I just want to emphasize, again, that my suggestion was NOT that
we should do this. It'd be a bad idea on simple editorial grounds.
I only mean that we could use their topic list to do a basic size
comparison.
Michael Snow wrote:
Martin Harper wrote:
Auppose
[the Wikipedia print edition] snagged the
same 55,000 topics as Columbia? How big would the resulting
text be?
Wouldn't selecting the exact same 55,000 topics as Colombia be a possible
copyright infringement? Choosing an appropriate selection of topics for a
concise encyclopedia is a creative act...
It would indeed. In fact, it's probably one of the better openings we
could provide for our natural rivals to sue us. Encyclopedia topic
selection is definitely copyrightable. And given this kind of opening,
if Columbia really wanted to take Wikipedia down, they could also
recruit other parties with copyright claims and front the cost of the
litigation. (For example, the various copyright owners of the images we
included, if we haven't screened those properly.)
I doubt choosing the exact same topics as Columbia is realistic,
however. We have different naming conventions, and therefore quite a few
of the topics would not coincide exactly.
--Michael Snow
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