[Wikipedia-l] Copyright violations

[koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com]

Toby wrote:
>> What!? how could this possibly be?
>> Why would the GNU FDL be stricter than ordinary copyright law?
>> If I quote a line from a biography of Winston Churchill
>> in my own FDL biography, why must that be invariant?
>> This doesn't make any sense to me.

Speaking only for text, you'd have an ethical (and, quite possibly, a legal) obligation to leave the quotation as-is; otherwise you're saying someone said something they did not.

That's distinct from coypright, though, which allows for fair use *but* each person has to determine whether they have the right to fair use; it's not a blanket license.  E.g. I as an educator in school may pass the "fair use" test to show a film in class for free, whereas Joe Moneybags, who wants to show the same film for $10 in a theater without working out a deal with Paramount, would not.

IANAL,

kq