[Foundation-l] Wikiquote

John Vandenberg jayvdb at gmail.com
Wed Sep 10 23:13:14 UTC 2008


On Thu, Sep 11, 2008 at 7:20 AM, Mike Godwin <mgodwin at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
> Klaus Graf writes:
>
>> Here is an interesting Quote (with educational value):
>>
>> "A company published a book of trivia questions about the events and
>> characters of the "Seinfeld" television series. The book included
>> questions based upon events and characters in 84 "Seinfeld" episodes
>> and used actual dialogue from the show in 41 of the book's questions.
>> Important factors: As in the "Twin Peaks" case, the book affected the
>> owner's right to make derivative "Seinfeld" works such as trivia
>> books. ( Castle Rock Entertainment, Inc. v. Carol Publ. Group, 150
>> F.3d 132 (2d Cir. 1998).)"
>>
>> I would like to ask WMF board and its lawyer to give legal advice to
>> the en WQ project.
>
> I can't speak for the Board, but I don't see in this case a compelling
> argument for Wikiquote to change its current practice.
>
> Copyright law cases typically involve multifactorial analyses and lots
> of nuance. I would not assume that a commercial book publisher's use
> of "Seinfeld" quotes necessarily tells us anything about a non-
> commercial reference's use of quotations.
>
> Many people believe that copyright jurisprudence gives clear and
> obvious guidance about how one should use copyrighted materials in
> future cases. My experience has been, however, that this belief is
> mistaken.
>
> If we were contacted by a copyright holder with a complaint about
> Wikiquote, of course, we would attempt to respond within reason to
> resolve the complaint without anyone's having to resort to
> litigation.  The Digital Millennium Copyright Act actually provides
> for services like Wikiquote a way of resolving copyright complaints
> without serious risk of litigation through its notice-and-takedown
> procedures. I'm not aware of any DMCA notices regarding Seinfeld
> quotations on Wikiquote.

Has there been any DMCA notices regarding any set of fair-use quotes
on Wikiquote?

--
John Vandenberg



More information about the foundation-l mailing list