From: Fastfission fastfission@gmail.com
And it seems to me, as we've discussed on here before, that it would easily fall under the "fair use" clause. We are using an insubstantial part of their encyclopedia; we are using it for our own internal purposes (it is in the Wikipedia namespace, is it not?); we are non-profit; we are not claiming copyright; we are not defrauding them in any way; we are not even looking at the content itself, just bibliographic information.
There is paranoia, and then there is prudence.
SCO's various lawsuits may not have much merit, and it is possible that their case could be on the verge of a spectacular legal meltdown. However, they have managed to cause an enormous amount of expensive trouble. In SCO's case, they are attacking deep-pocketed companies like IBM and Autozone, so there is no point in doing so unless they really hope to win.
If a traditional encyclopedia wanted to attack Wikipedia--and I don't think you need to be paranoid to assume such a wish--they don't need to win, but only to bankrupt the entity they're suing. Their case doesn't need to be good enough to win. It only needs to be good enough that court couldn't refuse to consider it.
Using the list of articles from other encyclopedias, merged, edited, what-have-you, sounds like gloriously complicated legal territory to me. It's concrete evidence of copying _something._ Sort of. Kind of.
Could they win? I don't think it matters. Anyone knows who won Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce?
-- Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith@verizon.net "Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print! Sample chapter at http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html Buy it at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/
Daniel P. B. Smith wrote:
From: Fastfission fastfission@gmail.com
And it seems to me, as we've discussed on here before, that it would easily fall under the "fair use" clause. We are using an insubstantial part of their encyclopedia; we are using it for our own internal purposes (it is in the Wikipedia namespace, is it not?); we are non-profit; we are not claiming copyright; we are not defrauding them in any way; we are not even looking at the content itself, just bibliographic information.
There is paranoia, and then there is prudence.
How do you distinguish between them? Prudence is a frequent argument to excuse paranoia.
In a claim of fair use, one needs to consider the four factors. Let's analyse the use of such lists in terms of those factors. 1. Purpose and Character. It is a non-profit usage that stimulates creativity. 2. Nature of the copied work. A factual list of article titles, without regard to how those titles are expressed, in a standard manner. Indeed, our given-name-first way of listing personal names is "more original" than the usual way of listing names. 3. Substantiality. A mere list of titles is certainly minor compared to the whole articles, and our list will be diminishing in size. 4. Market effect. May marginaly have a positive market effect since it's a list of things we DON'T have. A person wanting the information would need to look it up in the source work.
SCO's various lawsuits may not have much merit, and it is possible that their case could be on the verge of a spectacular legal meltdown. However, they have managed to cause an enormous amount of expensive trouble. In SCO's case, they are attacking deep-pocketed companies like IBM and Autozone, so there is no point in doing so unless they really hope to win.
SCO's suits are for patent infringement not copyright infringement.
If a traditional encyclopedia wanted to attack Wikipedia--and I don't think you need to be paranoid to assume such a wish--they don't need to win, but only to bankrupt the entity they're suing. Their case doesn't need to be good enough to win. It only needs to be good enough that court couldn't refuse to consider it.
Before an actual litigation thay would need to go through the inexpensive take down order process. That would give us an opportunity to reconsider any good-faith fair use position that we may have taken.
Using the list of articles from other encyclopedias, merged, edited, what-have-you, sounds like gloriously complicated legal territory to me. It's concrete evidence of copying _something._ Sort of. Kind of.
Could they win? I don't think it matters.
This is the primary argument in favour of copyright paranoia. Is our position based on principles or on fear? If our only argument is fear of successful litigation, what is that but paranoia? I don't think we should simply take on issues solely for the purpose of setting up litigation; we should show some care in choosing our battles. Principled positions give us more flexibility.
Ec
send "unsubscribe" to wiki-en-l-request@wikipedia.org to do that ;)
On 8/28/05, noahp4485@aol.com noahp4485@aol.com wrote:
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
oops, wikien-l-request@wikipedia.org ;)
On 8/28/05, Phroziac phroziac@gmail.com wrote:
send "unsubscribe" to wiki-en-l-request@wikipedia.org to do that ;)
On 8/28/05, noahp4485@aol.com noahp4485@aol.com wrote:
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
-- signature
On Sun, 2005-08-28 at 21:53 -0400, Phroziac wrote:
oops, wikien-l-request@wikipedia.org ;)
On 8/28/05, Phroziac phroziac@gmail.com wrote:
send "unsubscribe" to wiki-en-l-request@wikipedia.org to do that ;)
On 8/28/05, noahp4485@aol.com noahp4485@aol.com wrote:
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
-- signature
Should we maybe consider making the e-mail footer more explicit? Perhaps, "go to the site linked above to unsubscribe" or something like that? A number of other mailing lists have a "To unsubscribe" section in their footers, and it seems the current one used for Wikimedia mailing lists isn't informative enough, as I've seen numerous "please unsubscribe me" mails sent directly to the lists. Just a thought.
--Christopher Larberg ([[w:en:User:Slowking Man]])
Christopher Larberg wrote:
Should we maybe consider making the e-mail footer more explicit? Perhaps, "go to the site linked above to unsubscribe" or something like that? A number of other mailing lists have a "To unsubscribe" section in their footers, and it seems the current one used for Wikimedia mailing lists isn't informative enough, as I've seen numerous "please unsubscribe me" mails sent directly to the lists. Just a thought.
The list does set List-Unsubscribe:, but it's reasonably clear that not every reader knows about it (or has a helpful MUA).
Cheers,
N.
I have changed the footers of messages, as you can see. If people think it's not right as it is now, I will change it again/back.
~Mark Ryan
On 8/29/05, Nick Boalch n.g.boalch@durham.ac.uk wrote:
Christopher Larberg wrote:
Should we maybe consider making the e-mail footer more explicit? Perhaps, "go to the site linked above to unsubscribe" or something like that? A number of other mailing lists have a "To unsubscribe" section in their footers, and it seems the current one used for Wikimedia mailing lists isn't informative enough, as I've seen numerous "please unsubscribe me" mails sent directly to the lists. Just a thought.
The list does set List-Unsubscribe:, but it's reasonably clear that not every reader knows about it (or has a helpful MUA).
Cheers,
N.
-- Nicholas Boalch School of Modern Languages & Cultures Tel: +44 (0) 191 334 3420 University of Durham Fax: +44 (0) 191 334 3421 New Elvet, Durham DH1 3JT, UK WWW: http://nick.frejol.org/
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: RIPEMD160
Christopher Larberg wrote:
Should we maybe consider making the e-mail footer more explicit? Perhaps, "go to the site linked above to unsubscribe" or something like that? A number of other mailing lists have a "To unsubscribe" section in their footers, and it seems the current one used for Wikimedia mailing lists isn't informative enough, as I've seen numerous "please unsubscribe me" mails sent directly to the lists. Just a thought.
I'm fairly certain that mailman can be set to moderate anyone who posts a message with subjects that match certain things...
- -- Alphax | /"\ Encrypted Email Preferred | \ / ASCII Ribbon Campaign OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613 | X Against HTML email & vCards http://tinyurl.com/cc9up | / \
like "plz read!!!!!!!!!"?
On 8/29/05, Alphax alphasigmax@gmail.com wrote:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: RIPEMD160
Christopher Larberg wrote:
Should we maybe consider making the e-mail footer more explicit? Perhaps, "go to the site linked above to unsubscribe" or something like that? A number of other mailing lists have a "To unsubscribe" section in their footers, and it seems the current one used for Wikimedia mailing lists isn't informative enough, as I've seen numerous "please unsubscribe me" mails sent directly to the lists. Just a thought.
I'm fairly certain that mailman can be set to moderate anyone who posts a message with subjects that match certain things...
Alphax | /"\ Encrypted Email Preferred | \ / ASCII Ribbon Campaign OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613 | X Against HTML email & vCards http://tinyurl.com/cc9up | / \ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (MingW32) Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
iD8DBQFDEwaH/RxM5Ph0xhMRA6DDAJ0XOk3pExbQOwIeOWK6PSU4QfmCkgCeLA1Z /N1aWOvUYQ1y21zDShNSdHU= =7Tjz -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 8/29/05, Phroziac phroziac@gmail.com wrote:
like "plz read!!!!!!!!!"?
*snicker* I've seen this on every mailing list I've ever been on. Several times a year there is a despairing wail from someone posted to the general list, asking to be unsubscribed. In every case this is something they can do for themselves, but they've lost the instructions or they can't understand them or they've forgotten a password or some other equally silly thing. If there's more than a handful, then maybe it's a problem, but otherwise the moderators spot the message and quietly unsubscribe the member, leaving the list clear for more important traffic.
-- Peter in Canberra
It is possible to change the footer text within Mailman. What should I change it to? Just make the last line say "To subscribe visit http..."? Because mine shows links, but I think it's just Gmail automatically linking the text.
As for subject filtering, it is possible. In fact, I'm sure it used to forward emails that look like unsubscribe requests to the list admins. I don't know why it stopped.
~Mark Ryan
On 8/29/05, Phroziac phroziac@gmail.com wrote:
like "plz read!!!!!!!!!"?
On 8/29/05, Alphax alphasigmax@gmail.com wrote:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: RIPEMD160
Christopher Larberg wrote:
Should we maybe consider making the e-mail footer more explicit? Perhaps, "go to the site linked above to unsubscribe" or something like that? A number of other mailing lists have a "To unsubscribe" section in their footers, and it seems the current one used for Wikimedia mailing lists isn't informative enough, as I've seen numerous "please unsubscribe me" mails sent directly to the lists. Just a thought.
I'm fairly certain that mailman can be set to moderate anyone who posts a message with subjects that match certain things...
Alphax | /"\ Encrypted Email Preferred | \ / ASCII Ribbon Campaign OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613 | X Against HTML email & vCards http://tinyurl.com/cc9up | / \ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (MingW32) Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
iD8DBQFDEwaH/RxM5Ph0xhMRA6DDAJ0XOk3pExbQOwIeOWK6PSU4QfmCkgCeLA1Z /N1aWOvUYQ1y21zDShNSdHU= =7Tjz -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
-- signature _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On Monday, August 29, 2005, at 11:35 PM, Mark Ryan wrote:
It is possible to change the footer text within Mailman. What should I change it to? Just make the last line say "To subscribe visit http..."? Because mine shows links, but I think it's just Gmail automatically linking the text.
You could do the old standard "if you recieved this in error, unsubscribe here" etc...
Ryan
Could they win? I don't think it matters.
This is the primary argument in favour of copyright paranoia. Is our position based on principles or on fear? If our only argument is fear of successful litigation, what is that but paranoia? I don't think we should simply take on issues solely for the purpose of setting up litigation; we should show some care in choosing our battles. Principled positions give us more flexibility.
What is called copyright paranoia comes in many forms, and I see this one as the least legitimate one. One form of copyright problems is having dubious copyright text interspersed in an article. I think this is the worst one, because it can so easily taint the entire article and even spread to other parts of the encyclopedia through copy and paste. It's also the easiest to fix, because text of this sort can easily be rewritten. Then there are dubious claims of fair use in the encyclopedia, in ways that are easily removed (especially images, but also quotes, song lyrics, etc). This isn't really a legal problem for Wikipedia, it's a problem for those who might want to reuse the encyclopedia, and therefore a problem with the free status of the encyclopedia.
Finally, there's what we're seeing here, a copyright problem in a side-page which isn't even in the encyclopedia itself. For another example, consider a fair use image being used on someone's user page. Assuming this doesn't taint the actual encyclopedia, there really isn't much of a problem at all.
Now yes, this all rests on the assumption that having a list in the Wikipedia space doesn't taint any of the article space. But I haven't heard any educated arguments that this assumption is invalid.
Anthony
On 8/5/05, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
In a claim of fair use, one needs to consider the four factors. Let's analyse the use of such lists in terms of those factors. 1. Purpose and Character. It is a non-profit usage that stimulates creativity. 2. Nature of the copied work. A factual list of article titles, without regard to how those titles are expressed, in a standard manner. Indeed, our given-name-first way of listing personal names is "more original" than the usual way of listing names. 3. Substantiality. A mere list of titles is certainly minor compared to the whole articles, and our list will be diminishing in size. 4. Market effect. May marginaly have a positive market effect since it's a list of things we DON'T have. A person wanting the information would need to look it up in the source work.
Each of these four factors do not have to be considered separately to the exclusion of the others,IIRC, the courts consider them both separately and in combination.
Addressing #1 & #4 together: Our use is non-profit usage that stimulates creativity, certainly, which in turn directly results in the reduction of the market values of EB and Encarta. How can that possibly be fair use? I don't think it can.
I see several other potential problems that damage Wikipedia's claim to fair use. I think we're right to take them down at this time.
On 8/28/05, Michael Turley michael.turley@gmail.com wrote:
Each of these four factors do not have to be considered separately to the exclusion of the others,IIRC, the courts consider them both separately and in combination.
Addressing #1 & #4 together: Our use is non-profit usage that stimulates creativity, certainly, which in turn directly results in the reduction of the market values of EB and Encarta. How can that possibly be fair use? I don't think it can.
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
On 8/29/05, Fastfission fastfission@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 wrote:
Their choice of what articles to include is a very significant part of their content.
How do you measure "significant"? If their articles average 1,000 words each we're talking about less than 1/10 of 1 percent.
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 realize that the corporatist agenda is often a matter of talking in favour of competition while acting against it. Restricting competition is not one of the purposes of copyright law. If that were the case I could see Coke starting a legal action every time that Pepsi referred to them in one of their ads.
I wouldn't want us to be in breech of anti-trust legislation. :-)
I don't think I can make it any simpler than that.
Simple and simplistic are two different concepts.
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.
How much? Who will hold the bets? How will it be settled without without the need to go to court?
Ec
On 8/6/05, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Michael Turley wrote:
Their choice of what articles to include is a very significant part of
their
content.
How do you measure "significant"? If their articles average 1,000 words each we're talking about less than 1/10 of 1 percent.
It doesn't take much court watching to know that "significant" is not decided by percentage. If you were to print and give away individual still frames from a copyright movie, you'd be using an even lower percentage of the work, yet you'd still lose a copyright infringement action. Disney does quite good business selling individual stills from their movies. I don't remember but they may have started doing so after successfully suing someone else for doing it.
I don't think "significant" is something you can measure objectively. You have to look at each case, the creativity involved in making the work, and the specific purpose that the fair use claimant uses it under.
In this case, the fact that the other party is competing in the same product market, and that we're using their work to improve our competing product means we have to be even more cautious.
As you say, the courts don't try to restrict competition, but they do frown on people trying to compete with a copyright holder by using the copyright holder's own work. That is the very purpose of copyright.
I think the founders were right in granting limited copyright terms, but if you think the current courts favor competition over copyright, please review the consititutionality review of the recent copyright extension laws. "Competition" and "common good" are not high on the current court system's list of goals.
If a traditional encyclopedia wanted to attack Wikipedia--and I don't think you need to be paranoid to assume such a wish--they don't need to win, but only to bankrupt the entity they're suing. Their case doesn't need to be good enough to win. It only needs to be good enough that court couldn't refuse to consider it.
That's not all that's needed. There also needs to be a threat that the lawsuit could bankrupt Wikimedia in the first place. Over a list of titles I just don't see it, even if we just gave up on the merits, which are in our favor as well.
Even then there is relatively little incentive for a traditional encyclopedia to attack Wikipedia in the first place. So they bankrupt Wikimedia? That's just going to make Wikipedia grow even bigger. Fine, the legal entity of Wikimedia would be bankrupt, but Wikipedia is much more than a legal entity and it will survive with or without Wikimedia. Besides, the support would come pouring in from all over the place. We'd probably get plenty of legal support donated to us. Maybe this wouldn't be the case if we blatantly flaunted the law (although it still might be), but in a case like this where we're actually in the right, the support would be tremendous.
The only reason we should even consider backing down on this is if there's a serious legal argument that keeping this list would somehow taint the rest of the encyclopedia. I highly doubt this is true, but I'm not a lawyer, and if a lawyer says this is plausible it's something we should look at hard.
But otherwise, if it's just a list, I don't see the problem. The worst reasonable case scenario is that we have to take it down. A long drawn out legal battle; a chance to set a precedent that can be used in the future; that'd probably be a good thing.
Anthony
On 8/28/05, Daniel P. B. Smith dpbsmith@verizon.net wrote:
There is paranoia, and then there is prudence.
So are they threatening to sue us? Did I miss something? If they aren't, why worry about it? If the pages had an elaborate fair use rationale on them, it would probably help with all of this a bit.
FF