[WikiEN-l] Re: Copyright Warning

[John Davenport]

Those interested can find the complete text of the bill and information 
on its status at:

http://thomas.loc.gov/

While I do agree that this is a bad law, I do not believe it will 
interfere with Wikipedia, although IANAL either.

Section 4 of the bill, "Permitted Acts", states:

     "(a) INDEPENDENTLY GENERATED OR GATHERED INFORMATION- This Act
     shall not restrict any person from independently generating or
     gathering information obtained by means other than extracting it
     from a database generated, gathered, or maintained by another
     person and making that information available in commerce.
     (b) ACTS OF MAKING AVAILABLE IN COMMERCE BY NONPROFIT EDUCATIONAL,
     SCIENTIFIC, OR RESEARCH INSTITUTIONS- The making available in
     commerce of a substantial part of a database by a nonprofit
     educational, scientific, and research institution, including an
     employee or agent of such institution acting within the scope of
     such employment or agency, for nonprofit educational, scientific,
     and research purposes shall not be prohibited by section 3 if the
     court determines that the making available in commerce of the
     information in the database is reasonable under the circumstances,
     taking into consideration the customary practices associated with
     such uses of such database by nonprofit educational, scientific,
     or research institutions and other factors that the court
     determines relevant.
     (c) HYPERLINKING- Nothing in this Act shall restrict the act of
     hyperlinking of one online location to another or the providing of
     a reference or pointer (including such reference or pointer in a
     directory or index) to a database.
     (d) NEWS REPORTING- Nothing in this Act shall restrict any person
     from making available in commerce information for the primary
     purpose of news reporting, including news and sports gathering,
     dissemination, and comment, unless the information is time
     sensitive and has been gathered by a news reporting entity, and
     making available in commerce the information is part of a
     consistent pattern engaged in for the purpose of direct competition."

Wikipedia would appear to be protected by the provisions listed above, 
as we are a non profit organization, however, we must be careful as 
always to cite our sourcs, and not copy sources that aren't expressly 
GFDL/Public domain, without adapting and rephrasing them properly.

I think the quoted section of the bill protects us.