[WikiEN-l] Bot for generating articles on cities in Israel

Mon Sep 22 14:32:22 UTC 2003

Ray Saintonge wrote:
> I've looked at the site and found this in the copyright notice:
> 
>     User must respect the "moral rights" of the CBS and the State of
>     Israel in the copyrighted material. Therefore, when quoting from
>     the copyrighted material, User must attribute the source to the
>     Central Bureau of Statistics of the State of Israel. In addition,
>     User may not alter, modify or in any other fashion change the
>     copyrighted material, and may not do any other act which might
>     diminish the value of the copyrighted material in a manner which
>     would cast aspersion on the State of Israel or on the CBS.
> 
> 
> It seems to me that using this material could at least in part be a 
> violation of copyrights.. Has anyone looked into this.

The statistics that we would be using fall under "fair use", and so we
don't need permission at all.  Their conditions on the data are
something that "fair users" can choose to respect or not -- they can't
be legally binding on such use.  (Alternatively, this may not be 'fair
use' but 'just facts' which can't be copyrighted anyway.)

As it turns out, of course, we *will* attribute the statistics to
them, and endeavor to report them accurately.  And of course, as a
matter of policy, Wikipedia should not cast aspersions on anyone.

So I think we *will* meet the conditions, but I also think we should
regard this as a happy circumstance, not something that we are legally
or morally required to do *by their license*.

--Jimbo