Talk:Bob Hope's World of Comedy Transcript

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Transcript Policy

A few days ago, stemming froma discussion at Muppet Wiki talk:Unidentified Appearances, Nick posted this unformatted transcript to Bob Hope's World of Comedy. As noted on the talk page, the special is commercially available as part of a boxes set on Amazon, found here. At the time, Nick added it "Since it's not hurting Jim Henson Inc/Disney/Sesame Workshop/HIT Entertainment/...'s commercial viability." I'm not sure that's good enough. As it says at Muppet Wiki: Transcripts policy, "Material that is currently commercially available should not be transcribed. Reading the wiki is not an alternative to buying a DVD or an album. Commercially available material can be described and quoted where appropriate, but not transcribed in full."

It's been awhile since we've discussed the issue, but I don't see how this changes anything. True, most Muppet fans aren't going to go out and buy a pricey Bob Hope set, but deciding that anything commercially available is game as long as it's not from Henson/Disney/Sesame et. al is a slippery slope (if this is allowed, why not transcribing Rowlf's appearances on The Best of the Jimmy Dean Show DVDs and so on). Besides, our primary concern isn't just to protect the profits of Sesame Workshop and so on, though that is a factor, but the Wiki, since transcripts and YouTube clips of commercially available DVD product certainly strains any "fair use" or academic arguments. I'd vote to drop this, but if Nick or anyone else wants to summarize the appearance based on the content here, that would be more doable. -- Andrew Leal (talk) 23:23, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Yep, this is clearly stated in our policy and should be deleted. —Scott (talk) 01:42, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

And just because it's not from Sesame Workshop (or Henson, or Disney) doesn't mean that Sesame Workshop wouldn't be losing money. I'm sure that Sesame Workshop would be getting residuals for the use of one of their characters (and Caroll Spinney probably gets residuals for this as well). --Minor muppetz 20:32, 11 January 2008 (UTC)