Ed Poor wrote:
I beg you to donate this passage, which is from your
book "Trust Us
We're Experts" to Wikipedia, Sheldon. May we have your permission to
incorporate it into the [[pseudoscience]] article?
Feel free to use or adapt it as you see fit. However, the Wikipedia
article already contains most of the ideas in the passage I cited. It
already mentions Karl Popper, it already talks about
"falsifiability," and it has quite a bit of other information that is
actually quite a bit more detailed than the passage I quoted from my
book.
For that matter, what are the legal technicalities
involved in the
case where a published author wants to donate a tiny portion of a
copyrighted work, to the public via the GPL? (I'm not saying Sheldon
would want to do so in this case: this is brilliant prose, and he's
entitled to make money off it; more power to him!)
I'm not an attorney, but U.S. copyright law, as spelled out in 17 USC
107, says that "fair use of a copyrighted work...for purposes such as
criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching..., scholarship, or
research, is not an infringement of copyright." It goes on to specify
the following criteria to be used in judging whether the use made of
a work constitutes fair use:
(1) the purpose and character of the use, including
whether such use
is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;
(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to
the copyrighted work as a whole; and
(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of
the copyrighted work.
With regard to points (1) and (4), Wikipedia would be on solid ground
in quoting brief excerpts from a book or other published work of
significant length. Wikipedia isn't a commercial venture, and a brief
quotation or adaptation from a book wouldn't hurt sales. Assuming
attribution is given, it would probably *contribute* to sales. No
harm, no foul.
I'm not sure what point (2) is intended to address, but I think it
applies to unauthorized use of confidential documents or trade
secrets.
On point (3), the "amount and substantiality" of an excerpt is
subject to varying court interpretations, depending on the nature of
the work. Quoting a brief poem in its entirety could be a copyright
violation, but a 1,000-word passage from a book probably isn't.
If you wish to research this further, the following URLs may help:
http://www.utsystem.edu/ogc/intellectualproperty/clasguid.htm
http://www.law.emory.edu/6circuit/nov96/96a0357p.06.html
--
--------------------------------
| Sheldon Rampton
| Editor, PR Watch (
www.prwatch.org)
| Author of books including:
| Friends In Deed: The Story of US-Nicaragua Sister Cities
| Toxic Sludge Is Good For You
| Mad Cow USA
| Trust Us, We're Experts
--------------------------------