Talk:List of copper production by company

Contested deletion, it's all public info

This page should not be speedy deleted as an unambiguous copyright infringement, because all the information in the table is from public reports, such as the companies annual reports. This is no more a copyright violation than reusing something from the phone book. --Pete Tillman (talk) 04:25, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

• Your understanding of copyrighted material is skewed. If it's public information, source it to public information (i.e. government reports that are in the public domain). If you're quoting a newspaper article (copyrightable material), that is itself giving credit to a private entity that factored that information (i.e. as analysis), that information is copyrightable. And copying here, a copyvio issue. Company annual reports, shareholder reports, an investment prospectus--those are typically copyrighted--I wrote my fair share of them (14 years in corporate finance/ibanking). Regulatory filings to a government entity are not.--ColonelHenry (talk) 04:36, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

OK, to make it simpler. We source the info to the WSJ, who sourced it to a database compiler. The compiler, in turn, got the information (typically) from annual reports and other public filings. If you look at just about any Wikipedia articles on public companies, you will find information cited to their annual reports. Used under fair use, I suppose. Definitely NOT a copyright violation. --Pete Tillman (talk) 05:05, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

• Information cited to annual report is fine, provided you're not copying information out of the report, that you properly paraphrase it/render it/analyze it, and properly cite it. However, lifting tables from one source to a Wikipedia article is often problematic. This often isn't as clear-cut as a Feist v. Rural matter. So, you might think you're not violating/infringing on a copyright, but you'd be wrong in a lot of circumstances (and Wikipedia, sadly, is more often wrong than right in this area). Next, you're confusing public sector (government) with publicly-traded companies (who are still private entities) and privately-held companies. The only "public companies" are things like the post office (quasi), or corporations nationalized by a fascist/statist government. A publicly-traded company does not surrender their creative rights to their company report just because they have to file with the SEC or CFTC or the Department of Energy. A regulatory filing is a public record, undoubtedly, however an annual report, or shareholders report is an entirely different animals. If you're lifting a company document that isn't a regulatory filing, most of the time, it's copyrighted work product and definitely infringement. And in infringement, "assuming" it's fair use is not a defense. If WSJ lifted that table and didn't give a credit, that information provider/factoring entity could have a very actionable claim. --ColonelHenry (talk) 05:30, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

• And FYI, SNL's analysis reports are copyrighted...they have a great swath of caselaw backing them up (Bloomberg and their damn terminals paved the way for their ability to be litigious to protect their information).--ColonelHenry (talk) 05:33, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

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• Please see Sweat of the brow doctrine, and the Threshold of originality. Almost certainly (imo), mechanically compiling data from public sources -- which is what SNL did to prepare that table -- wouldn't meet the "Threshold of originality" test.

Nevertheless, it might be best to add a bit of independently-sourced info to our list. I'll do that when I have time. Pete Tillman (talk) 15:21, 24 January 2014 (UTC)