Hi Cristian,
In both cases, they may be within the realm of the "right to quote"[2] > (I am not sure this concept exists in US law per se) or "fair use". > I haven't checked the accuracy of the "Right to quote" Wikipedia article you referenced, but I will note here that it mentions the following requirements: - the cited paragraphs are within a reasonable limit (varying from country to country), - clearly marked as quotations <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotations> and fully referenced, - the resulting new work is not just a collection of quotations, but constitutes a fully original work in itself. Assuming for the moment that the information in the Wikipedia article is sound, I don't think the first requirement is met: we are talking about potentially millions of words reproduced from Wikipedia without attribution. The second one is clearly not met either. The third one is debatable, but I would lean towards the opinion that the entire body of Alexa's output is not a "fully original work in itself" if its answers draw substantially on Wikipedia. The Wikipedia article's lead further mentions that the making of quotations has to be "compatible with fair practice, and their extent does not exceed that justified by the purpose". The Amazon Echo is a commercial product sold for the company's (considerable) profit. The information "Alexa" provides is a substantial part of the product's value to the customer. It's the main selling point. This kind of commercial purpose is completely different from the making of quotations in the context of critical reviews, parodies and so on, which in no way attempt to *replace* the source quoted from, but instead exist to provide a sort of commentary on it. My understanding is that this latter kind of purpose is the kind of purpose "fair use" is meant to support. > > You say that Alexa reportedly gets some of this from Bing. But even if > > that's the case, how does it make a difference? To me it seems rather > like > > Flickrwashing (Bingwashing?). > > It may totally make a difference. I am not a lawyer, but I think the > question about the copyright status of search snippets and indexes for > search engines has already been addressed by jurisprudence. > Surely, the difference with search snippets is that such snippets, by the very nature of things, include a link to the original. That is their purpose. And this has a direct bearing on all of the CC licence requirements quoted earlier. In other words, by following the link provided in the search result, readers can view the original work the snippet is taken from, identify its title, its authors, its copyright status and the precise licence under which the material is published. None of that is possible with Alexa. Alexa's use of Wikipedia, where things literally come out of a black box, with the listener uninformed as to their origin, is substantially different, and indeed competitive to Wikipedia itself. > Simply put, the amount of text used changes the situation from "right to > quote"/"fair use" to "derivative work". > Derivative works, of course, have to be published under the same licence. > Furthermore, to correctly cite Wikipedia, if snippets would not be > considered under fair use/right to quote, they would need to also cite > the license. > See above – search snippets contain a link to the original. This might be considered "reasonable" in the context of a search engine, given space limitations, usability considerations etc. To be sure, in the case of the Amazon Echo, I don't think it would be "reasonable" to expect "Alexa" to recite the complete text of the CC licence, along with the names of all contributors who had worked on the material included, etc. The medium is a material factor here. But Amazon appears to proceed on the assumption that it is "reasonable" to proceed *without any attribution whatsoever* in their delivery medium. > In this regard, compare the difference - http://imgur.com/gallery/3FQZS > - between the snippets (both from Google and Bing), which do not have a > license indication and the extensive portion of text which is displayed > in the box in Bing which correctly indicates both the link to the > original work and the license. Interestingly, in the case of the FBI, > the box in Bing has less text and no indication of the license. It may > be that they automatically decide that if they are going to show more > than N words/characters then they do not treat the text as a quotation > but as a derivative work and so they show the license. > > I tried with another couple searches and this behavior seems > consistent. If they shw a short chunk of text (~ 1 sentence), they do > not provide the source and link to the license. If they show a big chunk > of text (with a "+" sign) they do. > Interesting, thank you. > The Wikimedia Foundation could ask for a clarification to Amazon, but I > suspect that the answer would not differ very much from above. > A clarification and examination of Amazon's reasoning would indeed be welcome. Andreas > Cristian > > [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Close_paraphrasing > [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_quote > > _______________________________________________ > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ > wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/ > wiki/Wikimedia-l > New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, > <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe> > _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
