Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
On Mon, 9 Apr 2007 02:15:19 -0700, "Matthew Brown" morven@gmail.com wrote:
The opposition at least in my case is about how far some people and corporations will go to claim copyright (or trademark, or indeed patent, although the latter doesn't affect Wikipedia nearly so much) in ways that range from laughable through questionable and dubious to unlikely.
Oh sure. I recently handled a complaint from someone who claimed that sales figures for a product which he quoted on his website were copyright, and we may not reproduce the figures. That is clearly complete bollocks. On the other hand we had someone complaining that a formatted list of tour dates was a direct lift out of his book. He was right; it was a direct lift.
The problem in both of these cases hinges on the popular misconception that information can be copyright. In the first case I would be inclined to consider whether the material was proprietary data, but that's a whole other field outside of copyright. In the second case the formatting is likely the deciding factor. The tour dates themselves (probably historical since they're from a book) are not protected. Any two people doing original research on the matter should come up with the same dates.
In any event, you need to deal with the factual situation in front of you. Anyone challenging your decision should exhibit a bit of cluefulness about copyright, and a good whinge is not particularly cluefull.
Ec