[Foundation-l] Wikisource Copyright

Mon Nov 14 18:22:22 UTC 2005

I've recently been in a discussion on the Wikisource website and I
would like some definitive answers about the licence that the text of
Wikisource is under and also about the policy with respect to fair use
on Wikisource. I've posted this question here as there is no dedicated
Wikisource mailing list that I can find.

The copyright issue has come up over the text of UN resolutions, many
of which are on the Wikisource website, and also with the British Act
of Parliament the Hunting Act 2004. The former are placed on the site
under "fair use" despite the fact that the copyright info page of
Wikisource says that fair use should not be resorted to for texts
except in exceptional circumstances, and then only for quotes. There
are hundreds of resolutions placed on the site, and the UN certainly
claims copyright over its works if their website copyright notice is
anything to go by. The British Act of Parliament is under Crown
copyright as it was passed in 2004. There is a waiver on copyright of
British statutes allowing them to be reproduced pretty freely, but it
does have conditions that are incompatible with the GFDL. On
Wikisource the rather dubious claim is also made that foreign statutes
and court decisions are not subject to copyright at all in the United
States. I agree with them that statute law in the US means federal
government works are not under copyright and that case law probably
means local and state government laws and decisions are not under
copyright, but that does not extend to foreign laws.

Given the above I have two main questions:

1. Is Wikisource subject to the same text licensing rules as
Wikipedia, ie GFDL, public domain or GFDL-compatible text?
2. What is the position on fair use at Wikisource?

David Newton