mobile team really believes what they are saying, "we have not enough space for attribution", then i propose to drop the useless "wikidata description" that they have added to the cards. Those "wikidata descriptions" are not patrolled at wikidata and are vandalized a lot and are therefor controversial too (see d:Wikidata:Project_chat/Archive/2015/01 and d:Wikidata:Project chat/Archive/2015/02 and d:Wikidata:Project chat etc.) --Atlasowa (talk) 17:59, 21 April 2015 (UTC)


 * You still need to answer the "open questions" on the page, especially with regard to non-CC-BY-SA licenses and sublicensing. That's not to say I'm content with what you have said. You seem to be relying on "this is just about OK under CC-BY-SA (even if the media is not CC-BY-SA)" and if it's not "it's probably fair use".
 * I disagree that the link provides easily accessible attribution information. First the link from the text which may or may not be included with the shared fact by the sharer has to be clicked, then the reader has to click on the image, which may or may not have been removed from the article (and if it has, they will need to look in the history), and then Media Viewer may or may not show them sufficient attribution material. The media on Wikipedia and Commons is simply not as homogeneous as your argument appears to be presuming. BethNaught (talk) 06:52, 22 April 2015 (UTC)