Template talk:Schedule

This tag may not be used on U.S. television schedules. The tag states: Please convert this schedule to prose. Schedules which have been copied and pasted from an external source may possibly be in violation of copyright. Please remove this template after editing.

"Schedules which have been copied and pasted from an external source..."

Because the wiki mark-up is different from html mark-up, the chances of someone copying and pasting a schedule from an external source and having it successfully load are not good.

"...may possibly be in violation of copyright."

U.S. Television schedules are not under copyright:

"Copyright protection under the copyright code (title 17, section 102, U.S. Code) extends only to “original works of authorship.” The statute states clearly that ideas and concepts cannot be protected by copyright. To be protected by copyright, a work must contain at least a certain minimum amount of authorship in the form of original literary, musical, pictorial, or graphic expression. Names, titles, and other short phrases do not meet these requirements."U.S. Copyright Office Circular 34

"Names, titles, and short phrases or expressions are not subject to copyright protection. Even if a name, title, or short phrase is novel or distinctive or if it lends itself to a play on words, it cannot be protected by copyright. The Copyright Office cannot register claims to exclusive rights in brief combinations of words such as:

Titles of works
Mere listings of ingredients, as in recipes, labels, or formulas. When a recipe or formula is accompanied by explanation or directions, the text directions may be copyrightable, but the recipe or formula itself remains uncopyrightable. U.S. Copyright Office Circular 34

In Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Company The Supreme Court ruled that "only the compiler's selection and arrangement may be protected; the raw facts may be copied at will."[1]

Whether this information is copyrightable in Europe depends on the members states of the EU:

"American observers, however, are generally surprised that the information in the program schedules was protectable under the Irish copyright law. In the United States, such material would be considered “factual” and consequently unprotectable.[118] Indeed, it appears that this kind of information would not be protectable under the laws of most of the member states of the European Union either.[119] [2]

This discussion, on WP:AN/I, the general consensus was that such schedules are not under copyright protection:

"A collection of facts cannot be copyrighted"
"Just my personal, mildly informed opinion: TV schedules don't seem to be the kind of thing that are copyrightable. Additionally, they do seem encyclopedic to me. You can get a great insight into what society was like decades ago by looking at the kind of things they could watch on television in a single night."
"My understanding is that while arrangements of information is copyrightable the information itself is not. Is that not how Wikipedia works by taking information from copyrighted source, arranging it in a creative original way and citing the source?"
"I'm inclined to agree with the above that the schedules themselves probably aren't copyrightable. Once the shows have aired, listing what was on becomes a simple matter of historical fact lacking the apparent creativity necessary for copyright."
"The works themselves might be copyrighted, but a collection of titles (like a List of bestselling novels in the United States or the Academy Award for Best Picture) is probably not a copyrightable collection of facts. According to the article on Feist v. Rural the threshold is very low, but a copyrightable work has to contain some element of creative expression. The information itself, if rearranged, is not copyrightable."
"I have been working on the daytime TV articles, and I do not see how you can copyright a simple listing of facts. They can be verified by looking into old TV Guides or newspaper TV listings."
"I've been using 1949-50 United States network television schedule, off an on, to create new articles for early broadcast programs. The information I'm using to create the articles has television schedules in it, and there are no copyright notices there. I don't see how they can be acceptable in newspapers and not here."
"Television schedules serve a useful research purpose for authors of historical fiction. A writer who sets a childhood tale in the 1950s, for example, would want to know what network Howdy Doody aired on, what day or days of the week it was available, and what hour it was broadcast. "
"These are not copyrightable. What's confused some people is that the television schedules were "created" by someone, but just because your decisions can be expressed as written data doesn't mean that you've created copyrightable written expression. The schedule is more akin to a set of instructions, or a recipe: "air program B after program A at these times." This is not eligible for copyright."
"Perhaps this will help: www.copyright.gov's circular 34 specifically states that "titles of works" are "not subject to copyright"; accordingly the names of the television shows are not copyrightable (they can be trademarks, but that's a different issue.) Furthermore, from the same source, "mere listings of ingredients, as in recipes, labels, or formulas" are not subject to copyright. Since a television schedule is a "listing of ingredients" in a network's daily broadcast, the collection of titles is also not copyrightable. I'm not a lawyer, and of course copyright law is subject to interpretation by the courts, but this seems extremely clear-cut."
"What happens in other countries is also irrelevant, some other countries allow facts to be copyrighted. The US does not."
"My cursory look at the category in question indicates that we are talking about simple grids, so I think it is not a copyvio."

This was followed up by this discussion, which resulted in keep for 5 television schedules.

Please Avoid copyright paranoia when tagging articles with this template. It is clear from the links that television schedules, at least in the U.S., and probably elsewhere, are not copyright violations, as the data cannot be copyrighted, and it cannot be presented on Wikipedia without alterations to the layout.

"Please convert this schedule to prose." These schedules present tabular data in a way that cannot be easily expressed in prose, in the same way that the Periodic table of elements cannot be easily explained in prose (and who would write out the Periodic table anyway!?) Replacing tabular data with prose just doesn't make sense for repetitive information. Finally, there's the simple fact that television encyclopedias have been presenting national TV program grids in tabular form since at least the 1960s (probably much earlier, but the earliest example I have seen is from 1963). Only those who have never seen a television encyclopedia could be convinced that such data was "unencyclopedic" or needed to be "converted to prose". Firsfron of Ronchester 08:00, 11 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. In spite of the (rather lengthy) analysis of copyright above, I should point out that, while TV/radio listings may not be copyrighted in the US, it can be an issue in some other countries. Wikipedia has worldwide reach, so it's appropriate to warn editors of this. This is why this template uses the phrase "may possibly be in violation of copyright".

However, it's not the primary concern here - Wikipedia policy clearly states that Wikipedia is not a TV or radio schedule. Some editors feel the need to fill an article about a broadcaster with unnecessary lists of programme times, and this should be discouraged. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not the Radio Times, and any description of programmes should be written as prose in an encyclopaedic tone. (It's beyond me why the 2006 discussion about TV schedules resulted in a decision to keep the disputed articles in clear contravention of Wikipedia policy, but I'm not about to get involved in that particular argument.) Suffice to say that this cleanup template serves a useful purpose, and that its main emphasis is discouraging pointless lists rather than flagging copyright problems. Cnbrb (talk) 09:45, 20 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]