[Wikipedia-l] Copyright question

[Ray Saintonge]

Richard Grevers wrote:

> What is the situation when you want to include information which is 
> essentially in the public domain (e.g. a historical list of the 
> Governors- General of NZ) but where all the convenient sources have 
> their own copyright notices? Are they in effect copyrighting the 
> information (which I would consider to be in the public domain) or 
> just their presentation of it?

I basically agree with what Erik and Brion have said.  An original 
presentation would be copyrightable, but the usual chronological or 
alphabetical lists can hardly be considered original, nor could 
something like putting a GG's dates to the left of the name instead of 
to the right.  It is customary and much easier to make a blanket 
copyright statement about a site, which means that it's copyright to 
whatever extent it's copyrightable.  The user might as well be the one 
to try figuring out what is and isn't copyright.  Sometimes the only 
thing that is copyrightable is the general appearance of the site, which 
you probably don't want to use anyway.

Eclecticology