Memory Alpha:Dealing with possible copyright infringements

One of the key goals of Memory Alpha is to provide an accurate, original reference source for Star Trek fans. Therefore, we take the possibility of copyright infringement very seriously. Material coming from external sources – that is, material that you have not written yourself – may only be submitted by the original author. In all such cases, it is important to cite your sources in a "Reference" section, and to explicitly state that you have granted permission for this material to be used on the article's talk page.

It is not the job of rank-and-file members of the Memory Alpha community to police every article for possible copyright infringements. However, from time to time you may come across an article that you believe may be infringing someone's copyright, or worse, is plagiarized from an unauthorized source. (Unauthorized sources are those which we know we are not allowed to copy from; this includes works such as the Star Trek Encyclopedia or the official Star Trek website.)

Procedures
Memory Alpha's copyright policy explicitly provides for cases in which an article or other media posted to Memory Alpha violates someone's copyright. If you think an article or image is in violation of someone's copyright and does not constitute fair use, place one of the following boilerplate messages (listed below) on that page. Then list the page on possible copyright infringements. Pages should be listed there until a decision is made.

According to Memory Alpha's deletion policy, pages listed may be deleted after at least two additional votes for deletion have been cast, or alternatively after a waiting period of seven days. There is no upper limit to the length of time a page may be listed here, but it is preferable for potential copyright conflicts to be resolved quickly, so that the ugly boilerplate messages are not left on article pages.

In addition to listing a potential copyright violation, you could also:


 * Replace the article's text with new (re-written) content of your own. You should do this on a temporary page (named  PAGE NAME/temp , for example) so that, when the previous version of the page is deleted, then the new version can simply be moved to take its place.
 * Request permission by contacting the copyright owner. (This is of course not possible in cases of works owned by Paramount.)  Oftentimes, an author or artist might be very pleased to see their work get more attention from a site like Memory Alpha!  If you receive explicit permission to post work, it should be noted on the talk page that permission to use the copyright work has been granted.

Exceptions for plagiarized works
In some cases, contributors who are unfamiliar with our policies may submit text that is copied directly from official Paramount sources – the Star Trek Encyclopedia is the most common source in this example. Once an article is listed on the possible copyright infringements page, it may be deleted immediately, at the discretion of the administrators. In such cases, a note should be left under the original listing, stating that the page was immediately deleted and for what reason.

Note that other plagiarized works – coming from fan websites, for example – do not qualify for immediate deletion. The only reason that copied Paramount works may be deleted immediately is because there is no chance of gaining permission to release the article text under the terms of the Memory Alpha copyright. In all other cases, some leeway should be granted to make it possible for the contributor(s) to obtain permission for the inclusion of the work.

Copyvios replacing valid content
In some cases, a contributor may replace valid article text with copyrighted text that does not belong in Memory Alpha. If this happens, it is acceptable to simply revert the changes back to a non-copyvio version of the text. The copyvio will remain in the page history, but will not be easily accessible to most readers (who are generally only interested in the current version of the text).

Articles which have a valid page history should not simply be deleted or replaced, because deleting the page will also wipe the history of contributions to that article – something which would be extraordinarily unfair to the contributors to that page.

If a copyright holder wishes to complain about a copyright violation in a page history, it is possible for a developer to edit the database manually and delete individual page revisions based on that revision's OLDID identifier.

Notice to copyright owners
If you believe Memory Alpha is infringing your copyright, you may choose to raise the issue using this page and the standard copyright infringement notice as described below. Alternatively, you may choose to contact Memory Alpha's designated agent under the terms of the.

Note that archivists do not have the ability to remove copyright infringements from an article's page history. Therefore, if you believe that material in an article's page history infringes your copyright, you should contact an administrator or Memory Alpha's designated agent, rather than using this page.

Copyright infringement notices
Remove the text of the article, and replace it with the following boilerplate message.

For textual articles, use the following message:


 * copyvio

For images, use this message:


 * copyvioimage

In both cases, append the URL of the original location of the work, as well as your signature, to the basic message.

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