[Foundation-l] Publishing

Wed Jul 5 17:02:23 UTC 2006

Brad Patrick wrote:

>The lawyer is very much aware of this problem now and will be working on
>it.  In particular I am fascinated that two of our stellar 'IANAL' folks are
>the persons who wrote [[Wikibooks:Copyright]].
>  
>
I hope you are not refering to myself here.  All I've done on that page 
is some minor tweaks partucularly to inform project admins that there 
might be a copyright violation (making it easier to delete violating 
material) and adding a disclaimer that you should seek local legal 
counsel if you are not in the USA but are republishing content that is 
fair-use.  I hope you don't consider that to be bad advise.

As far as Mav is concerned, he was simply trying to get something of a 
disclaimer, hoping that at some time in the future we as a group would 
eventually get somebody interested and give it the hard legal review it 
deserves.  The Wikipedia copyright page really isn't that much better 
for that matter, and if I'm not mistaken the Wikibooks copyright page 
was a fork of the Wikipedia copyright page back when Wikibooks was first 
started, and certainly the Wikipedia copyright page was worked on by the 
same individuals.

For myself, why I may not be a lawyer, I have done an extensive study of 
copyright law including case histories in the USA, and try very hard to 
keep up on changes in copyright law as well.  I do this mainly out of 
professional interest because so much of what I do every day is tied to 
copyright law in some way or another, and there are a number of legal 
landmines you can land on if you are not careful.  Quite litterally, my 
livelyhood and ability to provide for my family depends on knowing 
copyright law.  That I don't do more is because I would rather create 
the content than spend time learning how to stop idiots from stealing it.

-- 
Robert Scott Horning