Klaus Graf writes:
Here is an interesting Quote (with educational value):
"A company published a book of trivia questions about the events and characters of the "Seinfeld" television series. The book included questions based upon events and characters in 84 "Seinfeld" episodes and used actual dialogue from the show in 41 of the book's questions. Important factors: As in the "Twin Peaks" case, the book affected the owner's right to make derivative "Seinfeld" works such as trivia books. ( Castle Rock Entertainment, Inc. v. Carol Publ. Group, 150 F.3d 132 (2d Cir. 1998).)"
I would like to ask WMF board and its lawyer to give legal advice to the en WQ project.
I can't speak for the Board, but I don't see in this case a compelling argument for Wikiquote to change its current practice.
Copyright law cases typically involve multifactorial analyses and lots of nuance. I would not assume that a commercial book publisher's use of "Seinfeld" quotes necessarily tells us anything about a non- commercial reference's use of quotations.
Many people believe that copyright jurisprudence gives clear and obvious guidance about how one should use copyrighted materials in future cases. My experience has been, however, that this belief is mistaken.
If we were contacted by a copyright holder with a complaint about Wikiquote, of course, we would attempt to respond within reason to resolve the complaint without anyone's having to resort to litigation. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act actually provides for services like Wikiquote a way of resolving copyright complaints without serious risk of litigation through its notice-and-takedown procedures. I'm not aware of any DMCA notices regarding Seinfeld quotations on Wikiquote.
--Mike
On Wed, Sep 10, 2008 at 5:20 PM, Mike Godwin mgodwin@wikimedia.org wrote:
If we were contacted by a copyright holder with a complaint about Wikiquote, of course, we would attempt to respond within reason to resolve the complaint without anyone's having to resort to litigation. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act actually provides for services like Wikiquote a way of resolving copyright complaints without serious risk of litigation through its notice-and-takedown procedures. I'm not aware of any DMCA notices regarding Seinfeld quotations on Wikiquote.
We also make it easy for these copyright holders to contact us. We have a "Contact Wikiquote" link on the sidebar of all our pages which links to < http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Wikiquote:Contact_us%3E. On that page, they find they are able to report copyright violations via private e-mail (to our OTRS queue) or on a wikipage.
On Thu, Sep 11, 2008 at 7:20 AM, Mike Godwin mgodwin@wikimedia.org wrote:
Klaus Graf writes:
Here is an interesting Quote (with educational value):
"A company published a book of trivia questions about the events and characters of the "Seinfeld" television series. The book included questions based upon events and characters in 84 "Seinfeld" episodes and used actual dialogue from the show in 41 of the book's questions. Important factors: As in the "Twin Peaks" case, the book affected the owner's right to make derivative "Seinfeld" works such as trivia books. ( Castle Rock Entertainment, Inc. v. Carol Publ. Group, 150 F.3d 132 (2d Cir. 1998).)"
I would like to ask WMF board and its lawyer to give legal advice to the en WQ project.
I can't speak for the Board, but I don't see in this case a compelling argument for Wikiquote to change its current practice.
Copyright law cases typically involve multifactorial analyses and lots of nuance. I would not assume that a commercial book publisher's use of "Seinfeld" quotes necessarily tells us anything about a non- commercial reference's use of quotations.
Many people believe that copyright jurisprudence gives clear and obvious guidance about how one should use copyrighted materials in future cases. My experience has been, however, that this belief is mistaken.
If we were contacted by a copyright holder with a complaint about Wikiquote, of course, we would attempt to respond within reason to resolve the complaint without anyone's having to resort to litigation. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act actually provides for services like Wikiquote a way of resolving copyright complaints without serious risk of litigation through its notice-and-takedown procedures. I'm not aware of any DMCA notices regarding Seinfeld quotations on Wikiquote.
Has there been any DMCA notices regarding any set of fair-use quotes on Wikiquote?
-- John Vandenberg
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org