[WikiEN-l] Copyright status of press releases

[Christiaan Briggs]

On 28 Jan 2005, at 2:39 pm, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:

> Christiaan Briggs wrote:
>> Maybe some of you would like to respond to this interesting question, 
>> are press releases copyrighted?:
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:News_release
>
> Press releases are clearly copyrighted.

Judging from all the conflicting information on the net, a lot of it 
from reputable sources, it seems anything but clear. I've yet to see 
one person cite a conclusive source in regard to law.

There is the argument that anything published is copyrighted unless 
stated otherwise, however it is possible that the very word "release" 
could be construed as such a statement. Who knows? I don't. And nobody 
I've discussed this with on Wikimedia, so far, seems to know either.

> An argument could be made about this in court, but I have no interest 
> *at all* in making such an argument.  On Wikinews and elsewhere, we 
> can make use of a press release as factual information, but it would 
> be absurd for us to just publish them or base stories directly on 
> them, license or no license.
>
> Our journalistic standards should be higher than that of lazy 
> reporters who simply regurgitate whatever a company tells them.

If the status of press releases proves to be inconclusive then, yes, it 
clearly would not be a good idea for Wikimedia to be publishing them. 
However, if it were proven that press releases were compatible with 
Wikimedia licences, far from being absurd, I think there's a very good 
argument for publishing them on Wikisource, so they can be linked to 
from Wikinews articles. It's worth noting that current Wikisource 
policy does not preclude press releases from being published (save for 
probable copyright issues), and reasons to publish them on Wikisource 
as opposed to simply linking to them externally are the usual suspects, 
we don't have control over them; they could disappear or be edited.

Over recent years, as a reader of news on the internet, I have found it 
extremely beneficial to refer to press releases; to make my own 
judgements; to read exactly what the prime minister said rather than 
what some other person believes she meant. Historically this ability 
has been reserved for journalists, one reason being that traditional 
mediums, such as newspapers, simply do not have the room. We obviously 
don't have this restriction.

The idea that news readers should be sheltered from press releases by 
groups of people with superior powers of deduction is elitist (can the 
masses be allowed to decipher the world for themselves?) and flies in 
the face of the goals of Wikimedia (to promote and spread knowledge).

One of the fundamental issues of media and propaganda today is the 
fallacy that there is such a thing as objective news, even that which 
attempts a NPOV. You may be able to write things with a neutral point 
of view but the way we frame things is fundamentally woven into our 
cultures, i.e. one culture's NPOV will be very different to another 
culture's NPOV. Knowing who is saying what and what their world-view is 
(or what culture they belong to) is key to getting around this problem, 
which is what the ability to refer to press releases partially allows 
one to do.

Wikinews is a news site. It's clearly to the benefit of news readers to 
be able to refer to relevant press releases, therefore publishing a 
copy of relevant press releases would be beneficial to Wikinews and its 
goals. This is far from absurd it seems to me.

Of course this is all beside the point if there are copyright issues. :)

Christiaan