The Uninvited Co., Inc wrote:
Paraphrased can still be a copyvio in most
jurisdictions, including the
U.S., when the overall sentence and paragraph structure remains the
same. It starts looking like a derived work when the ideas are
organized and presented the same way even though the word choices are
different.
Paraphrasing is only sometimes a copyvio. Saying that it _can_ be does
not imply that it is. Many of the marvunapp entries are very short, and
suggest that there may not be much more to say about a particular
character. In such cases the merger principle may be applicable because
the information itself is not copyrightable, and the number of ways that
you can express that information is very limited.
If we only have occasional short short quoted paragraphs that are
properly attributed that comes well within fair use.
One possible source of copyvios is selection, but that is far more
difficult to establish. If a person is systematically drawing on
marvunapp's material and using that as the basis for what he includes
that could be a copyvio, but a small random selection of material would
not be.
In your comments you make no mention of your negotiations with
marvunapp, and their willingness to find an accomodation. This is
better than assuming that because they have complained there is
necessarily a copyvio. Even if none of our entries are copyvios and
what we do is entirely within the law, they still have a right to exist
in their own particular niche, and we should resist the urge to
overwhelm them with our size, or to otherwise engage in Borg-like behaviour.
It would be very interesting to see reports on negotiations.
Ec