From: "Evan Prodromou" evan@wikitravel.org
However, I find it an interesting concept that individual articles might be so diluted as to be uncopyrightable. How can you have knowledge without some sort of explication -- a didactic expression of knowledge? Even if something is "just" factual, there must be some elaboration on those facts if they're rendered in prose form. The driest of police-ledger columns and science textbooks is copyrightable -- why would a Wikipedia article not be?
Police ledgers are not copyrightable, that is public information. Just like the news is not really copyrightable. That is why you can use pictures of famous people and famous events. Unless their is something particularly creative about the photo there is just a mechanical reproduction. Sort of like the copyright of an old painting.
This is one point that copyright paranoia guys harp on, no fair use, we need everything to be "pure". That is not true because there is a lot of trivial stuff that is copied all the time, language itself is copying, you can't copyright the words or even random sets of words, something more is needed, that is creativity. I am not sure that every edit made on Wikipedia is original, fixing typos or grammar problems is not so creative for instance, otherwise most books would have a joint copyright with the editors who get it into shape.
It is important to understand the rationale behind copyright law because without such an understanding it is easy to make all kinds of statements about what is copyrighted and copyrightable without understanding the reason we have copyright law, it is not to prevent copying, it is only to prevent others from exploiting an exclusive right that is held by the owner of copyright. If it does not stand in the way of such exclusivity then copying is more than alright, it is useful.
Each individual version seems, to my uninformed eye, to be copyrightable and licensable (to the public and to the next contributor).
Uninformed is a good way of putting it. Not everything is covered by copyright no matter what the lawyers tell you to do (yes they usually say, put a copyright notice on it, you can claim it for some part of it sch as typography, layout, order, etc., but it does not mean that it will stand up in Federal Court, does it?).
But I'm intrigued. I'd love to hear some examples of how this could happen.
There are many good textbooks on copyright, Nimmer on Copyright, check out the prison or local law library, they have all the federal cases in them. Or buy a subscription to Lexis-Nexis. Also findlaw.com has a lot of free case law. Most of the federal court web sites have case decisions from the last five years. Wikipedia has a lot of copyright information you can gain access to, there is a list of leading cases (they have not all been briefed so go to it). If you'd like private lessions on copyright law most copyright lawyers are available between $200 and $400 per hour, of course their work is copyright protected as it is not trivial expression, a lot of research goes into rendering such knowledge into a unique form and yet the law itself is often not considered to be copyrighted, or if it is then the enforceablility of such copyright is extremely limited or impossible for if the public could not know and copy the laws without paying a fee any society would be in chaos.
Remember copyright is just a concept, it is not something like mathemetics, physics or computer programming, it is a social concept that is in constant evolution. Wikipedia copyright is so diluted anyway that it is practically a grant into the public domain anyway. I doubt that Wikipedia could really sue for individual articles the damages are really minimal and even wholesale copying by "forking" would probably be held to be almost unenforceable because what are the real damages to Wikipedia? It allows free copying anyway with just some moral rights notices that are not that enforceable in US law anyway; really trademark protection is much more important for Wikipedia than blatant copying and reformating of information.
Alex (en:user:alex756)