[WikiEN-l] Citizendium

[Ray Saintonge]

Carcharoth wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 2:46 AM,  <wjhonson at aol.com> wrote:
>   
>> If the author who is placing their material PD, not by age, doesn't
>> like what people do with it, they shouldn't have made it PD.  I mean
>> you can't give away your cake and then claim that it shouldn't be eaten.
>>     
> Agreed. But is it the whole text, parts of the texts, the ideas
> expressed in the text, the original wording and structure of the text,
> that are PD, or only some of those? Obviously, if a PD text quotes a
> copyrighted text, there are still restrictions on how that can be used
> or re-used. And if you were quoting from the main text of a PD text,
> you would still put the quote of PD text in quotation marks. Or would
> you?
>
> How would you make a decision on whether to paraphrase, summarise, or
> quote verbatim, all or part of the PD text, and in which cases would
> you not use quotation marks to offset what you are quoting or
> republishing, from the rest of your work?
>   
One does better by trying not to conflate copyright infringement with 
plagiarism.  They are distinct offences either of which can exist 
independently of the other.  One gives credit to one's sources with or 
without quotation marks depending on whether one is repeating the 
original words or paraphrasing them.  It's as simple as that. If a PD 
text quotes or otherwise uses a copyright text why would you have 
restrictions? This is what fair use exists in the first place.  If one's 
quoted source itself quotes another text then one just uses a second 
level of quotation.  I really don't see a problem here.

Ec