Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
mboverload wrote:
Someone explain to me how a screencap is ANY different than a quote from a book.
Quotes are factual (somebody said them), and facts cannot be copyrighted.
Wow! Some people really work hard to prove they haven't got a clue. Quotes may be factual, but they are not facts. What is copyrighted is the way something is expressed rather that its informational content. Sometimes they become merged when the two are indistinguishable. The merger principle can render something uncopyrightable; this was the basis for Lexmark's loss over the copyrightability of the software in its ink cartridges. When the work in question is fictional you are less likely to be dealing with facts, and unless the work is in the public domain the use of any quotation from it is an example of fair use. Picking up the quote from a work about the work doesn't change that.
You misunderstand me. First, you abuse me when I'm trying to explain something to someone without flaming them for not understanding; second, what is a quote if it's not a factual saying? Even made-up quotes are factual in that someone made them up; even quotes from a book are factual in that someone wrote the book they come from.
What I was saying was that the copyright issue is irrelevant to the original research issue. A quote taken directly from a novel or indirectly from an encyclopedia is still the same quote. Its copyright status, whether fair use or not, remains the same. It's no different for a picture. While the encyclopedia may very well present that it is a fact that the novel said what it said, this kind of meta-factual process does not change the nature of what is quoted. It is not justification for characterizing the clear application of fair use as something else.
Oh, and if quotes are copyrightable (and we can only use them under "fair use"), please explain to me how Wikiquote can exist?
I did not say that quotes were copyrightable; you cannot claim copyright on something that is already copyright by someone else, or is in the public domain. I said, "...unless the work is in the public domain the use of any quotation from it is an example of fair use" Wikiquote can exist because of fair use.
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