> >>A meaningful selection of a subset is
copyrightable and the selection of articles to include in an encyclpedia is such a
meaningful selection.<<
It MAY be copyrightable. The matter is far from clear.<<
What is far from clear? In US law, it's completely clear that a meaningful selection
creates a copyright. If you doubt it, read our article on Feist v. Rural or the decision
itself at
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=499&i… .
It's even more clearly set out in Assessment Technologies v. WIREdata, a 2003 Seventh
Circuit decision (citations removed):
"WIREdata???s appeal gets off on the wrong foot, with the contention that Market
Drive lacks sufficient originality to be copyrightable. Copyright law unlike patent law
does not require substantial originality. ... In fact, it requires only enough originality
to enable a work to be distinguished from similar works that are in the public domain,
since without some discernible distinction it would be impossible to determine whether a
subsequent work was copying a copyrighted work or a public-domain work. This modest
requirement is satisfied by Market Drive because no other real estate assessment program
arranges the data collected by the assessor in these 456 fields grouped into these 34
categories, and because this structure is not so obvious or inevitable as to lack the
minimal originality required"
(Since someone will be tempted to use this at possible copyvios, note that there must be
at least minimal creativity, sufficient not to be de minimis (that is, too insubstantial
to matter) and that basic English connective words betwen obvious facts in a small amount
of text are likely to be de minimis, IMO)
As to whether the pages Timwi created are infringement, they contain a list of about
20,000 articles selected by Columbia, all of theirs, less the ones Timwi could
automatically determine weren't in the Wikipedia already. I don't think it's
likely that any court would consider a list of 20,000 items the Columbia selected by human
work to be anything other than substantial. Hence, it's substantial copying of a
copyrighted work.
If you'd like to disagree, please explain why you believe that US law doesn't say
that a meaningful selection is copyrightable, citing a case to support your view, or why
you believe that a list of 20,000 items from a work is not a substantial selection.
>We are not planning to publish the list; it is
solely for internal use; items which have been considered would be deleted from the list.
The titles are only a small part of the entire work.<<
One purpose for which the list was created is to facilitate the creation articles or
redirects of the same name in the Wikipedia. Which will mean that the list is published as
part of the Wikipedia, one item per incorporated article title.
> >>We also lose our unwritten fifth fair use
factor "are they good people?" positive result in this case.<<
This emotional argument would be totally irrelevant in a law suit.<<
It's not an emotional argument. It's a legal argument. Quoting from Stanford
University Libraries' Copyright & Fair Use article at
http://fairuse.stanford.edu/Copyright_and_Fair_Use_Overview/chapter9/9-b.ht… :
"5. The "Fifth" Fair Use Factor: Are You Good or Bad?
When you review fair use cases, you may find that they sometimes seem to contradict one
another or conflict with the rules expressed in this chapter. Fair use involves subjective
judgments and are often affected by factors such as a judge or jury 's personal sense
of right or wrong. Despite the fact that the Supreme Court has indicated that
offensiveness is not a fair use factor, you should be aware that a morally offended judge
or jury may rationalize its decision against fair use."
Now, you may not like me telling you that there is a fifth factor, but it still does exist
and it's one reason why I'm usually writing that our uses are fair: our uses are
generally good and for the public good, so judges are likely to choose to interpret the
four formal factors in our favor. Not this time.
>Have they said that they would? Has anyone
received a takedown notice? You are speculating about what they might do; that's what
copyright paranoia is all about.<<
No, I'm working out how _I_ would advise them to act if I was giving them legal views
and wanted to do the greatest possible amount of harm to a competitor taking money from
them. Takedown notices are optional and cheap for the Wikipedia to deal with. That makes
using them a bad choice. It's more costly, and hence more harmful to us, to go
directly tocourt. The most harmful to us time to do that is when there are lots of unsold
printed encyclopedias in a warehouse and about as many just distributed to book stores.
It's speculation based on how to hurt us the most, knowing that we are competitors and
that those competitors have been or will be watching us closely and looking for ways to
hurt us, so they can continue to make money.
> It's also a very big giveaway if they see lots
of referrers from a Wikipedia page to their site. <<
They should be happy with that.<<
I agree. It helps them to identify what is happening. Beyond that, it's a sign of how
we're going to take money from them in the future and you can be sure that their
fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders is to prevent us, not say thank you for
doing it.
> I see Jamesday's position as nothing better
than extreme copyright paranoia. <<
Thanks for the kind words. The only voice of opposition to me becoming an admin expressed
the view that I thought that nothing was copyrighted, in part because I usually write that
uses are fair when I write at Possible copyright infringements. I'll be happy to use
your words to refute that claim in the future.:) You might consider what it means when I
instead write that I believe something is infringement, will result in a legal case and
will result in us losing that case.
A note for the Columbia readers, either now or whenever you're doing discovery:
I'm not a lawyer and this is not a legal opinion.:)