I tend to look at the difference between using Britannica as a source and outright word for word copying as Mr Beall does as a purely legal matter. Facts in themselves are not copyrightable, and only the loosest protection exists for anything purely factual in nature, as with an encyclopedia article. While it may or may not be "dubious," it's more a matter of being uncreative with the sources for your questions, no more, unless one means to suggest that somehow mining three sources as opposed to one is somehow more legitimate. The ultimate resort of this line of reasoning is that one can only write questions that one has done hands-on research free of any prior knowledge gleaned from a third party. (And, of course, since it's still facts, it's still not a very strong protection). With Mr. Beall it's something entirely different. Whatever loose copyright exists for facts, he managed to violate by copyrighting the expression verbatim. Assuming a court wouldn't find this matter totally de minimis (and, ok, it probably would) then Mr. Beall might owe someone, say, $200 given that a court would probably reduce damages below the statutorily set bar. One might go so far to find an old state law misappropriation suit on these grounds, assuming federal copyright law would not preempt. The problem is, Mr. Beall has managed to wholesale ripoff from many different people, each just a little bit. These are each separate violations, not one collective violation, so a court simply might not car that he's done this. The only other thing I could think of doing with Mr. Beall is seeing if somehow fraud could be found, if he passed off these questions as Original.
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