On Fri, Jan 23, 2009 at 5:22 AM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen <cimonav...@gmail.com> wrote: > I think it is useful to note that even in countries where > moral rights are inalienable, there is a requirement of > "originality" and "creative effort". <snip>
It is not strictly true that all countries require "creativity", some jurisdictions (notably the UK) tend to use copyright to protect the expenditure of effort involved regardless of whether the work is creative. In other words, the rights follow from the fact that someone expended time and effort in creating the publication, and do not necessarily require that the publication contains an original creative expression. This is known as the "sweat of the brow" doctrine [1] and has been explicitly rejected in US case law. That said, I'm not sure how much effort one would have to expend in making cleanup and formatting edits to a wiki article before it could be considered enough to count. However, I do think we should give some consideration to the wikignomes that beautify and cleanup articles, even if they aren't writing lots of text. Their work, though sometimes formulaic, does improve the overall quality and consistency of the resulting product. -Robert Rohde [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweat_of_the_brow _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
