Re: Is copying parts of research papers to the description of a package a "fair use" ?

[Charles Plessy <charles-debian-nospam@plessy.org>]

> On Wed, 29 Aug 2007, Charles Plessy wrote:
> 
> >I just realised that I made many package descriptions by cut-and-paste
> >from published articles, and I wonder if it is a fair use or a copyright
> >infringement ?


Le Wed, Aug 29, 2007 at 03:15:59PM +0200, Andreas Tille a écrit :
> 
> If in doubt I would ask the author(s).


Le Wed, Aug 29, 2007 at 06:15:07PM +0200, Sebastian Hilbert a écrit :
> 
> Most likely it will be treated as copyright infringement. Ask the authors.


Le Wed, Aug 29, 2007 at 10:38:23PM +0200, Thijs Kinkhorst a écrit :
> 
> The description is a very short excerpt, you explicitly list the source. That 
> is quoting in my book - of course I'm not a legal expert but I would be 
> highly surprised if anyone would be offended by it, let alone make a 
> successful court case out of it and wins too.


Hi all,

On one hand, I agree with Thijs that it is likely to be a fair quote,
but on the other hand, there are two points which worry me:

- The quote mostly comes from abastacts and introductions. So if one
  considers only them, it starts to represent quite a significant
  percentage of the original work.

- In the (not unlikely) case where a Google search would lead on
  Debian's pages rather than on the publisher's pages, could the
  publisher decide that it is annoying and send a nasty email to
  webmaster@debian.org, who may want to avoid spending time on that kind
  of issue.

To have a hint, I sent the following message to a publisher:

  I am preparing installation packages of bioinformatic software for the
  Debian GNU/Linux operating system. To write a description which explains
  what the program is doing, I often simply cut-and-paste sentences from
  the README, but also from the article in which the software was
  published. You can find an example of such a description below (the
  package is not on line yet).

  I just realised that the abstract is copyrighted work, and I would like
  to know if you agree that such quote is a "fair use". The Debian
  operating system puts an equal emphasis on software freedom and respect
  of intellectual property and copyright works, so I can rewrite the
  description if needed.
 
The answer I got was that in this particular case is that the copyrights are
managed through an external company, Rightslink. I think that it strongly
increases the risk that webmaster@debian.org could receive a letter written by
a lawyer...


I think that I will try to review the descriptions I made, and to paraphrase
when it looks necessary... Or do you think that I should try to contact
Rightslink ? "Never wake a sleeping dog", the proverb says...

Have a nice day,


-- 
Charles Plessy
http://charles.plessy.org
Wako, Saitama, Japan