Just FYI :-)
The German Verein has just received a legal opinion they ordered some time ago, concerning various legal issues for wikipedia and German law.
It turns out that, according to the legal opinion, German law prohibits the collection of quotes, or quotes as such, if they are not used in a context.
That would mean the German wikiquote project's legal status is shaky at best. (IANAL)
The German PDF with the legal opinion is at [1], and as wiki code at [2].
Magnus
[1] http://www.wikimedia.de/files/Rechtsfragen_Maerz_2005.pdf [2] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Rechtsfragen_M%C3%A4rz_2005
Magnus Manske wrote:
It turns out that, according to the legal opinion, German law prohibits the collection of quotes, or quotes as such, if they are not used in a context.
That would mean the German wikiquote project's legal status is shaky at best. (IANAL)
Does this mean that printed collections of quotes, like the equivalent of the English world's ubiquitous _Bartlett's Book of Quotations_, are not commonly available in German bookstores?
-Mark
Delirium wrote:
Does this mean that printed collections of quotes, like the equivalent of the English world's ubiquitous _Bartlett's Book of Quotations_, are not commonly available in German bookstores?
Answering my own question, it appears that such books of quotations *are* readily available in Germany. Amazon.de, for example, sells all the standard English-language books of quotations, from the _Oxford Concise Dictionary of Quotations_ to the _Random House Webster's Quotationary_, and most of them include unlicensed quotations from 20th-century figures like Einstein.
See: http://www.amazon.de/exec/obidos/tg/browse/-/11902/ref=br_dp_bl_2/028-002433...
Since these publishers haven't been prohibited from selling their books in Germany, it seems that whatever prohibitions might exist aren't being enforced.
-Mark
On Wed, 09 Mar 2005 14:51:05 +0100, Magnus Manske magnus.manske@web.de wrote:
Just FYI :-)
Vielen Dank fuer deine Informationen, Magnus.
The German Verein has just received a legal opinion they ordered some time ago, concerning various legal issues for wikipedia and German law.
It turns out that, according to the legal opinion, German law prohibits the collection of quotes, or quotes as such, if they are not used in a context.
Japanese Wikiquote has a similar restriction. We have no legal consultant but there have been a similar sentence and it made us decide to have a very strict policy toward submissions.
According to the Japanese law, any quotation should be under two restriction. 1) Any quotation should be used in a context 2) quotation should be subsidiary from the view of quantities, that is, the amount of quotation should be less than the text which gives the context.
That would mean the German wikiquote project's legal status is shaky at best. (IANAL)
We accept only submission from PD texts. So there are no quote from TV and movies, nor contemporary writers. Some politicians have their pages because their words and addresses in some occasion (at the diet, e.g.) are PD. We should have given up some pages like "Albert Einstein" .
It is a bit shabby but still now we have a bunch of good classics. I hope it could be your consolation.
The legal study ordered by the German Wikimedia e.V. is mostly a summary of the current German law. While that has value in itself, those who have followed the relevant discussions will not find much new information in it. A more interesting study would be one of loopholes and ways to do an end run around copyright and trademark law:
- How to cheat museums which try to steal public domain content by forbidding photographs. - How to get coat of arms images under a free or semi-free license. - How to phrase Wikiquote pages so that they fall under the fair use equivalent of German law. - How to use the fact that Wikimedia servers are in the United States to our advantage.
In short, instead of asking "What does the law say?", we should ask "How can we do what we want to do?". If the answer is "We can't", then we should actively work to change the laws to our advantage. If we want to survive, we need to be creative in the way we deal with the law, especially in Germany, where, tolerated by the government, a substantial subset of lawyers are criminals who terrorize grandmothers and 15-year-old webmasters with illegal demands for money (google "Abmahnung").
If your perception is that, legally speaking, you are standing on a small island, then you will not even notice as the protections that the law grants you are eroded away by the ocean around you. We have to actively claim the ground that rightfully belongs to us, and not let lobbyists and corrupt governments get away with making information ever more proprietary.
Erik
Erik Moeller wrote:
The legal study ordered by the German Wikimedia e.V. is mostly a summary of the current German law. While that has value in itself, those who have followed the relevant discussions will not find much new information in it. A more interesting study would be one of loopholes and ways to do an end run around copyright and trademark law:
- How to cheat museums which try to steal public domain content by
forbidding photographs.
- How to get coat of arms images under a free or semi-free license.
- How to phrase Wikiquote pages so that they fall under the fair use
equivalent of German law.
- How to use the fact that Wikimedia servers are in the United States
to our advantage.
In short, instead of asking "What does the law say?", we should ask "How can we do what we want to do?". If the answer is "We can't", then we should actively work to change the laws to our advantage. If we want to survive, we need to be creative in the way we deal with the law, especially in Germany, where, tolerated by the government, a substantial subset of lawyers are criminals who terrorize grandmothers and 15-year-old webmasters with illegal demands for money (google "Abmahnung").
If your perception is that, legally speaking, you are standing on a small island, then you will not even notice as the protections that the law grants you are eroded away by the ocean around you. We have to actively claim the ground that rightfully belongs to us, and not let lobbyists and corrupt governments get away with making information ever more proprietary.
This kind of ultra-concervative approach to the law by lawyers does not surprise me. A lawyer that is truly a benefit to his client should be looking for ways that the law can be interpreted that will help his client to achieve desired goals within the law. Simply being a parrot that quotes the law has a very limited value. It's not even a matter of doing an end run or looking for loopholes, but of looking at how the law can serve us as it is.
I would not call taking surreptitious photographs in museums "cheating"; I would be more inclined to characterize the activities of those museums in that way. The rules that they might have about taking photographs are not a copyright issue except in a few limited cases where they actually own the copyright .
Using our funds to lobby for changing the law can affect the tax-free charitable status in some places, but using the existing law to our best advantage should come first anyway.
Your general conclusion about law is accurate. The ones who benefit from the law are those who play it close to the edge. Exciting new ideas such as Wikipedia itself have not progressed by being more safe than sorry. Gold medallists in sport are the ones who take that extra chance; they know that they could crash but are not paralyzed by that fear. It just takes a little courage.
Ec
Out of curiosity, Ray, what caused you to respond to a one year old email from me now? Are you experiencing some lag? :-)
Erik
Erik Moeller wrote:
Out of curiosity, Ray, what caused you to respond to a one year old email from me now? Are you experiencing some lag? :-)
My apologies. I know there are a lot of things that just don't get tossed from my mailing list files, and I usually check the date of what I'm answering. Good thing I was mostly agreeing with you. :-)
Ray
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org