On 8/29/05, Fastfission <fastfission(a)gmail.com> wrote:
I think this is nonsense -- EB doesn't make money based on the number
or even the choice of topics. They make it PRIMARILY because of the
article CONTENT, which we are not duplicating in the slightest. They
also make money because of their so-stressed "reliability" which
they've gone to great lengths to explain that they don't think we have
a shred of anyway. Noticing that they have an article on "The U.S.
Civil War" and then creating our own article with totally separate
content on "The U.S. Civil War" does not sound anything like copyright
infringement to me. It's no different than flipping open a volume and
reading what they have, except it is compiled into one place. It is
*bibliographic information* at that -- mere citation!
I offered this the first time and I'll offer it again: if people are
really so freaked out over this, I'm happy to write up a little script
which would take any given list of article titles and see if they were
available on Wikipedia. I'm sure we can find someone who can host it.
Otherwise I'd be happy to host it on my own servers as "research". If
it aids Wikipedia in writing good articles, so be it!
I'm fine with being copyright paranoid in situations regarding things
which are known to be copyrightable. But with something as vague as
"article titles in an encyclopedia which may not be in this other
encyclopedia", I'm less inclined unless there was a direct legal
threat or request for removal (in which case I'm happy to lean towards
the idea of prudence and a lack-of-lawsuit).
FF
Their choice of what articles to include is a very significant part of their
content. The full list is a unique expression of editorial choice of what
parts of human knowledge to include, and as such is protected by copyright
law. Our list is an edited copy of theirs. Our use of significant portions
of their copyright work in order to create and improve direct competition
for them, the copyright holders, is certainly not protected under fair use.
I don't think I can make it any simpler than that.
In the end, it's up to a judge somewhere. The judge may not agree, but in
this world of capitalist corporatism, I'd be willing to wager a lot of money
that you're wrong.
--
Michael Turley
User:Unfocused