[WikiEN-l] Re: Legal paranoia

[Daniel P. B. Smith]

> From: Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com>
>
> And it seems to me, as we've discussed on here before, that it would
> easily fall under the "fair use" clause. We are using an insubstantial
> part of their encyclopedia; we are using it for our own internal
> purposes (it is in the Wikipedia namespace, is it not?); we are
> non-profit; we are not claiming copyright; we are not defrauding them
> in any way; we are not even looking at the content itself, just
> bibliographic information.

There is paranoia, and then there is prudence.

SCO's various lawsuits may not have much merit, and it is possible  
that their case could be on the verge of a spectacular legal  
meltdown. However, they have managed to cause an enormous amount of  
expensive trouble. In SCO's case, they are attacking deep-pocketed  
companies like IBM and Autozone, so there is no point in doing so  
unless they really hope to win.

If a traditional encyclopedia wanted to attack Wikipedia--and I don't  
think you need to be paranoid to assume such a wish--they don't need  
to win, but only to bankrupt the entity they're suing. Their case  
doesn't need to be good enough to win. It only needs to be good  
enough that court couldn't refuse to consider it.

Using the list of articles from other encyclopedias, merged, edited,  
what-have-you, sounds like gloriously complicated legal territory to  
me. It's concrete evidence of copying _something._ Sort of. Kind of.

Could they win? I don't think it matters. Anyone knows who won  
Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce?

--
Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith at verizon.net
"Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print!
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