[WikiEN-l] Copyright question ("compilation copyright")

[Bryan Derksen]

Seth Finkelstein wrote:
> 	Under US law, the keywords you would want to understand
> are called "compilation copyright".
> 
> http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html
> 
> "A "compilation" is a work formed by the collection and assembling
> of preexisting materials or of data that are selected, coordinated, or
> arranged in such a way that the resulting work as a whole constitutes
> an original work of authorship."

But if this list was compiled by Wikipedia editors (as JzG claimed when
arguing that it's OR) then the _editors_ own the compilation copyright
and are perfectly within their rights to release it under the GFDL.

> 	And actually, "facts about the show" CAN be owned!
> 
> http://www.rcfp.org/news/1998/0824i.html
> 
> "SECOND CIRCUIT--A trivia quiz book testing readers' knowledge and
> recollection of lines from the 'Seinfeld' television show does not
> qualify as a "fair use" and as such constitutes copyright infringement ..."
> 
> 	In general, you really, really, don't want to try to get
> useful answers to questions of copyright law by throwing them out
> to a mailing list and debating them from intuition.

But we the editors have to make these sorts of decisions dozens or
hundreds of times per day. We _have_ to try to figure out what copyright
law means, we can't go running to a professional lawyer with every
question. And personally, I believe that any law that is so byzantine
and obscure that a layperson it applies to cannot figure out what's
legal most of the time is a really bad law. If copyright law was like
that we might as well just give up because if someone wants to sue
there's really nothing at all we could do to avoid it.

In this case, I've had a look at the list and I don't see how it could
reasonably be considered a sufficiently detailed summary of facts about
the show to violate fair use. It's much less so than our oft-mentioned
compilation of Pokemon trivia or hundreds of other such examples. Unless
a professional IP lawyer decides to pipe up at this point with
contradictory information to convince me otherwise I feel comfortable
with my interpretation.