JimAE

"Copyright holder"

The editor User:JimAE refers in his History page note to Jim Amash being "copyright holder" of the Joe Sinnott interview. A person's quotes are public domain. While the format of the interview, the questions in the interview, the introduction to the interview, and the images and graphic design in an interivew are copyrightable, the quotes of the interview subject are not. An interview subject's quotes may be freely used. As someone who writes Wikibios of often unsung comics professionals, and who believes in going outside the Web for printed sources, particularly first-person sources, I admire Jim Amash, Jon Cooke, Roy Thomas, and Dr. Michael J. Vassallo in particular, no one can change coopyright law and and assert they are the copyright holder of an interview subject's quotes. -- Tenebrae 07:10, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

Copy of Talk:Joe Sinnott's "Set you up with a User page!"

First off, caption spelling fixed.

Secondly, congrats on your spanking new User page! I've set one up for you at User:JimAE. "User" it in good health!

Thirdly: Jim, I know you mean well, so why not give a read over at Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines. God knows I've been at this for months, and I still stumble over rules inadvertantly! Wikipedia works by consensus. I've aksed, on this page, above, for comments by other, disinterested Wikipedians. I'd rather not invoke the three-revert rule and bring this to mediation or arbitration. We're supposed to get comments from other Wikipedians first. So I ask you to respect this established policy and guideline.

Here's why I think the addition of your name all over Wikipedia for brief quotes taken not from an article but from a Q&A is a matter for Wikipedia:Vanity guidelines:

It does not add to the fact of or the sourcing for the citation itself. Your rationale that "those of us who work on these fanzines make little money and...it just seems appropriate to me to credit the author of the interviews" says that it's a quid pro quo. By that standard, why not credit the Q&A's art director? Wikipedia is not the place for that. (See Self-Promotion under Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_not#Wikipedia_is_not_a_soapbox.) It's the source and the subject's words — and we're talking brief quotes here — that are important — not the person asking the questions. No Q&A interview from The Comics Journal, Comic Book Marketplace, Time, Playboy, The New Yorker, or any of the other dozens of magazines I cite for their brief interview quotes have ever pursued this. It's only you, which I think needs to be considered.

Lastly, and I urge you to talk to the magazine's attorney about this, no one owns the copyright to people's quotes. What someone says in a newspaper article or a magazine article is public domain. I'm talking only about the actual, verbatim words someone is quoted as saying. That's what makes works of biography possible. So honestly, and I've asked this before, please stop claiming you own the copyright to Joe Sinnott's words, or Will Eisner's words. That's just not true. — Tenebrae 00:17, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Mike Ambrose here. If I may inject a bit of rational third-party observation: Tenebrae, you are way off base here. The quotes you extract from Jim's interview with Joe are part of an article copyrighted by Jim Amash. That those quotes are by an individual who is not Jim is immaterial. The quotes are taken from material under copyright. Your use of those quotes is a fair use by any definition of the term, and Jim concedes that. Under the Copyright Act, you may make fair use of such material--but you must credit the source. I will be happy to quote the relevant section of the United States Code if you like.

That would be great. And Wikipedia is crediting the source; I'm not sure your unjustifiable implication that the source is not being credited is warranted. In addition, we are also talking Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines — the community and the Admins have the final say. Attempting to supersede the community for vanity's sake is really unseemly, in that Wikipedia is not an avenue for advertising or self-hype.

The Q&A source is being credited; anything more than that, inserted by a not-disinterested party interested not in accuracy (since the source is accurately and properly cited) but for his own self-aggrandizement is offensive to the community. There's a reason for anti-hype policies.

For the second time now, I reiterate that I have brought the issue up so that disinterested Wikipedians may comment. That's the proper way. Incidentally, Wikipedia frowns on Ballot stuffing. BTW, your statement that your "third-party" observation is "rational" implies that other observations are not. That's personally offensive, and I ask you to respect Wikipedia:Etiquette. If I'm "off base", pls cite the Wikipedia policy I'm not observing. -- Tenebrae 01:51, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

RE: MLK

Please let Mike Ambrose know, since he's hasn't bothered to register and have his own page, that someone who has "worked in publishing for 34 years, the last 11 of them in legal book publishing" ought to know not try and equate a prepared, copyrighted speech with interview qutoes. That kind of apples-and-oranges debate trick is a little insulting. -- Herculaneum 22:07, 6 February 2006 (UTC)