[WikiEN-l] Copyright status of press releases

Fri Jan 28 23:17:40 UTC 2005

On Fri, 28 Jan 2005 12:09:12 -0800, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales
<jwales at wikia.com> wrote:

> Someone calling something a "press release" DOES NOT qualify as a
> license which is compatible with the GNU FDL.  I do not know of any
> court cases arising out of this, and it is easy to understand why
> there wouldn't be any: companies love it when people just post their
> PR, and have no reason to sue or complain over it.  Even in our case,
> where we would be modifying heavily, a case would be unlikely to
> arise, due mostly to our NPOV policy.

Releasing something as a press release is giving a broad implicit
permission to reuse the content.  However, this is not the same as PD,
legally.  All rights are not given up.

However, there's nothing wrong with quoting a press release for
relevant portions; that's fair use.  For NPOV, of course, we should
attribute anyway.

-Matt