Talk:List of best-selling singles in Japan

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[edit] AFD nomination

This article was nominated for deletion with a result of keep. Capitalistroadster 01:42, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Copyright issue

I just wanted to say, I don't see how the previous version of this page contravened copyright, at least of the quoted page. For one, transliterating the names and song titles into English represents that it is an independent piece of work, and that site is not the only place that that information is available. If it belongs to anyone, it belongs to Oricon. AuTomAton 23:08, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Where did you read that translating the names creates a new work? This certainly isn't true. Transliterating is less work than translating, so I can't imagine that copyright doesn't attach. Indeed, it's completely the point -- the work belongs to Oricon and can't be reproduced here without their permission. -- Mikeblas 02:45, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

I am not really an expert in US law. But per Feist Publications v. Rural Telephone Service I removed the copyvio tag. Garion96 (talk) 18:44, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

It seems like a stretch for you to replace the text and remove the copyvio tag, since the case you cite doesn't involve translation and does involve discoverable facts. -- Mikeblas 20:52, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Exactly Garion96, it's the sweat of the brow doctrine, though I will admit I'm not an expert in US law either, being from the UK. Anyway, I see no harm in including information that is publically available but few have access to, due to the form of the text. AuTomAton 21:11, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

You cannot redistribute a derivative of a copyrighted work without the original author's permission. Translating a work does not remove the original work's copyright, hence the translation aspect is irrelevant.—Tokek 14:42, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

If I look at the Feist case from Wikipedia. (Wikipedia is not always reliable, so I have to read the actual case soon but still) "The court ruled that Rural's directory was nothing more than an alphabetic list of all subscribers to its service, which it was required to compile under law, and that no creative expression was involved. The fact that Rural spent considerable time and money collecting the data was irrelevant to copyright law, and Rural's copyright claim was dismissed."

Applying that case to this case. The fact that Oricon compiled the date, just record sales/finances could be considered irrelevant to copyright law. Since it's only a top 241 list from which the original editor picked 100.

However, to quote again from the wikipedia article "the creative choice of what data to include or exclude, the order and style in etc". And on closer look, the list on Wikipedia and the list on Oricon look almost identical. So perhaps it should be deleted after all. Which also means the whole article actually should be deleted since that list was in there from the first edit.

Translation btw has nothing to do with it in this regard. Either it's copyrighted or not. Garion96 (talk) 21:41, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

It's not copyrightable. Phone books and other collection of information that does not have creativity or originality enough to be copyrightable. You'd have to pretty much delete Wikipedia if you weren't allowed to add information here. —Tokek 11:03, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

You are allowed to add information here. But not to copy the exact table format etc. Garion96 (talk) 12:53, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

Content should not be removed from the article when it is clearly not a copyright violation. —Tokek 14:07, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

That obviously is disputed. Feel free to convince me (and others) that it is not a copyvio. But meanwhile, do not revert the article. Garion96 (talk) 14:10, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

Did you actually take a look at the cited URL? The claim is that this version[1] violated the copyright of this web page[2]. Not only do the appearances, such as the table structure, not look similar, the information provided in the two versions such as sales count differ as well. You'd have to point out to me which aspects you think are copyright violations. Also, if you can create a Top 2 list that in your opinion is not copyright violating (keeping in mind thing such as information in phone books are not considered creative or original work), I'd be happy to complete the rest of that list for you provided that it's not an unexpectedly complicated demand. If you can't figure out how the previous versions were violating copyright, then maybe you could restore the article to the version prior to your edits. —Tokek 14:42, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

No of course I didn't look at the cited URL, I just imagined it. In other words, skip the sarcasm please. The table structure is extremely similar, just some columns moved around and, except for number 1, the sales are identical. Feel free to add the information in a way that it doesn't look identical to the source page. Although, as you can see, opinions differ on the fact if that is a copyright violation or not. Since it is a list of only sales figures (as far as I can tell) I don't think the data itself is copyrightable. Garion96 (talk) 19:04, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

You missed several rows. The two tables differ in sales number in more than one. What kind of table format would be non-problematic in your opinion? —Tokek 00:43, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Regarding your sarcastic comments: I'm sorry that you took offence to my comments and misinterpreted it as sarcasm. For this discussion, I wanted to present the two URLs in my comment for the sake of navigational convenience and to make sure that we were paying attention to the same material. Sometimes it is easy to miss out on some details, both start talking about different things, etc. But enough with that. If you can explain which aspect of the list you are concerned about (e.g. is it the order of columns? Some aspect that could be considered creative or original work?), then I can take that into consideration when reconstructing the list. If you are opposed to the list, but you can't really point out what aspect of the list is specifically wrong with it, then I don't think you have enough reason to justify repeatedly clearing the list. —Tokek 12:07, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

My apologies, I took it for sarcasm. If you can make the list so that it doesn't look the same, great. Perhaps just numbers 1 till 100, the song and artist. This is a bit controversial topic all together and not a 100 percent clear. See Talk:List of football (soccer) players with 100 or more caps for a related discussion. Garion96 (talk) 12:32, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm going to weigh in on what was contained when the list wasn't a pathetic "Top 3" and was here in its full "Top 100" glory. There is the layout and data contained within the table. As per Supreme Court ruling discussed above, the data is clearly not copyrightable. Thus, copying the data is completely OK. Now we have the layout. In Wikipedia's case, the background and text colors are different. In fact, the only thing similar about them is what the columns are. I assert that when compiling a table of record sales, the relevant data is Artist, Work Title, Sales Amount, Date, and Ranking. Perhaps there could be a "Notes" column.

This is similar to how the relevant data in a phone book is Phone Number, Address, and Person's Name. This information is not copyrightable as above. In fact, under Feist (I'm looking at the actual Supreme Court opinion as I type this), the source material would need to have some sort of creativity. I assert that the table structure used in the source table is not original, and my justification is that I have seen hundreds of music charts before which use the exact same columns. There are probably even other "Top # Objects" tables on Wikipedia which use the same table layout. Would we suggest that the source material infringes on Wikipedia's table layouts? No, we wouldn't.

Here is what I consider to be the definitive statement which implies that the Top 100 we had was not infringing: Justice O'Connor wrote in Feist that "copyright protection may extend only to those components of a work that are original to the author." Feist, 499 U.S. 340 (1991). If the author of the Top 100 is not the originator of "use a table with Rank, Sales, Title, Author, Peak, Date," then the author does not lord control of that structure over us. It may be copyrighted to someone else, but if so, I suggest that it's copyright was formed in the 1940s by someone compiling the first Top XX Hits article for a publication. However, because the chart in this article was composed independently of the first Top XX Hits composition ever done, there is no copyright to be enforced, and Wikipedia is in the clear to publish the Top 100 as it was in a previous incarnation on this page. I conclude that, under Feist, the Top 100 we had was absolutely and incontrovertibly non-infringing. KyleGoetz 23:45, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

This is relevant here: I know Wikipedia's policy is that all facts need to be cited, and someone's credentials are not a justification for declaring something fact. However, in legal situations, we are debating opinion and not fact. Whether something violates copyright is an opinion, not a fact. In that case, is it possible that someone who has legal training in interpreting Supreme Court opinions would be more persuasive on Wikipedia than someone who has not been so trained? I'm not asking about citable fact. I'm asking about the interpretation of facts off the article itself, and merely in the off-page discussion.KyleGoetz 23:45, 30 June 2007 (UTC)