Can FAQs Be Copyrighted? 139
scubacuda writes: "Are FAQs copywritable? Judge Barbara B. Crabb, of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin, in the case Mist-On Systems, Inc. v. Gilley's European Tan Spa, didn't think so."
One can short of a six-pack. (Score:2, Insightful)
Really all the judge found was that the defendant was not guilty of plagiarism (however,
I'd love to hear their argument on how it caused them "irreparable harm". Ha!
There's no difference (Score:2, Insightful)
In any case, a FAQ is something someone has written, and all forms of creation are (well, should be) subject to copyright.
But the case dealt with is this:
(read more to find out)This decision does not say that FAQs are not subject to copyright though, but that there was no copyright infringement:
So the title of the article is misleading, the court just ruled that there was no copyright infringement because the 2 FAQs were different...
Let's move on... But I think the editors should have taken the time to read the article
A word to the editors (Score:5, Insightful)
This court case is so banal it doesn't even deserve mention. The plaintiff was suing the defendant on the grounds that it basically ripped off the idea of having a FAQ at all, which is about as asinine as having one publisher sue another for putting a synopsis on the back of a book. It wasn't even over whether one FAQ was a copy of the other - they didn't cover the same questions or use the same answers to those questions that were the same.
What's next, Slashdot posting an article about a court ruling that it is indeed legal for everyone to write books about how to use computer software without paying royalties to O'Rielly?
"didn't think so" (Score:4, Insightful)
Even though others have clarified the ruling, I think it's worth noting (again?) that the judge did NOT think FAQs were not "copyrightable." In fact, the copy right of any work is automatically bestowed upon the author, but there is a formal procedure as well for registering a copyright.
The judge ruled that there was no copyright infringement. This ruling does not, in any way, imply that FAQs do not deserve copyright protection. It does, however, set the bar reasonably high for proving copyright infringement for a FAQ-style document.
This is a Good Thing. FAQs on vendors'/retailers sites will often have similar information. Think of the thousands of companies that install windows, or who sell nutritional products or cleaning products or pretty much anything manufactured by someone else. Two competitors could reasonably come up with very similar FAQs about that product category and its use, completely independent of each other.
The good news here is that the Court ruled in a reasonable manner, which we might hope will continue when the CBDTPA hits it in a few years...
someone stole my sig!Good (Score:2, Insightful)
According to the court and prior case law, regardless of the "original authorship" contained in a work, "the facts and ideas it exposes are free for the taking."
FAQ's benefit everyone. They're collections of information, often resulting from many users' experiences over time, and they can be an extremely valuable resource. Although the chap who gathers the information together and presents it might well feel a bit miffed if you copied his FAQ and its style exactly without his permission, trying to prevent someone from distributing a FAQ helps no one.
As has been mentioned once or twice on Slashdot, copyright protection is supposed to benefit the public, not particular individuals.
persecution complex, anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
If the editors edited instead of simply relaying common memes, maybe this problem would go away. At least a little bit.
Re:persecution complex, anyone? (Score:1, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The REAL cause for alarm.. (Score:1, Insightful)
Wow, sure are smart.
FAQ's are able to be copyrighted (Score:2, Insightful)
For instance, if an ISP has a one article in a FAQ like:
What are "WinModems" and/or software dependent modems?
These are modems that leave some or most of the work needed in modulating or demodulating (translating and talking to the Internet) to the processor rather than completing all the work themselves. For various reasons, we do not recommend these modems...
Now, if some other ISP were to use it word for word, they would be violating copyright, but if they had the following (or any variation) it would be very difficult to claim it against the copyright:
What are Win and software modems?
Modems that leave much of the work of talking to the Internet (MODulating and DEModulating) to your processor rather than completing the function themselves are often referred to as WinModems (a category of software modems). For various reasons, we recommend using a real or hardware modem...
The similarities may appear blindingly but remember the conditions, same subject, same type of company. And remember, there's a reasion they're called Frequently Asked Questions.
In general, just about anything is able to have a copyright attached to it. There are conditions that will collapse a copyright if challenged in court however, like a commonly used phrase, insufficient to make something unique or a pre-existing work. Take twenty bucks to the copyright office and copyright your name, even John Smith will get through, but if you challenge someone or they challenge you, then it may be abolished (and you don't get your gas money back). This is what makes copyrights different from trademarks and patents; trademarks and patents have to be researched first, and naturally, cost more money.
<insert one-click patent jokes here>
Re:Actually, the court DID say.you can't (Score:2, Insightful)
Compilations of information and the exact expression of that information is definitely copyrightable. Not only that, but the answers to those questions are obviously not common knowledge or else so many people would not be asking them. The fact is, someone put time into creating the document, answering the questions, and publishing the work. There was some thinking involved in selecting the appropriate questions, but also in categorizing and answering them in a way that would convey the information clearly.
One must think about the reason for copyright law in the first place. The laws are created to encourage the sharing of knowledge. Without copyright protection, the company might not want to publish their FAQ. They would be worried that someone would steal their work and claim it as their own. In this case, many obvious questions would inevitably go unanswered.
The court was justified in saying that the format and conventions used in creating a FAQ is simply a standardization on the best known method of representing the answers to commonly-asked questions. Denying that the format is copyrightable was adequate in this case since it addressed the issues that needed to be addressed. That's all they needed to say.
What the court added to this, however, was completely uncalled for. The court said that the particular publication was not copyrightable simply because it was a FAQ. So are you saying that by naming it a FAQ, the author waives all right to copyrighting the document? So the author could just change the name of the document to "Frequently-given-answers" -- would that be sufficient to now be able to copyright the work? Even if so, this would be counterproductive, since people can no longer used the word FAQ as a keyword for searching.
FAQ is simply a convention for naming a type of document with a standardized format. This convention should not be an implicit waiving of copyright priviliges. It's the content that is valuable here, not the format.