On 4/9/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG
<guy.chapman(a)spamcop.net> wrote:
On Sat, 07 Apr 2007 19:46:26 -0700, Ray
Saintonge
<saintonge(a)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.
Creating a content fork would be a rather dramatic solution that would
harm Wikipedia.
--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill(a)gmail.com)