[WikiEN-l] Re: Legal paranoia

[Anthony DiPierro]

> > Could they win? I don't think it matters.
> 
> This is the primary argument in favour of copyright paranoia.  Is our
> position based on principles or on fear?  If our only argument is fear
> of successful litigation, what is that but paranoia?  I don't think we
> should simply take on issues solely for the purpose of setting up
> litigation; we should show some care in choosing our battles.
> Principled positions give us more flexibility.
> 
What is called copyright paranoia comes in many forms, and I see this
one as the least legitimate one.  One form of copyright problems is
having dubious copyright text interspersed in an article.  I think
this is the worst one, because it can so easily taint the entire
article and even spread to other parts of the encyclopedia through
copy and paste.  It's also the easiest to fix, because text of this
sort can easily be rewritten.  Then there are dubious claims of fair
use in the encyclopedia, in ways that are easily removed (especially
images, but also quotes, song lyrics, etc).  This isn't really a legal
problem for Wikipedia, it's a problem for those who might want to
reuse the encyclopedia, and therefore a problem with the free status
of the encyclopedia.

Finally, there's what we're seeing here, a copyright problem in a
side-page which isn't even in the encyclopedia itself.  For another
example, consider a fair use image being used on someone's user page. 
Assuming this doesn't taint the actual encyclopedia, there really
isn't much of a problem at all.

Now yes, this all rests on the assumption that having a list in the
Wikipedia space doesn't taint any of the article space.  But I haven't
heard any educated arguments that this assumption is invalid.

Anthony