Hi,
Le Wednesday 16 November 2005 23:48, David Newton a écrit :
Ray Santionage wrote:
I've
recently been in a discussion on the Wikisource website and I
would like some definitive answers about the licence that the text of
Wikisource is under and also about the policy with respect to fair use
on Wikisource. I've posted this question here as there is no dedicated
Wikisource mailing list that I can find.
In law there is seldom a definitive answer. If you are looking for a
simple solution it's not going to happen. If somebody gives you one it
is no solution. Applying GFDL depends on whether that application is
necessary. Public domain, fair use and licenses are applied
cumulatively, and not in a mutually exclusive fashion. When someone
puts a copyright notice on a web page or a book it really only means
copyright to the extent that it is copyrightable; it clearly does not
mean that everything on that page or book is copyright. It may very
well be that the only thing copyright about a page is its general layout
and format, and that would be reason enough to add a copyright notice.
The public domain or fair use nature of material is not modified by the
application of a GFDL statement. Being in the public domain obviates
fair use claims.
I'm not asking for a definitive answer under law of the implications
that the licence that Wikisource is under entails. I'm asking for a
definitive answer about what licence the text of Wikisource is under.
The text of the Wikipedia is under the GFDL, there is no question of
that. There is a question as to whether Wikisource text must be GFDL,
GFDL-compatible or public domain, ie the same conditions as apply to
text posted to the Wikipedia, or whether those restrictions are not in
place. It is a straightforward question and if there is not a
straightforward answer we have a serious problem with Wikisource's
copyright situation.
It is clear that most of the documents in Wikisource are under public domain,
because their copyright has expired. A few new documents are under free
licences (GFDL or CC) or public domain when the author decided to release
them in that way.
I think fair use doesn't apply to any document in Wikisource because these are
published in their entirety.
>When considering the copyrightability of UN
resolutions, or all UN
>documents for that matter, what law do you apply? Is there a UN
>Copyright Act? In the absence of such a law can any UN document be
>copyright?
I copy the answer from JB Soufron below:
"Actually, the texts on the website of the UN are copyrighted by the UN as
mentionned on [the copyright notice]. It is forbidden to reproduce these
texts except in the limit mentionned in their [terms of use]. To put it
siply, this basic license allow people to reproduce the texts but not to
modify them, which seems normal since these are legal texts and that
distributing modified versions could induce people in error. I think that
wikisource could make a good use of these texts if they come with a proper
disclaimer. --Soufron 11:22, 20 November 2005 (UTC)"
Personally, I don't see anything useful in copying UN resolutions on
Wikisource. The UN web site is certainly as much as available Wikisource, so
I don't understand why we should copy anything from it, since we can't modify
anything in these texts anyway.
[cut]
As for fair use, I have posted in the Scriptorium and
the response has
disappointed me to say the least. The responses that I have received
have been contrary to the policy of Wikisource as set out at
[[Wikisource: Copyright]] and they indicate to me that the people
concerned do not have a deep understanding of copyright law, or if
they do they choose to ignore those bits of copyright law that they do
not like. The argument for fair use applying to entire documents in
incredibly weak, and no account seems to be take of that fact.
Agreed.
David Newton
Regards,
Yann
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