Copyright status of word lists from textbooks

[Olle Linge]

I haven't logged in to my Anki account for a while, but when I did yesterday, I was faced with a long legal text about copyrighted material. In essence, it said that I (and everyone else I presume) should go through their lists and make sure (and swear/promise/sign) that no lists contain any copyrighted material. It also made clear that word lists taken from textbooks weren't okay to share with the general public.

 

This is just the background of my question. I don't want to discuss Anki in particular, there are hundreds of apps and websites for learning Chinese that offer study lists from textbooks. I also realise that the copyright laws are different across the world, so there won't be one answer to the question of copyright on word lists either, but perhaps the US is the most relevant.

 

When it comes to word lists for learning Chinese, when does copyright start to apply? For extreme cases, it ought to be obvious, so a manually edited dictionary done from scratch is protected, but a random selection of words with no translations or annotations/translations probably isn't. But what about the following cases, so common in Chinese-learning apps and websites we all use:

• A list of words with Pinyin from the book
• A list of words with Pinyin and definitions from the book
• A list of words with Pinyin and custom definitions
• A list of words with example sentences from the book
• A list of words with custom example sentences
• Personally annotated versions of all the above

I've seen copyright mentioned in connection with word lists, but always peripherally, it would be interesting to hear what someone who knows more about this has to say about the issue in general. I don't really need to share my lists in Anki, but the usefulness of the app just dropped by several magnitudes because it will now be much harder to find suitable decks (a student asking me about this was the reason I logged in to check what was wrong in the first place).

[roddy]

I think any of those can, theoretically, be copyrighted (you'd need someone to assert copyright and test it in court to be sure, I guess). The idea is that it's not the words you are copyrighting, but the selection and arrangement. If you've spent time and money identifying Chinese words to introduce in Chapter 1, Chapter 2, etc, that's work worthy of protection. I'd say that addition of 'custom' sentences and so on is irrelevant. It's the specific set of words that are the issue. 

[889]

Yes, what counts is whether there was some element of original authorship in selecting and arranging the content. (When you say a "random selection of words," I don't think you really mean a random selection.)

But what's copyrighted is the list, the arrangement, the selection, not the individual words, and that can lead to some angels-dancing-on-the-head-of-a-pin distinctions.

There is also the "fair use" exception for limited use of copyrighted material, which might apply to use of small selected elements of a word list.

See http://copyright.gov/circs/circ14.pdf and note why a telephone directory is not copyrightable:

"When the collecting of the preexisting material that makes up the compilation is a purely mechanical task with no element of original selection, coordination, or arrangement, such as a white-pages telephone directory, copyright protection for the compilation is not available."

[Kenny同志]

I wish I was 倉頡 and had copyrighted all the Chinese characters he invented. Even if I got paid US$0.0001 each time one of the characters was written, I would still be the richest person in the world!

[liuzhou]

I have no idea what the answer is, but I do know that, under US and EU law, a list of ingredients in a dish is not copyrightable, but any description of the dish and cooking process is.

 

Something similar may apply. 

 

The words are not copyright, but the definitions and examples are???

[Olle Linge]

 

I have no idea what the answer is, but I do know that, under US and EU law, a list of ingredients in a dish is not copyrightable, but any description of the dish and cooking process is.

 

This is pretty close to what my own, previous understanding was, but this goes against what the other have posted here and the action Anki has taken. Of course, their action might just be to be on the safe side, they might just want to take down lists than might infringe someone's copyright to avoid the issue altogether.

[Guest realmayo]

I'd like to know the answer too.

 

I guess (i) if you include the exact translations/descriptions of the vocab as it appears in the textbook, that is much more questionable and (ii) as for just selecting the Chinese words, perhaps not illegal not but a small outfit like Anki will not want to pay laywers to prove it if required to do so.

[889]

An ingredient list is not akin to a vocabulary word list, even if that seems to be another angels-dancing-on-the-head-of-a-pin distinction.

 

Anyway, do a Google search on how the Scrabble people claim a copyright on the Scrabble word list.

[imron]

People claim all sorts of overbroad things as copyright.   What they claim and what the law allows are often very different things.