Talk:Finlandia University

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Higher education

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Michigan Low‑importance

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This article is written in American English, which has its own spelling conventions (color, defense, traveled) and some terms that are used in it may be different or absent from other varieties of English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus.

Historical marker block quote[edit]

I'm posting here to expand on my rationale for deleting that block quote.

Historical markers in Michigan are erected by an agency of the state government. That means they're published by the state.
Works of the state government are not in the public domain as a policy decision, unlike works of the federal government.
The marker was erected (published) in 1991 per the text of the article. Published works from March 1989 or later do not need a copyright notice to enjoy protection.

Thus based on those principles, the text of the marker is subject to copyright protection.

That brings us to the possibility of fair use of the text. Simply put, any fair use has to be minimal. The block quotes quoted the entire text of the historical markers, from both sides. That is not minimal use and fails any fair use case.

Thus, for policy and legal reasons, the block quote needed to be removed. Imzadi 1979 → 04:41, 4 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Banks Irk: you mentioned that MCL 399.159(3) allows the Michigan Historical Commission to copyright a marker, but they haven't done that. Reading the text of MCL 399.159, it is silent on copyright. It mentions trademarks under subsection (4), but that is in relation to the "logo, seal, and emblem", not the text of markers. As this marker was erected (published) in 1991, a copyright notice on it is not required to establish copyright protections in the text with changed in copyright law post-1989.

Even if we didn't have copyright concerns in the usage of that amount of text, there's another concern. It's a lazy editing practice to quote the much text in the middle of an article when we can summarize and appropriate paraphrase content and cite the source for that. Imzadi 1979 → 18:41, 5 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The 2002 amendment added the language I referred to re the ability to copyright the text on historical markers. That language was repealed in 2018, so actually the text on markers is no longer copyrightable. Banks Irk (talk) 21:19, 5 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The 2002 version of the Act does have the "may copyright" text, but federal copyright law specifies that works published after March 1989 are automatically protected. I read that text though to say that the MHC can profit off its markers' texts and logos through licensing deals, but if it does, the money has to go into a dedicated fund. The 2017 amendment only seems to specify that they have that same requirement for deals related to any trademarks on their "logo, seal, and emblem", but any money earned from copyrighted text no longer has to be put into that fund.

Unlike copyright, which is automatic post-1989, someone has to apply for a trademark and then continue to use it, so granting the MHC permission to apply for a trademark makes more sense than granting them permission to get a copyright they already got. We'd need some sort of statement that they've dedicated their marker text into the public domain for the copyright to be nullified. Otherwise we're into fair-use territory, and we fail by quoting the entire marker text, destroying any licensing potential the MHC may have.

All that said, do our readers benefit by having a large blockquote in the middle of this article when we could put into our own words details contained on the marker? Imzadi 1979 → 04:38, 16 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]