[WikiEN-l] Exposure of magic on Wikipedia

[Bryan Derksen]

MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
> Excessively long plot summaries of films and books can constitute a
> copyright violation because while they're not an exact copy, they damage
> intellectual rights of the copyrighted material.

Could you back that up, please? As I understand it, this is way too
broad an interpretation of copyright law. It's only illegal to actually
_copy_ something that's copyrighted, not to merely do something that
reduces its "value."

> Can't the same apply to
> summarizing a magic trick manual to the point while the text is not a copy
> it still violates the copyright of the text?

I don't see how. Copyright covers a specific tangible expression, not
the underlying ideas contained within it. One can make a movie out of a
book and then have the book be in public domain while the movie remains
copyrighted, for example. I think the sort of IP protection you're
thinking of is more along the lines of trade secret or patent law, which
as far as I can tell don't apply here.

Wikipedia has no obligation to keep other people's secrets (possibly
with some exceptions in biographical articles, I guess). One need merely
take a glance through the Scientology articles to see that.