Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Entertainment/2021 January 26

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January 26

Arts and entertainment

As brilliant as the information used for 21st century is. Is there a reason or none for why theres barely any for arts and entertainment? Compared to what's been done for the 20th century. 21st century#Arts and entertainment — Preceding unsigned comment added by 110.151.2.7 (talk) 10:22, 26 January 2021 (UTC)

What would you suggest adding to it? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 10:47, 26 January 2021 (UTC)

I'm not sure to be honest sorry not really helpful I just think you guys are the experts. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 110.151.2.7 (talk) 11:11, 26 January 2021 (UTC)

The link is 21st century#Arts and entertainment. It certainly is very weak, but not really my strong point. Alansplodge (talk) 12:04, 26 January 2021 (UTC)

It may be better to use the section name "Culture and entertainment" of the 20th-century article, instead of "Arts and entertainment", and prefill it with the same subsection headings and {{empty section}} or {{expand section}}, as appropriate, as placeholder for the content; that will make it easier for editors to work on it. There should also be a subsection "Literature", which can refer to 21st century in literature and 21st century in poetry. "Music" can refer to 21st-century classical music.  --Lambiam 14:43, 26 January 2021 (UTC)

So, information at Wikipedia is not created by professionals who job it is to write an encyclopedia, it is created by random people, exactly like yourself User:110.151.2.7, because a) something was missing and b) they wanted to see it fixed. That is literally the only two qualifications for making Wikipedia better. A person notices something is inadequate, and fixes it. So, quite literally, there is no one to blame for it being missing except for yourself, because there is no one in the universe who was more responsible than you are to fix it before you noticed it was missing and wanted it fixed. Of course, anyone reading this, if they felt like, could fix it too. However, asking other people and hoping they care enough to fix it is a slow and inefficient process. The faster and easier process is to just fix it yourself. Wikipedia literally only exists because people did that already in other places, and you can help Wikipedia continue to exist by just fixing things that are wrong with it. See Wikipedia:Be bold for more information on this. --Jayron32 15:05, 26 January 2021 (UTC)

But note that the OP was not imputing a failure or suggesting anyone was to blame for a lacuna, but merely asking if there was an explanation for this conspicuous disproportionality.  --Lambiam 16:46, 26 January 2021 (UTC)

The explanation is that the OP didn't add the information themselves. Also, no one else did. But since the OP is interested in the information, they are at LEAST as likely as anyone else, and almost definitely more likely, to add such information. --Jayron32 19:06, 26 January 2021 (UTC)

Copyright question

Hi! I found an unpublished book online. I can read it as a pdf or on a web page. I want to know if I can print it legally. The link is here. Thank you! Dswitz10734 (talk) 15:24, 26 January 2021 (UTC)

Print it for what use? --jpgordon^{𝄢𝄆 𝄐𝄇} 16:44, 26 January 2021 (UTC)

@jpgordon Just for individual pleasure reading. Dswitz10734 (talk) 19:25, 26 January 2021 (UTC)

We don't offer legal advice, but in that case I would have thought it makes no difference whether you're reading it on screen or on paper.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 19:36, 26 January 2021 (UTC)

@Shantavira, thank you for the advice. Dswitz10734 (talk) 19:46, 26 January 2021 (UTC)

You could download it to your PC and read it on-screen at your leisure. Then you won't have to consume any trees. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:16, 26 January 2021 (UTC)

@Baseball Bugs: If you care about trees, you can print it on a recycled paper. Or on a no-trees-used paper. The question is not about financial or ecological profitability, but rather legal aspects. Anyway, reading on-screen is not costless, either – you use electric power to run a device (a laptop, a smartphone, tablet, Kindle, whatever), and that energy comes from some environmental resources, too. --CiaPan (talk) 12:41, 29 January 2021 (UTC)

You could always contact the (well-known) author Kenneth C. Flint and ask him. He approved the online edition you link to (according to the Editing Notes at the end of the book), but may or may not be OK with a copy being printed for personal use: his contact details appear immediately after the 'Title page.' You might also want to contact the hosting website directly, although I can't at first glance see any copyrighting statements on it. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.200.40.9 (talk) 22:12, 26 January 2021 (UTC)

A book on the internet is published, even if never printed on paper. The vast majority of contemporary published works are copyrighted, and no formal copyright notice is required. There are a few exceptions, such as works by employees of the U.S. federal government as part of their job duties. Unless you have solid evidence to the contrary, assume that any contemporary work is copyrighted. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 22:21, 26 January 2021 (UTC)

Asking the author would be the honest thing to do, but if he's made it downloadable he's got no real complaint if someone downloads it - as long as don't try to sell it. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:12, 26 January 2021 (UTC)

Section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976 allows for "fair use for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, education and research." It seems clear that printing one copy for personal use in one's own education and research is acceptable. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 02:39, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

I'm not sure if printing the whole text is considered permissable. In UK public libraries I believe the rule used to be that one could (photo)copy no more than 40%(?) of a book, but I'm no longer current on such matters, having left bookselling and publishing over 35 years ago. However, this strays from the current question. If it were me, I would take the fact of the pdf on the website being downloadable in printable form to be tacit permission to print a single copy strictly for one's own use, but others may differ. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.200.40.9 (talk) 04:38, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

Was that limit for legal reasons or practical ones designed to ensure that all library patrons could have access to the copier? --Khajidha (talk) 12:30, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

Definitely for legal reasons, to prevent copyright infringement by exceeding "fair" usage. I actually first learned of it at a University Library, where the library copies of certain expensive reference books were in such high demand that they were available only on short loan (as little as 1 hour), so photocopying (sizeable portions of) them was the students' most economical/practical option. (UK university libraries are essentially public, in that they are publicly funded and anyone may apply to use them, permission being usually granted if the applicant has good reasons – while researching and editing transport-related publications I did much research in the library of Imperial College London: the Institute of Mechanical Engineers also allowed me free access to their library, as did the National Motor Museum, Beaulieu.) {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.200.40.9 (talk) 13:28, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

Really, this is one of those instances where it's much easier to get forgiveness than to get permission. --jpgordon^{𝄢𝄆 𝄐𝄇} 06:30, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

Supposing the OP did download the file, how would someone else know? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:48, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

Haven't you heard? "They" know everything. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 20:34, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

Fair use and fair dealing varies with jurisdiction. In some places you may legally copy whatever you like for private use, includign entire works, and you can also commission someone else to do it for you (for instance, a research assistant, or a private secretary, or a disabilities assistant, or a librarian at another branch of your library who scans it and e-mails it to you as a form of interlibrary loan). In other places there are restrictions on what proportion of a work you may copy. And, be warned, there are places where you have a right to copy as much as you like for private study, but copyright-holders' associations hand out education materials with their own made-up fair-use limits to libraries, students and the like, sometimes including licensing fees for fair use.

There are other regional winkles. Australia has fair-dealing rules that take into account whether a work is commercially available (so if a book is out-of-print/not otherwise available, you have more rights); many other countries have are-you-cutting-into-profits considerations. Some countries have exemptions for disability access. Some have exemptions for digital preservation of perishable media. Some allow you to break digital locks to exercise legal rights, including copying; others don't. And to actually be relevant to this query, many jurisdictions have format-shifting exemptions, which essentially say that you can copy VCRs to DVDs, CDs to MP3s, and computer files to printed pages or vice-versa. If you have and retain a right to one format, you have a right to any other format (even if the original format becomes unusable, like magnetic tape stretching, or cheap paper and bindings deteriorating until you have to store the book in a ziplock bag).

While we can discuss the sort of provisions that fair use and fair dealing typically have, we mayn't give you legal advice. So to answer that question, find a good local librarian/other local expert to advise you on your local copyright law. Many universities have copyright advice pages online, and some of them are useful. Contacting a more local reference desk may also be a good starting point; most large libraries have a reference-desk phone number or e-mail address, and at least one staffer interested in copyright law. There are librarians who know a lot about copyright law; I remember one going incandescent when Elsevier announced that it had retroactively relicensed all the CC-BY-SA articles they had published as CC-BY-NC-SA (no, they couldn't do that). And there's things like the HathiTrust.

But think critically and be careful about your information sources. Some librarians have been exposed to so much FUD on copyright that it seriously impairs their ability to help the public. I once had a bit of a polite argument about my photocopying all of a public-domain article; the librarian had all the information, it just took a minute for it to overcome the reflexive that's-illegal. And I was once asked to sign a copy-protection form promising, among other odd restrictions, not to convert any information from a library book into any physical form, which the library wanted before they would retrieve said book from compact shelving. I pointed out that this was a public-domain book on woodworking techniques, and I really could not promise to not do woodwork for the rest of my life (actually, it turned out to also contain information on basic knots...). This caused an appeal to the head librarian, who said I need not sign the form. This was a university library; I cannot imagine how anyone doing experimental research could agree to such a condition. HLHJ (talk) 03:18, 29 January 2021 (UTC)