On 5/24/07, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
The Seinfeld Aptitude Test, which presented trivia questions and answers about the Seinfeld television series, lost a fair use argument in federal court (see Castle Rock Entertainment vs. Carol Publishing Group).
How detailed is too detailed in the context of an encyclopedia? Like all other fair use questions only 9 people can say for sure.
Although technically I suspect that the PLOT was not the issue, since plot is generally not copyrightable. Rather, it would be details outside of plot.
While like every legal question, you can only really answer it by going to court and seeing who wins, I suspect some things can be determined. One would be that a trivia game is subject to different fair use judgment than an encyclopedia.
I'd personally say that any plot summary that would be detailed enough to cause fair use issues for a commercial print encyclopedia is too detailed for Wikipedia. It's supposed to be a very brief summary, not a retelling of the story in thirty paragraphs. In checking out spoiler warnings, I've found some obsessively over-large "summaries" out there ...
-Matt