Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Forbes Global 2000 companies


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was   delete due to copyright status, as the concerns of the list passing the threshold of originality and being eligible for copyright due to creativity in deciding on the list members (selection) and their ranks (arrangement), as well as list presentation, are valid. That being said, I fully accept that any copyvio was entirely unintentional, as this is a grey and difficult area of copyright. If anyone would like a list of the red links only from the list for help in creating a to-do list, I'll be happy to provide those upon request. Seraphimblade Talk to me 20:31, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

List of Forbes Global 2000 companies

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Looks to me as copyvio from Forbes as this is the list itself, not an article about. The Banner talk 13:07, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Delete, we are not Forbes' backup server. bd2412  T 14:30, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions.  Jinkinson   talk to me  16:08, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Organizations-related deletion discussions.  Jinkinson   talk to me  16:08, 21 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Response I was concerned about the copyright issue, but my non-lawyerly impression was that in a country without database copyright it should be permitted.  I know we hold many lists of sports statistics and other award winners.  I actually asked to confirm this at [] though, and someone called it a "corner case" because there is a list of albums which is considered creative.  In this case, the ranks are generated by an average of rankings within four different financial categories - revenue, profits, assets, and market valuation - but those figures do reflect some editorial choice by Forbes, for example, to lump together figures for half a dozen companies that are based in two countries.  I am not looking to violate copyright - I just want to include every scrap of information I can without doing so.  So if people end up deciding that taking out the rank column fixes that, I can do that, etc.  However, I should make it clear that this is not merely a "backup server" for Forbes: the point of putting up the list in the first place was to have a resource we could use to checklist through all these companies and systematically fill in the holes in our coverage, until the entire 2000 are represented with some confidence.  (I actually got into the 400s before I found a redlink I couldn't quickly disambiguate!)  Finally, the list is also usable for Lua scripts, so as a less-favored option (provided copyright is OK) I'd at least prefer to keep it at some place like Module talk:Forbes Global 2000/data so that I can use it to write a Lua module that accepts a company name and returns one of the six pieces of information about it that the list indexes.  The original function that led me to this idea would also be handled by the module: to return a random sequence of major companies for people to edit if they want to ensure systematic and neutral coverage. Wnt (talk) 17:41, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
 * In the United States, this would definitely be a copyright violation, since Forbes does exercise some editorial judgment in coming up with its rules for generating this compilation. A project-space list of just the relatively few red links would be fine. bd2412  T 18:53, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
 * This is not what I expected to hear. I've decided then to remove the table content temporarily - I'm not yet conceding the AfD at this point, but I'll need someone explaining a way to keep a meaningful amount of this content. Wnt (talk) 19:43, 21 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Probably delete Whereas the US is understood generally not to have database copyright, I think that belief is based on interpreting Feist. The problem here is that, whereas Feist dealt with a phone book that (1) included numbers within a geographical area, and (2) was sorted alphabetically by last name, here we have a very large list of ranked companies, where the metrics used to establish the rankings are at least novel, if not outright original. I believe this language is relevant:"The key to resolving the tension lies in understanding why facts are not copyrightable. The sine qua non of copyright is originality. To qualify for copyright protection, a work must be original to the author. Original, as the term is used in copyright, means only that the work was independently created by the author (as opposed to copied from other works), and that it possesses at least some minimal degree of creativity. To be sure, the requisite level of creativity is extremely low; even a slight amount will suffice. The vast majority of works make the grade quite easily, as they possess some creative spark, “no matter how crude, humble or obvious” it might be. Originality does not signify novelty; a work may be original even though it closely resembles other works so long as the similarity is fortuitous, not the result of copying. To illustrate, assume that two poets, each ignorant of the other, compose identical poems. Neither work is novel, yet both are original and, hence, copyrightable."Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Serv. Co., 499 U.S. 340, 345-46 (1991) (citations omitted). So, I think, it's very likely the list, without more, is subject to copyright, and probably not acceptable for inclusion under a fair use argument, as we might accept for a quotation. —/M endaliv /2¢/Δ's/ 21:17, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.