[WikiEN-l] Copyright status of press releases

[Ray Saintonge]

Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:

>If you can approach the major press release bureaus and persuade them
>to release all their work, or some portion of it, under a free
>license, or if you can secure a direct release from individual
>companies who would like to do the same, then by all means we can
>surely publish these on wikisource.
>  
>
My reaction as a Wikisource editor would be to ask a contributor to 
substantiate his right to add the press release.  If he fails to do 
anything about it within a reasonable time, it gets deleted.  Only the 
contributor knows where he found the material, so the burden is on him 
to establish the copyright status when it's questioned.

As much as I believe that there exist circumstances where we can and 
should push the boundaries of copyright law, someone's ignorance of 
copyright law is NOT one of them.

Ec