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.