[Wikipedia-l] 1911encyclopedia.org copyright nonsense

[Daniel Mayer]

To my mild shock, I have just read a copyright notice at 1911encyclopedia.org:

".....
Use on Other Web Sites.  The Contents are licensed only for the personal, 
household, educational use by a single individual.  Reproducing Content on 
another site or redistributing Content is forbidden. Taking Content from this 
site and editing it and posting it on another site is also forbidden. Framing 
of this site is forbidden.
......"

Full text: http://www.1911ency.org/legal.htm

Sound familiar (esp. the editing part)? Should we de-list this resource from 
[[wikipedia:Public domain resources]] and only use the very incomplete 
Project Gutenberg or should we risk an expensive lawsuit by PageWise? I know 
their claim is almost certainly bull sh*t, but our blatant use of their 
material nontheless would probably be enough to start expensive legal 
proceedings. 

<sarcasm>They did modify the public domain info by introducing OCR errors, in 
effect creating a derivative work.</sarcasm>  

Companies that do wholesale copies of public domain material and then slap an 
onerous copyright onto the unimproved text make me sick.

--maveric149