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/