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Coping with Database Protection Laws
harryhoch writes "Activist and Web commentator Andy Oram has written an article on the consequences of database protection Laws. The Sap and the Syrup of the Information Age: Coping with Database
Protection Laws addresses legal and social implications of database protection legislation. For folks interested in deCSS, patents, and other "intellectual property" issues on the Net, this article provides another interesting perspective." Congress is considering legislation that would make collections of facts protectable by law. Andy Oram takes a look at what that would mean to the Internet and public in general.
Yes, it does. Fundamentally, there is a difference between an organization that has a couple bits of data about me and an organization that has reams and reams of information about me-- the ability of the latter to extrapolate private information.
As an example, virtually everyone agrees that medical records should be private. Let's say that I go to my local pharmacy every month and spend $50 on some prescription drug. Given my HMO's publically available list of drug co-pays, you can determine a list of drugs I might be taking. Using information from the drug companies, you can determine a list of diseases I might have. Now, take a look at the articles I read on WebMD or one of the other health web sites. Correlate this with the probabilities with which these diseases occur among people of my age, race, gender, weight, locale, etc. Pretty soon, a lot of individually innocuous information will allow you to extrapolate private data, whether it's that I have AIDS, arthritis, or baldness. Do this for every member of my immediate family, and you can narrow the possibilities further.
In the past, we've been able to rely on the fact that the individual bits of data were spread among many organizations, each with their own proprietary format. The effort required in this regime to assemble the data above for any person was much higher than the expected reward. Today, more and more data is being consolidated under fewer and fewer roofs (i.e. DoubleClick). At the same time, technology is making it easier and easier to store and correlate this huge amount of data from various sources. Security through obscurity has begun to fail and people are recognizing that there isn't another line of defense.
While the above scenario may be unlikely, it's only for the reason that there's little use for the derived information today. The moment some organization (or individual) finds a way to profit from it, there's nothing to stop them from doing so.
"You suck!"
"Yes, but that fact is noted in my database, please pay me $30 for citing that fact."
"..."
Hmmm. Rights based on economics. If this ever made it into law, I can't see how it would be constitutional. [I have serious issues with the Digital Millenium copyright act here as well.]
Off the top of my head, it's like saying "my economic interest in protecting my database(d) information is more important than your right to
- freedom of the press,
- the Freedom of Information act which keeps most governmental documents accessible to the general public,
- free flow of medical research information
to name a few.I don't see how any more laws are needed. It's already against the law to pirate software (which is what virtually all databases are anyway). So for the database manufacturers to refer to the "data collections" as copyrightable seems disingenious to me.
Of course, there is the obligatory "we'll protect the public interest" clauses... "regulators and courts should balance database protection with an insistence on fair licensing and other promotion for competition." Except for one set of problems, I would say, "okee dokee fine." Regulators are noted for protecting the public interest, fair licences, or promoting competition.
The major points I think we should rally behind are that
- "...no one convincingly demonstrates that it is harmed by the lack of special laws." ,
- We may be entering an age when, as law professor Lawrence Lessig claims, "copyright is more effectively protected than at any time since Gutenberg...In such an age--in a time when the [technical] protections are being perfected--the real question for law is not, how can law aid in that protection? but rather, is the protection too great?"... and finally,
- "Privatizing information through contract, encryption, and similar devices may carry greater individual and social costs than would a copyright system."
BTW, in case anyone thinks I didn't read the whole article, I do understand the idea that a lot of work goes into the collection of "facts" that goes into a database, and that the work can be "freeloaded" via the web. There are other protections: I can put copyright notices on my web pages, disallow queries that do not originate from within a given site structure, etc. that do not require any new legislation to be effective.So IMHO the databases of facts do not require protection. The right to copyright "database facts" would seem to imply that if I create and a database of scientific facts, for example, I am somehow entitled to enforce my right to be the whole source of publishing that information -- just because I collected it first and got a copyright.
Let's hope (and contact your congressperson!!) that we can head this off before it starts another fight that the Internet community cannot afford to lose.
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
--
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
Regards,
January
p.s. Slashdotters who think there are too much patent and legal issues on /. lately, wave your hands!
But someone puts that information into a database and it becomes a violation of privacy?
Granted you should be able to decide if you want it readable, but how much do you really care? My birthday is important to me and I tell everyone ... call me egocentric, but I like presents :-)
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed