User blog comment:LordHarrison/Copy/Pasting/@comment-3055683-20160222071501

Lord Harrison,

To further explain what you see as a violation of copyright by cutting-and-pasting material onto a wiki, per Wikia Policies, it states:

''Adding Copyrighted Content to your Wikia:

Your community may want to include copyrighted material from outside sources on the wikia. This is only allowed under one or more of the following conditions:

*Your use of the material will be likely to qualify as a fair use or similar exception. *You have the permission of the copyright holder. *The material you want to use is licensed under a Creative Commons or other open license that permits free reuse. *The material is in the public domain. *​You have created the material yourself.''

As you are using copyrighted material directly from the source, it falls under the US Laws of Fair Use which states:

"Fair use is a legal doctrine that permits limited use of copyrighted material without acquiring permission from the rights holders. It is one type of limitation and exception to the exclusive rights copyright law grants to the author of a creative work. Examples of fair use in United States copyright law include commentary, search engines, criticism, parody, news reporting, research, teaching, library archiving and scholarship. It provides for the legal, unlicensed citation or incorporation of copyrighted material in another author's work..."

We are therefore well within Wikia's Term of Service policies as well as Fair Use laws. Therefore, this wiki can use copyrighted material under the "fair use" doctrine. I think you are confusing Wikipedia Terms of Service and Rules, which are much more stringent in regards to the use of copryighted material. They have very strict policies on using copyrighted material, and you can definitely not cut-and-paste on a wikipedia article. Wikia is a bit more lenient, as long as you stay within their established rules. Therefore, there isn't an issue here. You may not agree with it, but it is what it is.

Let me ask you this...would you rather receive the the correct content word-for-word/verbatim, directly from the source, or would you rather have everything be re-worded and be original content? Keeping in mind, the final product might not sound as good or be as accurate depending on the talent, originality and experience of the individual editor. Something to ponder.

Lastly, I disagree that you fail to see Lexicanum doing the exact same thing, or to the extent that this wiki has been doing. I've been around this hobby since 1986, and believe me, they were doing the cut-and-paste thing long before we were. In fact, many of their articles use material directly out of the Codexes, Novels as well as various campaign books. Only within the last couple of years have they starting getting a small pool of consistent writers that actually have been creating original work. Yet for some reason, this wiki is the website that ALWAYS gets called out on it.

First and foremost, the numerous editors and mods only keep this wiki going, because of our enthusiasm and love for the hobby. And we all wish to make it the best repository of WH40K lore out there on the web. Granted, we might not have as numerous of subjects as some of our competitors, but what we lack in number of articles, we more than make up for it the quality of the content. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion though, and if you feel we are not up to your expectations, I highly encourage you to utilize Lexicanum as your main source of WH40K-related information.

Hopefully this explanation will allay your misgivings and satisfactorily answer all your questions.

Sincerely,

Algrim Whitefang, WH40K Wiki Senior Associate Administrator http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f262/SGM-Daly91/Warhammer%2040K/SWBadgesmall_zpsa703bc79.png (talk)