Editing Incubator escapee wiki:Help desk/Archive 8 (section)

== 20000 quotations for you.. ==

Hi,

I have a database with nearly 20000 English quotations (19920 exact) quote +author. I have created this database with the help of a small bot which I coded myself. I don't know if you could do anything with it (is copyright a problem?), but I would like to send it in csv format to you (if you want to have it), let me know..

:That sounds like an impressive collection.  Wikipedia does not collect many quotations, but our sibling project [[Wikiquote]] ([http://www.wikiquote.org/ http://www.wikiquote.org/]) may be interested. [[wikiquote:Wikiquote:Village pump|Wikiquote:Village pump]] is probably the place to ask. [[User:Triskaideka|<nowiki></nowiki>]]&mdash;[[User:Triskaideka|Triskaideka]] 20:19, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

::''But'' note that yes, copyright may well be a problem - you say you got these quotes with a bot, so where exactly did you get them ''from''? I mean, a website of quotations probably won't be too happy with you trawling through their pages and copying all the quotations so that you can go offering them to their rivals... - [[User:IMSoP|IMSoP]] 20:36, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

If it's a quotation then surely  the copyright lies with the quoted people? How can any website have a copyright on what other people said? [[User:Theresa knott|Theresa Knott]] [[User talk:Theresa knott| (taketh no rest)]] 05:47, 17 Sep 2004 (UTC)
:Theresa is quite correct. A collection of non-creative information is not copyrightable in the US (as a result of [[Feist v Rural]]). Also, quotations are a very, very, very well establish form of fair use recognized explicetely by the Bern treaty. James and I wrote this all into [[Wikipedia:Copyright FAQ]] - go there for further discussion. [[User:Raul654|→Raul654]] 05:55, Sep 17, 2004 (UTC)

::But could the selection of these particular quotes represent a creative work? [[User:Meelar|[[User:Meelar|Meelar]] [[User talk:Meelar|(talk)]]]] 06:00, Sep 17, 2004 (UTC)

:::Yes, in theory, it could qualify for the same protections that an anthology does. However, if they were gathered with a bot, on its face, that would seem to negate the 'creative' element. [[User:Raul654|→Raul654]] 06:02, Sep 17, 2004 (UTC)

::: Even if the collection does constitute a copyrightable creative work, it appears that the owner of that copyright is offering the collection to us, so No Problem. -- [[User:Derek Ross|Derek Ross]] | [[User talk:Derek Ross | Talk]] 06:07, 2004 Sep 17 (UTC)

:::: No, you both miss the point: if they were gathered by a bot, they have been gathered from ''somewhere''. My guess is that they have been gathered from somebody else's collection: probably another website (note that this is a "small bot"; not "an advanced piece of software capable of extracting notable quotations from the Internet at large"). If I'm right, that other website may well argue that it is publishing a "creative work" or somesuch, and challenge our right to simply extract their content (NB: IANAL, this just seems fair enough). If this person (who I only now notice left no means of contact, so we no only that they were using IP:83.116.124.128) clarifies where the quotations came from, we can work out whether they are, in fact, usable.

:::: Meanwhile, is there anywhere on Wikiquote yet that deals with copyright issues? I mean, ''can'' one just blatantly rip off other people's quotation databases? Is the only thing stopping this being done that it is hard to verify the quality of them? And what about a bot that used [[OCR]] to process all the quotations in the [[Oxford Dictionary of Quotations]]? OK, maybe I'll shut up now. - [[User:IMSoP|IMSoP]] 16:18, 17 Sep 2004 (UTC)