Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ancient Law

This page is an archive of the proposed deletion of the article below. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page, if it exists; or after the end of this archived section. The result of the debate was transwiki. FCYTravis 5 July 2005 23:36 (UTC)

[edit] Ancient Law

Source material and original research that is in the public domain, from 1861. I'm not sure if this version's transcription is copyright (gutenberg doesn't have it). I vote Transwiki to wikisource Wikibofh 20:13, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

• Comment. First if going to transwiki, we should get a complete, clean copy. [1]. However, that source says on the website:

They are to be used strictly for non-commercial educational purposes. ... All complaints, suggestions, reports of errors should be sent to Rod Hay. [2]

I don't know if one can claim copyright for transcription of a public domain work; I suspect not, but IANAL. Those terms may be intended for other works on the same site that are posted as fair use rather than public domain. In any case, it gives us someone to contact. --Tabor 20:58, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

• Well, Wikipedia is certainly a "non-commercial educational purpose"... I don't see how this is all that different from using the 1911 Britannica as a source for articles, although this text is a bit dated (and needs maaaad wikification). -- BD2412 ^talk 22:44, 2005 Jun 21 (UTC)
  • Wikipedia may be non-commercial educational purposes, but mirrors and forks may be commercial, and we need GDFL terms for works that are still under copyright protection. --Tabor 02:44, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)
• Transwiki. It was written in 1861, so it's very likely that the text is PD. Although a check against a paper copy is always an important step. -- llywrch 23:18, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)
• Comment - User:80.58.35.42 deleted the VfD message; I have restored it. --Dcfleck 00:42, 2005 Jun 22 (UTC)
• Transwiki and use as a source for articles like history of law - Skysmith 09:57, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)
• Transwiki, keep, cleanup. The original text is surely PD, everywhere: Henry James Sumner Maine died in 1888. By all means preserve the source text on Wikisource. But there are probably the seeds of half a dozen articles in there, given some time and labour. Large swathes of text probably ought to be moved to more definite titles or merged into existing articles. Still, I see little point in keeping this in the article space, and like BD2412 said, it's not much difference from importing stuff from 1911 Britannica. Smerdis of Tlön 18:17, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be placed on a related article talk page, if one exists; in an undeletion request, if it does not; or below this section.