Template:Did you know nominations/American Geophysical Union v. Texaco, Inc.

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Vaticidalprophet (talk) 09:06, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

American Geophysical Union v. Texaco, Inc.

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• Article history

)

• ... that the alleged copyright infringement in American Geophysical Union v. Texaco turned on eight photocopied Journal of Catalysis articles in one researcher's files? Source: "The lot fell on one Donald H. Chickering, II, Ph.D., employed at the Texaco research center at Beacon, New York. Chickering's files were found to contain a number of photocopies of numerous items from various scientific and technical journals. As the subject of this limited issue trial, plaintiffs selected eight copies of complete pieces that appeared in the Journal of Catalysis, a monthly publication of Academic Press, Inc., which is one of the plaintiffs in this action.", American Geophysical Union v. Texaco, 802 F.Supp. 1, 5 (S.D.N.Y., 1992)
  • ALT1: ... that it was held in American Geophysical Union v. Texaco that the defendant's photocopying of scientific journal articles for its researchers was not fair use? Source: "We therefore agree with the District Court's conclusion that Texaco's photocopying of eight particular articles from the Journal of Catalysis was not fair use." American Geophysical Union v. Texaco, F.3d 913, 931 (2nd Cir., 1995)
  • ALT2: ... that American Geophysical Union v. Texaco was the first time that the Second Circuit Court of Appeals considered transformative use in deciding fair use? Source: The Second Circuit decided the case in 1995. Judge Pierre Leval, who had heard the case in district court in 1992, had two years prior to that written "Toward a Fair Use Standard" in the Harvard Law Review, where he introduced the concept of transformative use when evaluating the purpose and character of the secondary work (the first of four factors considered in the fair use test). While another case heard by the Southern District of New York (over which the Second Circuit has appellate jurisdiction) in 1991 had considered the issue, that case was never appealed.
  • ALT3: ... that after Texaco accused the academic publishers suing it for copyright infringement of profiteering, the judge called it "an odd argument ... to be made by an oil company"? Source: Decision cited for ALT0, at footnote 25
  • Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Ben Phillips (YouTuber)
  • Comment: I am not done expanding this article, so I may come up with more hooks in the meantime.

5x expanded by Daniel Case (talk). Self-nominated at 20:32, 13 July 2023 (UTC). Post-promotion hook changes for this nom will be logged at Template talk:Did you know nominations/American Geophysical Union v. Texaco, Inc.; consider watching this nomination, if it is successful, until the hook appears on the Main Page.

• Right now, this is a soft no. My reasoning is a concern that there is a lack of reliable, secondary information supporting the text. Instead, the majority of the article's text is referenced to court opinions. While court opinions are reliable sources, they almost certainly qualify as primary sources in this context. Given that context, I do feel that this article does ultimately come across as original research. Since I could find this ancient write-up on the subject, I hope Daniel Case can provide more recent precedent and consensus that we can base articles this heavily on court opinion; I would not be surprised if consensus says we can. ~ Pbritti (talk) 23:47, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

Well, I did suggest reviewers should wait ... and we generally consider court opinions reliable sources for what they themselves contain, i.e., those opinions themselves. (It is also debatable that court opinions are primary sources, more like secondary sources, since they rely on facts submitted by both parties. Appellate court decisions even more so, since they are largely interpretations and rereadings of the trial court decisions.

This rather artificial IMO distinction arose because too often in the early days, people cited things like depositions and affidavits as reliable sources for controversial information, sometimes controversial information on living people, on the grounds that, hey, they were court documents so they were reliable, right? So instead of doing the hard work and navigating the complications of the reliability of different types of court documents (i.e., there's a huge difference between testimony and final decisions in terms of the degree to which the facts within have been evaluated by a third party), the community, without really AFAICT writing this down anywhere, just decided for the most part to treat court documents as ipso facto primary sources, as if they were thousand-year-old tablets written in an obscure dead language.

This creates some inexplicable discrepancies in our sourcing policies. One might plausibly argue that the language of the law is arcane enough that we cannot trust editors unversed in its nuances, whether through a formal education or not, to interpret them for readers. But then why do we allow, in all our many articles about scientific and technical subjects, the direct citation of journal articles? Certainly those are also often written in a dense style heavy with obscure terminology (more so than legal writing, I would say, having read and cited such work for other articles I have developed). Yet we express no preference for secondary popular science or mainstream media coverage in their stead. And likewise WP:PLOT is one of the biggest exceptions to WP:CITE we have, certainly the most widespread. Yet some novels with a style so dense that the plot often requires for some readers a secondary work (i.e., Ulysses, particularly the "Proteus", "Oxen of the Sun", "Eumaeus" and "Ithaca" episodes ... many readers have required something like Harry Blamires' The Bloomsday Book to get through it), have no citations in their plot sections. (Alhough, to be fair, we generally do limit plot summaries to 700–1000 words, which may make a difference)

Sorry for the interruption, rant mode off. I can certainly add law review articles, like those in the further reading section, for informed summarization of the decision that basically says the same thing as what I've already written, as I and other editors have in other articles about court cases. Just give me some time. Daniel Case (talk) 03:19, 15 July 2023 (UTC)

Noted, and don't worry about coming across as ranting–this is the space where you're a subject matter expert, so I expect you to have strong and nuanced views. I'll come back at either a ping or a three-day wait. If you want more time before I re-review, let me know! Keep up the good work. ~ Pbritti (talk) 04:52, 15 July 2023 (UTC)

Came back to look at reviewing today but I have noted that significant changes remain underway. I will give another two days before I commence a review. ~ Pbritti (talk) 20:50, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

Thanks, although I have the case summaries themselves largely covered with law-review sourcing. Daniel Case (talk) 02:31, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

In that case, I‘ll review today. Thanks, Daniel Case. ~ Pbritti (talk) 14:57, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

My initial concern regarding the application of primary-source court documents to encyclopedic coverage of a court case has been mitigated by the lengthy additions attributable or partially attributable to secondary sources. This article has been sufficiently expanded without exclusive reliance on court papers. QPQ done, new enough expansion, length is a pass, no image concerns. Earwig was, as anticipated, insanely high at 95.9%–I've seen verbatim copy-and-paste articles return lower scores–but this is the result of extensive but appropriate quotation (which, I should note, I did not count as contributing to the 5x expansion). I approve hooks ALT0, ALT1, and ALT3 as appropriately cited and present in the article; hook ALT2 is too close to original research for my taste. Great work! ~ Pbritti (talk) 17:46, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

@Pbritti: You're welcome! I would argue that ALT2 actually comes under NOTOR as an easily replicable calculation, or akin to one (Event A came before Event B that depends on Event A), but given that only copyright lawyers might find that hook entices them to click on the article I won't really argue the point.

Anyhow, I just want to say that, if you're OK with it, I would like to continue to expand the article while it awaits its Main Page turn ... I do not see any of the material I am expecting to add (mainly law-review analysis and commentary on the case) to be likely to generate any more hooks, so that will not be an issue. Daniel Case (talk) 22:43, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

I still have my reservations on ALT2 but I'm also not the best reviewer, so grain of salt whenever I make a judgement like that. Let me know when you feel like you have a finished product (even if such a thing doesn't exist on Wikipedia) as I'd love to read it in full! ~ Pbritti (talk) 23:25, 19 July 2023 (UTC)