[WikiEN-l] Copyright question

[Ray Saintonge]

Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:

>On Sat, 07 Apr 2007 19:46:26 -0700, Ray Saintonge wrote:
>  
>
>>Let's face it, just mentioning NOR and fancruft in starting a thread 
>>where you sought responses on a copyright question was bound to give the 
>>wrong impression.  You've been around long enough to be aware of the 
>>uncanny ability of members of this list for finding the wrong emphasis 
>>in a message. :-)
>>    
>>
>Well yes, that's true.  What I hadn't realised was that there appears
>to be a degree of philosophical opposition to the idea of copyright,
>or at least to the idea that we should only include what we know to be
>clean, rather than waiting for conclusive proof before removing
>anything.  That's a reversal of the burden of proof, as far as I'm
>concerned.
>
Not really.  The initial burden of proof lies with the person bringing 
the matter to court.  He must establish

    1. that the material was copyright in the first place
    2. that he has a legal right to claim copyrights, and
    3. he must identify exactly what infringed upon the copyright. 

Only then does the defence need to say anything on any of a number of 
bases such as the material was not copyrightable, the plaintiff did not 
properly inherit the copyright, or fair use.  These are not the only 
ones.  The recent case against Dan Brown shows that it's not always easy 
to win a significant copyvio case..

In many of these situations only a court decisiion can determine what is 
clean.  All we have is opinions with not enough at stake to make a 
lawyer's opinion worthwhile.  What the lawyer says is still nothing more 
than an opinion.

Philosophical opposition is fine as long as one approaches copyright 
with a sense of respect for the person who may be the holder of those 
rights.  Simply saying that humanity needs to have this information is 
not a sufficient rationale for copyright violation.  Our rules are 
perhaps already more restrictive than what might be required by the 
courts.  That's fine. Still, there must be a place for legitimate 
challenges to particular copyright claims, and the first thing that I 
would look at when a person seeks to add what could be copyright 
protected material is some element of clue about copyright law.

Ec