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Congress Again Considering Database Protection Bill
An anonymous reader writes "Yahoo News is reporting on a new bill in Congress: '... a proposed bill that would prevent wholesale copying of school guides, news archives and other databases which do not enjoy copyright protection.'" The idea of database protection legislation has been kicking around for a long time. It's a bad idea, but it would make a lot of money for a few companies, so they keep pushing it, and no doubt will eventually get it passed.
I don't know about you people, but I have lost all faith in the folks in Washington. They seem to be very good at a lot of things but are not especially good at writing legislation. So what do they do? They ask corporations what they would like and if they would be willing to help draft the language. It's outrageous.
Copyright law is designed to protect CREATIVE work. Data is not creative work and no matter how hard it may be to compile said data, it should not result in you owning the data to the exclusion of everyone else. There is no way anyone in Washington will be able to write this bill in such a way that it doesn't screw everybody except for the lawyers duking out infringement cases based on it.
With the internet data has become so easy to find and compile that just about anyone can do it. A lot of people have figured out that this spells trouble for their business plan that was invented in the fifties and are now trying to make a land grab of sorts to protect their bottom line.
Each time we turn around in the U.S. it appears that the power of coporations has grown..... at the expense of individual rights. Hopefully this will not pass, but it very well might. It is stupid the violations they say they wish to prevent are already covered by existing laws, reguarless of whether a database is involved or not.
btw wtf did happen to FAIR USE??????
feel free to quote me..... IF YOU WANNA BE SUED =)
actually I am happy to see you, however that is in fact a banana in my pocket.