[Wikiquote-l] board resolution

[Manuel Menal]

Pedro Sanchez wrote:
> About the board resolution and wikiquote.

> It says that now projects can't hold nonfree content unless they
> develop an exemption policy.

> Wikiquotes host mostly content under some sort of exemption (for
> instance, when quoting from TV series). Is the resolution meaning that
> all wikiquotes have to develop a specific EDP for TEXT ?

As far as I understand it, yes. And it's a good thing, in my opinion.

Quotations laws do not follow any international conventions - they are 
exceptions to the international conventions on copyright, actually. 
Thus, the local laws may have significant differences. Aphaia just 
posted an interesting example about Japan. The French copyright law 
allows short quotes, but has some interesting restrictions : the quotes 
must have a source and has to be exact. There is also many documentation 
on the maximum length of quotes (you have to take into account the size 
of the source quoted *and* the size of the article where the quote is).

We should really try to seek compliance to our local laws whenever 
possible. That's not always possible, though : there are probably 
incompatible clauses in the French, Belgian, Swiss, Canadian and 
Algerian laws (but they're all french-speaking countries, so fr: is 
concerned with all of them).

As for fr:wq : we already have a sort of EDP, which is our « charte 
»[0]. It states that the applicable law is US law, that quotes must be 
added according to quotation rights and database rights, and, most 
importantly, that all quotes must have a precise source (e.g. for books 
: title, author, publisher, year and page number).

The main purpose of this EDP is to prevent people from taking quotes in 
existing quote databases and adding them to Wikiquote - which is why the 
French Wikiquote had to be closed and erased last year. But IMO 
unsourced quotes (and quotes with vague sources) can cause many legal 
problems: defamation, integrity of work and all sort of [[w:moral 
rights]]. These should probably be considered for an EDP, as most 
countries (including the US) are signatory to the Berne convention 
(which includes moral rights).

Just my 2¢,

[0]: http://fr.wikiquote.org/wiki/Wikiquote:Charte (in French only...)

-- 
Manuel Menal ([[q:User:Mmenal]])