[WikiEN-l] disclaimer at the bottom of pages

[Stephen Bain]

On 7/13/05, Dan Grey <dangrey at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> My point is - what has that bit of code got do with Wikipedia? Is that
> the bit "fair use" comes from?
>

Well, IANAL, just an Australian law student, but as far as I can tell,
17 USC 108 is linked because it is the part of US copyright law which
allows libraries or archives to make legitimate copies of a
copyrighted work.

http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode17/usc_sec_17_00000108----000-.html

I presume that this link is included to cover the possibility of a
copyright holder coming across an old revision of an article which
includes their copyrighted content. Basically it's saying "sorry, this
might have accidentally included your copyrighted work, but this is an
old revision, we have probably removed the content from the current
version, and just in case you try to sue, we believe we're covered by
this section." It's a sort of pre-emptive defence.

I'm not sure it's ever been tested whether WP would classify as a
"library", but WP would hopefully fall under 17 USC 108 (a) (1) - not
intending a commercial benefit, (a) (2) - WP is open to the public,
and (a) (3) the notice says "this work may be protected by copyright."

"Fair use" is a separate sort of pre-emptive copyright defence which
can be used by anyone (not just libraries and archives), which
essentially says "I know this work is copyright, but I believe that I
am reproducing this in a fair way."

Of course, IANAL, and I may be completely wrong, but that's how I read it.

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com