[Foundation-l] German law and wikiquote

[Aphaia]

On Wed, 09 Mar 2005 14:51:05 +0100, Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at web.de> wrote:

> Just FYI :-)

Vielen Dank fuer deine Informationen, Magnus.
 
> The German Verein has just received a legal opinion they ordered some
> time ago, concerning various legal issues for wikipedia and German law.
> 
> It turns out that, according to the legal opinion, German law prohibits
> the collection of quotes, or quotes as such, if they are not used in a
> context.

Japanese Wikiquote has a similar restriction. We have no legal
consultant but there have been a similar sentence and it made us
decide to have a very strict policy toward submissions.

According to the Japanese law, any quotation should be under two
restriction. 1) Any quotation should be used in a context 2) quotation
should be subsidiary from the view of quantities, that is, the amount
of quotation should be less than the text which gives the context.

> That would mean the German wikiquote project's legal status is shaky at
> best. (IANAL)

We accept only submission from PD texts. So there are no quote from TV
and movies, nor contemporary writers. Some politicians have their
pages because their words and addresses in some occasion (at the diet,
e.g.) are PD.  We should have given up some pages like "Albert
Einstein" .                                                           
                                                                      
                                                                      
                                                                      
                                                                      
                    It is a bit shabby but still now we have a bunch
of good classics. I hope it could be your consolation.

-- 
Aphaea@*.wikipedia.org
email: Aphaia @ gmail (dot) com