User talk:Dragons flight/Evil looking lists

I deleted three lists that had already been listed as copyright problems and were sitting on Copyright problems/Other waiting for someone to deal with them. I also deleted FIFA 100 because that had apparently been listed as a copyright problem back in 2004, but not handled correctly. Observing that it did have good commentary, as noted by Dragons flight, I was able to identify the authors who actually wrote text (all 5 of them; the page had 486 edits, but nearly all of that was just tinkering with the list) and credited them in my edit summary restoring the page.

Also, I took List of songs deemed inappropriate by Clear Channel following the September 11, 2001 attacks off the page. Taking the description of where the list comes from at face value, I don't think anybody has much of a copyright on the list. If anybody did, it ought to be Clear Channel, and they apparently deny that they issued such a list in an official fashion. Assuming that the list is an accumulation of grassroots efforts by station directors, then the lists as compiled by or from other media outlets are simply reporting facts, which are not copyrightable in and of themselves.

Finally, I didn't see anything that would distinguish A&E's Biography of the Millennium from the other lists collected here, so I just combined it with the rest. --Michael Snow 06:02, 4 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Also, it appears that 100 Great Black Britons was compiled based on a public vote, similar to the 100 Greatest Britons list that inspired it. Since the argument raised here doesn't extend to that, I've dropped it from the list. In doing so, I'm not advising that a voting-based list avoids copyright infringement, simply concluding that the analysis differs and leaving the matter in the absence of any specific complaint about that type of list. --Michael Snow 07:19, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Can we move this to a centralized discussion, perhaps? I agree that many of the lists are problematic, but I'd like to discuss the general principles of what we are allowed to have. Certainly, for example, we can certainly talk about a list without disclosing the full contents of the list. BD2412  T 16:03, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Talking about a list would be fine, that's why I restored the content of FIFA 100 after removing the list. The biggest concern with that is not letting the commentary be taken over by people who want to re-copy the list. --Michael Snow 17:38, 4 February 2006 (UTC)