[Wikilegal-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] An FDL test case: McFly

[Dan Carlson]

On Feb 12, 2004, at 3:22 AM, Alex R. wrote:

> If you open the page of a book is there a copyright notice on that 
> page?
> No you go to the title page. If he thinks it is an encyclopedia then 
> he will
> go to the main page and see the link on the main page. Some people on
> Wikipedia think that the use of all those copyright and disclaimer 
> links on
> every page is overkill. Most major sites have one copyright link, and 
> that
> suffices for the whole site. Isn't that a reasonable interpretation of 
> how
> book publishing is adapted to the web? It is not just one article, it 
> is a
> collection of articles and the copyright notice is only one link away 
> as it
> can always be found on the main page.
>
> Just being a devil's advocate, not necessarily agreeing with what he is
> doing, but there are always three sides to every dispute, the two
> disputants and the truth.

(Okay, I understand you're being Devil's Advocate here...  I just want 
to refute the argument as I see it.)

However, this argument assumes that a Web page can be treated in the 
same way as a paper Encyclopedia.  I think it's been very clearly 
established that this is not the case.  A book is clearly a single work 
-- you don't tear pages out of it to share around at all.  And if, for 
example, a professor shares an article from the encyclopedia, every 
professor I've ever had has always included a photocopy of the title 
page along with it, so that the attributions and copyright are 
included.

However, that is clearly not likely to happen in the case of the World 
Wide Web.  Every individual page is treated as a work in its own right. 
  A collection of pages like Wikipedia, creating a distinct "site", is 
certainly analogous to a book in a way.  But if you print out a single 
Web page, the browser (should) always include the date/time/URL of that 
page along with the information.  Each Web page, though part of a 
greater whole, is also a unique entity in its own right in a way that a 
single page out of a book really cannot.

Therefore, it's essential to provide attributions and copyright 
information on every page.

(Is this logical enough?  I'm not a legal expert, of course, but I'd 
like to think that my philosophy/logic classes are up to the task. ;-))

Dan Carlson, Administrator
Memory Alpha: A Star Trek WikiWiki
http://memoryalpha.st-minutiae.com/