Forum:Copyright Disclaimer

Hello. I see that a number of my contributions to the Wikia Vault have been copied over to this fork. While I am glad to see my content used to support the Fallout community, I noticed a discrepancy with the license information provided on this site.

The current licensing information is confusing or incorrect. At the bottom of the wiki the footer states, "Content is available under CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 unless otherwise noted." This should be changed to "Content is available under CC-BY-SA 3.0 unless otherwise noted." The Disclaimer already properly states that the content should be CC-BY-SA 3.0. When editing a page, the text states, "All contributions to The Vault are considered to be released under the CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 (see The Vault:Copyrights for details)." This too should be changed to CC-BY-SA.

I don't know how much sway the admins on this wiki have with Gamepedia, but it would be nice if other Gampedia wikis besides The Vault used CC-BY-SA. I have avoided contributing to any of them because they all use the NC license. I just recently found out that The Vault had moved here and was using CC-BY-SA on a Gamepedia wiki, which I am glad to see.

Thank you. --Odie5533 (talk) 00:55, 10 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Hey, Odie, thanks for your comment. Before I continue, let me note that this isn't a fork. The Vault has an established trademark and unbroken continuity since 2005. Merely switching hosts does not, in any way, constitute a fork. No further discussion.
 * That said, the license information may have been changed during transition, as Gamepedia by default uses the CC-BY-NC-SA 3.0 license. I have to ask: Why are you hesitant to contribute to wikis that have the NonCommercial clause in effect?
 * I'll send you e-mail up the chain and modify the information accordingly. Tagaziel (talk) 08:10, 10 January 2014 (UTC)
 * The Vault should be under CC-BY-SA. Looks like this was accidentally changed - I'll look into changing it back. VaultAusir (talk) 09:09, 10 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Thank you for looking into it Ausir. Just a small correction Tagaziel, you said, "the license information may have been changed during transition". That is impossible, legally speaking.
 * If you click edit on any page on here, it gives a disclaimer that "All contributions to The Vault are considered to be released under the CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 (see The Vault:Copyrights for details)". That statement contradicts what the linked page says. I am not a lawyer, but as far as I can tell all user contributions to this site after the content was transferred from Wikia are in a murky area somewhere between CC-BY-NC-SA and CC-BY-SA, which is to say no license at all. Users can't legally edit a CC-BY-SA page and have their contributions be NC, and you can't legally now change their contributions as though they've always been CC-BY-SA since the (new) users never agreed to that.
 * Personally, all I would ask is that it is made clear that at least for the pages I contributed to, users are notified that the content is CC-BY-SA. I don't have any clue how to work out the other, bigger problem. --Odie5533 (talk) 10:59, 10 January 2014 (UTC)
 * The Vault is licensed under CC-BY-SA, and it was stated as such until just recently (it's been CC-BY-SA since the move to Curse as well). The current copyright notice is wrong (the Gamepedia default is NC, so looks like it was changed to that by mistake with the recent software update), I'll look into changing it back to the proper version. This is a technical mistake that we'll address ASAP, and not an actual change of license in any way. VaultAusir (talk) 11:36, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

I am a lawyer Odie (or, at least, I have a Master of Laws degree), so I can tell you that there is no contradiction. The License information changed, but not the actual license. Now that I think of it, the error might have happened during the latest update of the underlying software. We'll fix it, it's not a nefarious plot meant to destroy the livelihood of thousands of people around the world. :P Tagaziel (talk) 12:22, 10 January 2014 (UTC)
 * And it's fixed now! Sorry for the temporary error. VaultAusir (talk) 15:14, 10 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Thank you, Ausir! I'm glad to see at least one Gamepedia wiki is CC-BY-SA. @Tagaziel: I am interested. So you can have a notice on your site saying "You submit your contributions under this license", and then later tell the person "There was a technical error. You actually used a different license." and this is legal? My contributions were always CC-BY-SA as I'd not yet contributed on the new site, so it does not affect me, but I am still curious. --Odie5533 (talk) 17:44, 10 January 2014 (UTC)
 * No, you can't. However, if this happens due to a technical error (say, a platform-wide MediaWiki update that applies to all hosted wikis), you can end up with this kind of situation, when the site is licensed on a certain form of Creative Commons, but the notice suddenly says something else due to a technical error. What matters is the licensing page which explains which license is used and applies across the wiki, the boilerplate notice is just that: A notice.
 * We thank you for bringing this up and allowing us to correct this oversight, but this situation should not be construed as a deliberate, nefarious attempt by anyone to change the licensing from one CC license to another CC license. Tagaziel (talk) 18:03, 10 January 2014 (UTC)