If Safeway made a list of products offered by WalMart which Safeway did not offer?
Fred
On Jun 24, 2005, at 11:32 PM, DF wrote:
The Issue
Whether or not using the 2004 Encyclopedia Britannica to form a list of articles that Britannica has but Wikipedia doesn't constitutes a violation of Britannica's copyright?
The list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:2004_Encyclopedia_topics
Background
The WikiProject:Missing encyclopedia articles currently uses four very large lists of topics that appear in other encyclopedias but do not appear in Wikipedia. Of these lists, two are from sources whose copyright has expired, one is a composite of multiple unnamed sources, and the last is based on the 2004 Encyclopedia Britannica (hereafter "EB").
On the talk page, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Missing_encyclopedic_articles#Copyright.3F, there is an ongoing discussion of whether EB holds a copyright in the list of articles itself. Under US copyright law (e.g. Feist v. Rural), a mere list of facts, topics, names, etc. can be protected by copyright if the selection and/or arrangement of those items is, in and of itself, a creative expression. Since the selection of articles for an encyclopedia is certainly an act of creativity, this may grant EB a copyright over the list of articles in their encyclopedia. If true, then creating derivative works from their list of articles (i.e. by making a list of articles that they have but we don't) is likely to be a copyright violation.
As can be seen from the talk page, not everyone agrees that this applies to the EB list. This includes conflicting opinions from users Jamesday and Postdlf, both of whom I respect for their legal acumen.
Precedent
In March 2004, a very similar situation occurred when someone created a list of missing topics based on the Columbia Encyclopedia. At that time, it was decided by community consensus to delete that list as a likely copyright violation.
Archive of that discussion (look under March 2): http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php? title=Wikipedia:Copyright_problems&oldid=2710783
In my opinion, the only real difference between the two cases is that the EB list has existed for four months without being challenged, whereas the Columbia list was challenged and removed almost immediately after its creation.
So what now?
Either we need to accept that such a list, though potentially useful, is too much of a copyright concern to keep around.
OR
We need to come to some agreement that such lists will be maintained despite the potential liability. In which case, Jimbo probably needs sign off since he is ultimately the one who is liable.
Thoughts?
Related links
WikiProject: Missing encyclopedia articles: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Wikipedia:WikiProject_Missing_encyclopedic_articles Feist v. Rural: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Feist_Publications_v._Rural_Telephone_Service US Copyright Code: http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/casecode/uscodes/17/toc.html
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