[Wikipedia-l] comment on wikipedia

[Alex R.]

From: "Evan Prodromou" <evan at wikitravel.org>

> However, I find it an interesting concept that individual articles
> might be so diluted as to be uncopyrightable. How can you have
> knowledge without some sort of explication -- a didactic expression of
> knowledge? Even if something is "just" factual, there must be some
> elaboration on those facts if they're rendered in prose form. The
> driest of police-ledger columns and science textbooks is copyrightable
> -- why would a Wikipedia article not be?

Police ledgers are not copyrightable, that is public information.
Just like the news is not really copyrightable. That is why you can
use pictures of famous people and famous events. Unless their is
something particularly creative about the photo there is just a mechanical
reproduction. Sort of like the copyright of an old painting.

This is one point that copyright paranoia guys harp on, no fair use,
we need everything to be "pure". That is not true because there is a lot
of trivial stuff that is copied all the time, language itself is copying,
you can't copyright the words or even random sets of words, something
more is needed, that is creativity. I am not sure that every edit made
on Wikipedia is original, fixing typos or grammar problems is not so
creative for instance, otherwise most books would have a joint
copyright with the editors who get it into shape.

It is important to understand the rationale behind copyright law
because without such an understanding it is easy to make all kinds
of statements about what is copyrighted and copyrightable without
understanding the reason we have copyright law, it is not to prevent
copying, it is only to prevent others from exploiting an exclusive
right that is held by the owner of copyright. If it does not stand in
the way of such exclusivity then copying is more than alright, it
is useful.

>  Each individual version seems, to my uninformed eye, to be
> copyrightable and licensable (to the public and to the next
> contributor).

Uninformed is a good way of putting it. Not everything is covered
by copyright no matter what the lawyers tell you to do (yes they
usually say, put a copyright notice on it, you can claim it for some
part of it sch as typography, layout, order, etc., but it does not mean
that it will stand up in Federal Court, does it?).

> But I'm intrigued. I'd love to hear some examples of how this could
> happen.

There are many good textbooks on copyright, Nimmer on Copyright,
check out the prison or local  law library, they have all the federal cases
in
them. Or buy a subscription to Lexis-Nexis. Also findlaw.com has a lot
of free case law. Most of the federal court web sites have case decisions
from the last five years. Wikipedia has a lot of copyright information you
can gain access to, there is a list of leading cases (they have not all been
briefed so go to it).   If you'd like private lessions on copyright law
most copyright lawyers are available between $200 and $400 per hour,
of course their work is copyright protected as it is not trivial expression,
a lot of research goes into rendering such knowledge into a unique form
and yet the law itself is often not considered to be copyrighted, or if it
is then the enforceablility of such copyright is extremely limited or
impossible for if the public could not know and copy the laws without
paying a fee any society would be in chaos.

Remember copyright is just a concept, it is not something like mathemetics,
physics or computer programming, it is a social concept that is in constant
evolution. Wikipedia copyright is so diluted anyway that it is practically
a grant into the public domain anyway. I doubt that Wikipedia could
really sue for individual articles the damages are really minimal and even
wholesale copying by "forking" would probably be held to be almost
unenforceable because what are the real damages to Wikipedia? It allows
free copying anyway with just some moral rights notices that are not
that enforceable in US law anyway; really trademark protection is much
more important for Wikipedia than blatant copying and reformating
of information.

Alex (en:user:alex756)