On 5/24/07, Anthony <wikimail(a)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