On 4/9/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
On Sat, 07 Apr 2007 19:46:26 -0700, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Let's face it, just mentioning NOR and fancruft in starting a thread where you sought responses on a copyright question was bound to give the wrong impression. You've been around long enough to be aware of the uncanny ability of members of this list for finding the wrong emphasis in a message. :-)
Well yes, that's true. What I hadn't realised was that there appears to be a degree of philosophical opposition to the idea of copyright, or at least to the idea that we should only include what we know to be clean, rather than waiting for conclusive proof before removing anything. That's a reversal of the burden of proof, as far as I'm concerned.
I'd say there's probably a large degree of philosophical opposition to the idea of copyright over a collection of 4 groups of 20 or so names of cars - not as much over the idea of copyright itself.
If you really want to exclude absolutely all copyrighted materials from all articles, lest a lawyer goes through and gives a professional opinion on whether or not the article is infringing, most articles on TV series would be decimated. If a list of 20 names of cars is copyrighted, what about a list of 20 character names? Seems to me that would be even *more* likely to be copyrightable, as the individual names themselves are creative.
At that point, maybe it's time to start a new project for fictional works.
Anthony