On 10/26/05, Brown, Darin <Darin.Brown(a)enmu.edu> wrote:
But in many fields, esp. mathematics and some
scientific fields, the
distinction between "facts" and "creative work" or "ideas"
isn't so
clear-cut. A previous poster seemed to imply, if I understand correctly,
that one cannot write, e.g. "E = mc^2" without attributing fair use to
Einstein. This seems ridiculous to me.
Two things:
1. "Scientific facts" cannot be copyrighted. I am fairly sure that
even "scientific theories" would fall under this. Of course, claiming
priority for something you did not come up with yourself is unethical,
but I don't think there is any recourse to copyright law. Scientific
laws cannot be copyrighted. Specific scientific _procedures_ can be
*patented* (not copyrighted), but that does not prohibit discussing
how they work in any way (it just puts limits on how one can reproduce
them).
2. It should be noted of course that E = mc^2 would not be
copyrightable anyway because its copyright, if it had one, would be
expired (was published in 1905).
In mathematics, there often is no
way to "paraphrase" a result, so that you are presenting "the facts"
but not
the "creative work". For example, suppose someone in analytic number theory
proves yet another technically tedious result on the zeta function. Just
imagine an expression full of integrals and special functions that goes on
for an entire line (or more). By the above interpretation, how is one to
present this result without violating copyright? After all, there is no way
to "paraphrase" the equation. And what about a proof? One can always
paraphrase a proof, but at the end of the day, you're really violating
copyright in spirit under the above interpretation as much as if you copied
verbatim.
I'm pretty sure mathematical proofs would not be copyrightable. They
do not represent "creativity" in the legal sense -- they are the
logical followings of a given set of circumstances. (None of this is
meant to imply that they don't require a great deal of creativity in a
larger sense to process and figure out) At least, that's how I'd
imagine a court would rule.
Even in something as non-scientific as the writing history (I say this
as a historian, mind you), "facts" are not copyrightable. Even a
particular structuring of them is not unless taken more or less
verbatim. Again, not giving credit (plaigiarism) is a bad thing, but
in many instances copyright law provides little recourse for that
unless it was truly copied from an original. I could write my own
version of the same facts in a given book and have full claim to a
copyright in this instance. In fact this happens all the time -- such
is how most "popular" works of history (and science) are composed.
Sometimes people resent this, but I've never heard of a successful
copyright lawsuit in this respect.
This brings me to another point that I don't think
was addressed when I
brought it up -- many people seem to think that NOR means that every single
mathematical argument in wikipedia requires a reference to the published
literature. Again, this is ridiculous.
I think a good line of work with NOR is to say that every fact which
could be reasonably contested should be cited. That is, if I write an
article the History of X, and I say that on such-and-such a date,
so-and-so did something, I might from the get-go assume that this is
common knowledge (at least among specialists). If someone comes to the
talk page and says, "Hey, I don't know about that," then it is my duty
to pull out some other source which says it. I think citation is
allowed to be an evolving thing.
A practical example: In the [[eugenics]] article, there were a lot of
statements about what the Nazi sterilization programs were like
(common knowledge amongst most people who have done a little reading
on this). A fellow who did not know much about this history came along
and said that he found these things incredible and wanted a citation.
And so I gave him half a dozen. No big deal -- a legitimately
contested fact is worth citing. There are limits of course -- people
who come in and demand a citation for things such as "World War II
occurred" can probably be regarded as people trying to game the system
in some way, but I think with good faith, good judgment will prevail.
It's not hard to reference literature. It's also not hard to have
nested referencing -- for example, I needn't cite that there was a
government called Nazi Germany in the article on eugenics, but there
can be ample citing in the article on Nazi Germany for that to be
sufficient.
FF