Star Trek Expanded Universe:Dealing with possible copyright infringements

&larr; Star Trek Expanded Universe: Deletion policy

Overview
The goal of Star Trek Expanded Universe is to provide an accurate, original reference source for Star Trek fans with thorough, in-depth coverage of "fanon", fan fiction and fan films.

Possible copyright infringement is a serious matter, and we aim to take it seriously. Material 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 community members 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 be copied; for example, the Star Trek Encyclopedia or the official Star Trek website.

Procedures
STEU's copyright policy explicitly provides for cases in which an article or other media posted to the Star Trek Expanded Universe database violates someone's copyright. If you believe that 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 the STEU 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, but it is preferable for potential copyright conflicts to be resolved quickly.

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


 * Replace the article's text with new (re-written) content of your own. You should do this on a temporary page ( PAGE NAME/temp , for example) so that, when the previous version of the page is deleted, 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.) Often, an author or artist might be very pleased to see their work get more attention from a site such as this. If you receive explicit permission to post work, note on the talk page that permission to use the copyrighted work has been granted.

Exceptions for plagiarized works
''This policy may be somewhat controversial. Please feel free to discuss it or suggest alternatives.''

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 for example. Once an article is listed on possible copyright infringements, it may be deleted immediately, at the discretion of STEU 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, 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 Star Trek Expanded Universe (Wikia) 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 here. If this happens, it is acceptable to simply revert the changes 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 constituting a possible copyvio, 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 copyvio 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 Star Trek Expanded Universe 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 STEU's designated agent under the terms of the Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act.

Note that we 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 the 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: For images, use this message:
 * copyvio
 * copyvioimage

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