[WikiEN-l] Copyright and Britannica Article List

Mon Jun 27 08:05:12 UTC 2005

DF wrote:

>Either we need to accept that such a list, though
>potentially useful, is too much of a copyright concern
>to keep around.  
>
>OR
>
>We need to come to some agreement that such lists will
>be maintained despite the potential liability.  In
>which case, Jimbo probably needs sign off since he is
>ultimately the one who is liable.
>
It is interesting to follow some of the links in our Feist v. Rural 
article. I was just reading through the decision in Assessment 
Technologies v. Wiredata (ooops I almost typed Wikidata. :-) ) 
http://www.ca7.uscourts.gov/tmp/JX03YB6O.pdf where it was ruled that the 
copyright owner could not use copyright law to prevent access to 
non-copyright information. Cited in that case also was the case of Sega 
Enterprises Ltd. v. Accolade, Inc., 977 F.2d 1510, 1520-28 (9th Cir. 
1992). There the court ruled that it was fair use for Accolade to make a 
copy of and reverse engineer Sega's console software in order to make 
its own games playable on Sega's system. The court said, "For technical 
reasons, Accolade had to make a copy of the source code in order to be 
able to obtain this information. It didn’t want to sell the source code, 
produce a game-console operating system, or make any other use of the 
copyrighted code except to be able to sell a noninfringing product, 
namely a computer game. The court held that this “intermediate copying” 
of the operating system was a fair use, since the only effect of 
enjoining it would be to give Sega control over noninfringing products, 
namely Accolade’s games."

It is also of interest that in a later ruling on costs Wiredata was 
awarded $91,765.28 in legal fees. To a large extent this was because 
there was an attempt to extent rights beyond what was avaiable in 
copyrights, and a recognition that the defendant in such cases is often 
at a disadvantage. "When the prevailing party is the defendant, who by 
definition receives not a small award but no award, the presumption in 
favor of awarding fees is very strong. See Diamond Star Building Corp. 
v. Freed, 30 F.3d 503, 506 (4th Cir. 1994). For without the prospect of 
such an award, the party might be forced into a nuisance settlement or 
deterred altogether from enforcing his rights.

AFAIK The discussion so far on this point has been an internal one, with 
no intervention by anyone representing EB. I don't believe that we are 
infringing their copyrights, but even if we were there are steps which 
they must take if they wish to enforce that right. The first such step 
would be to issue a take-down order. That would give us an opportunity 
to comply without further problems. In a clear case of copyright 
violation we would indeed be required to take things down when we become 
aware of the problem even without such a notice. Where there is serious 
doubt about the copyrightability of the material we do better by giving 
ourselves the benefit of the doubt.

Ec