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