The phone directories case (Feist v. Rural) is not relevant or helpful
to us here. The point there was that telephone listings involve purely a
compilation of factual information. The selection of encyclopedia
subjects does not--as we should know, it involves considerable editorial
judgment.
If we copy titles from Columbia or anywhere else, it's a bad idea.
Comparative advertising is a dubious defense, especially since right now
it sounds like we're using this much more for internal reference than
for outside advertising. Besides, like all fair use, it depends on the
factual situation, and part of the equation is the scope of copying
going on. Wholesale copying of article titles is not likely to be fair
use under any analysis.
Instead of avoiding copyright paranoia, why not just avoid copying,
especially so blatantly? We can do better working from our own content
than using somebody else as a base. From Jimbo's post, it appears that
he thinks it's a bad idea, too.
--Michael Snow
Please note:
I did NOT send that "Hi" message. I also
never use those those smiley things (eg :)).
But a few e-mails did appear here
indicating that I've been the latest victim
of a series of worm viruses (such as netsky)
that have been circulating lately.
Thankfully Sheldon has clarified this.
">
>Argh, i don't like the plaintext :)
>
>..btw, "22061" is a password for archive"
____________________________________________________________
Find what you are looking for with the Lycos Yellow Pages
http://r.lycos.com/r/yp_emailfooter/http://yellowpages.lycos.com/default.as…
There's been a request to make mailing list readers aware of a poll
being conducted at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Mailing_lists#Poll:_a_better_pl…
The purpose of the poll is explained below.
Seth Ilys wrote:
> A number of users have expressed major concerns about the way
> discussions occur and decisions are made and propegated with regard to
> the mailing lists (particuarly WikiEN-L). Presently, the mailing list
> is dominated by a handful of individuals and thoughtful back-and-forth
> discussion over extended periods of time is difficult (among other
> difficulties). Multiple users have complained that the mailing list
> volume is too high for them to reasonably keep up with. The current
> situation is clearly frustrating to many users, and clearly action is
> called for. However, there should be a home for the sorts of informal
> "meta-discussion" that takes place on the mailing list.
>
> This subject was recently brought up on WikiEN-L and was rapidly shot
> down; however, those who shot it down were those who frequent the
> mailing list, and I feel as if the community's voice has not been
> heard. Below I propose a number of potential solutions; feel free to
> add additional options...
>
> I personally suggest moving discussions to the online forums already
> set up at boards.wikimedia.org, because they offer the threading,
> viewing, and referencing capabilities that the Wiki is not capable of,
> but are open, fully transparent, and real-time on the web (accessible
> conveniently to all).
Rural lost to Feist because Rural had included every eligible telephone subscriber in the telephone directory. That is, because Rural had done no selection. Since there was no selection, the list of subscribers was just factual information in an obvious order and not copyrightable.
All encyclopedias do select which articles to include and under what titles, a tiny subset of every possible encyclopedic subject. That selection is copyrighted. What we see created so far is a portion of a robot run which was in the process of adding a very substantial set of additional redirects. You might want to read the paragraph under Implications at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_v._Rural :
'cannot contain any of the "expressive" content added by the source author. That includes not only the author's own comments, but also his choice of which facts to cover'
This is a case of a use of the choice of which facts to cover.
-----Original Message-----
From: "Jake Nelson"
To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l(a)Wikipedia.org>
Date: Tue, 2 Mar 2004 20:10:55 -0600
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Columbia encyclopedia article titles
user_Jamesday wrote:
> At my urging in IRC chat, this and the redirects from it are listed at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Possible_copyright_infringements#Marc
h_2 .
>
> A meaningful selection of a subset is copyrightable and the selection of
articles to include in an encyclpedia is such a meaningful selection.
See the decision of the US Supreme Court in [[Feist v. Rural]], 1991.
(Thanks to Raul654 to pointing out our article on it) It's directly
connected to this.
It's worth noting that we're not even listing their entire set of titles-
only the difference between us and them. This could be considered
comparative advertising- see Sony v. Bleem (9th Circuit Court of Appeals,
2000) for a recent case in which fair use was upheld for what many called an
edge case.
Also, nearly all the redirects created are obvious- <lastname>, <firstname>
naming, different formulations of titles, transliteration of foreign
characters (a-ring to double-a, c-cedilla to c, accent marks, tildes), and
so forth. The more esoteric Biblical names, mentioned earlier, all come from
texts or translations that are within the public domain (typically via
Easton's). Moreover, the suggestion on the discussion page that we should
also delete all the redirects created as a result is ludicrous.
Based on all of these and a number of other factors (our nonprofit status
among them, but that's relatively minor), I'd say we're well within bounds.
[[meta:Avoid Copyright Paranoia]], people.
-- Jake
PS: IANAL. I miss Alex.
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Martin Harper wrote:
>>Auppose [the Wikipedia print edition] snagged the
>>same 55,000 topics as Columbia? How big would the resulting
>>text be?
>>
>>
>Wouldn't selecting the exact same 55,000 topics as Colombia be a possible
>copyright infringement? Choosing an appropriate selection of topics for a
>concise encyclopedia is a creative act...
>
It would indeed. In fact, it's probably one of the better openings we
could provide for our natural rivals to sue us. Encyclopedia topic
selection is definitely copyrightable. And given this kind of opening,
if Columbia really wanted to take Wikipedia down, they could also
recruit other parties with copyright claims and front the cost of the
litigation. (For example, the various copyright owners of the images we
included, if we haven't screened those properly.)
I doubt choosing the exact same topics as Columbia is realistic,
however. We have different naming conventions, and therefore quite a few
of the topics would not coincide exactly.
--Michael Snow
If people are going to run polls and then claim that the results can be
used to set policy -- then they really ought to give better publicity to
the polls.
I don't plan to abide by any poll that isn't announced on this mailing
list or in some other Very Prominent Place.
Democracy doesn't mean winning a vote, there's a lot more to it -- as
the recent unpleasantness in Haiti proves.
Uncle Ed
I'm very confused. There has apparently been a poll
at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Main_Page/Archive_14#Straw_poll
for a little while that claims to be deciding whether
or not to keep the current main page. Two MAJOR
problems. One, the poll does not allow someone to
vote for the main page as it is right now (all options
are a week old), and it splits the vote so that there
are four different slightly altered types of new main
page (hence four possible places to cast a vote for
the new design), and one old main page (pooling all
the votes for the old main page in one place) -- this
means that the plurality of the vote right now is for
the old main page. Two, most of us had no idea the
vote was going on until now (and frankly, can't figure
out where to vote "I like what we have this very
moment). Can anyone help me figure out what's going
on?
James Rosenzweig
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I did some analysis of the top 50 contributors to Wikipedia.
After 4 months, they are contributing around 1,500 edits per month.
Then, with each succeeding month, they tend to contribute 50 FEWER edits
per month.
Data Source:
http://www.wikipedia.org/wikistats/EN/TablesWikipediaEN.htm#wikipedians
Ed Poor
----- Original Message -----
From: David Gerard <fun(a)thingy.apana.org.au>
Date: Tuesday, March 2, 2004 3:42 pm
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Good news!
> On 03/02/04 20:08, Ray Saintonge wrote:
> > Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
> >> You know what would be great? If we had a standard form for
> people to
> >> use. You could mail to to this person by paper mail with a return
> >> address to the Wikimedia Foundation, and when the permissions
> come in,
> >> I can store them for future due diligence on the part of a
> publisher>> or reuser or whatever.
>
> > Gee! I would never have guessed that you liked handling paper
> so much. :-)
>
>
> Want to put up scans too, in case Bomis burns down? (Not that I
> think it
> will. Er ...)
>
> A form letter usable outside the US would be most useful too, if
> anyonedoes one. Something sufficiently Berne Convention consistent.
I thought the US does implement the Berne Convention?