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Who Owns The Facts?
windowpain writes "With all of the furor over the Patriot Act a truly scary bill that expands the rights of corporations at the expense of individuals was quietly introduced into congress in October. In Feist v. Rural Tel. Serv. Co. the Supreme Court ruled that a mere collection of facts can't be copyrighted. But H.R. 3261, the Database and Collections of Information Misappropriation Act neatly sidesteps the copyright question and allows treble damages to be levied against anyone who uses information that's in a database that a corporation asserts it owns. This is an issue that crosses the political spectrum. Left-leaning organizations like the American Library Association oppose the bill and so do arch-conservatives like Phyllis Schlafly, who wrote an impassioned column exposing the bill for what it is the week after it was introduced."
[T]he Supreme Court ruled that a mere collection of facts can't be copyrighted.
Would the Linux people, then, be able to assert that their C code is merely programmable facts which generates certain (MD5|MD4|SHA1|etc) hashes? Chew on that one, SCO.
Trolling is a art,
...that most of the people who post to slashdot don't need to worry about being in violation if this bill passes. Facts have never stopped anyone here yet!
You can say goodbye to the GPL being enforceable.
If it goes one way, it can go the other in this situation.
insert into facts (object,property) values ('sky','blue')
There we go.
# Erik
Too bad guys (greedy corps and stupid politians) they beat you too it!
What, so now I can't talk about something that a company thinks it owns? The question of whether or not people can own ideas or material has been pervasive for a long time (i.e., RIAA lawsuits with intellectual music property, DMCA restrictions on undermining copy protection), and I have to wonder where it's taking us. With the computer, we've seen a mass 'liberation' of thought and media, and a while ago it was considered a good thing that people could have access to culture so easily. But there have been major arguements as to what should count as a marketable product. Companies are insisting that they should be paid for their wares, and I guess from that viewpoint I agree. They should be paid for what they do. However, if what they do is think of an idea, and then if they tell everybody about that idea, I expect them to not charge me for thinking about it. I think our culture will go down the drain if it doesn't accept that some things are not private property.
I regularly report MSN spam to the Hotmail admins.
In particular, what if I copyright all facts concerning myself and refuse to grant any company a license? Surely no entity could have a better claim to their "authorship". Say hello to free unlisted telephone numbers.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
Wrong. It limits the rights of everyone, period. Why do people so consistently miss the fact that less government involvement neatly solves problems like these?
Someone should make a fuckedrepublic website so that we can predict when our rights are revoked and for which reasons.
Illegal search and seizure, May 8, 2005: Homeland Defense.
Right to Private Property, September 19, 2006: Corporate Bottom Lines.
Freedom of Speech, December 2, 2003: This post.
The List of Grievances with Slashdot.
No, information is not universal. Information is contributed by individuals whether paid for by corporations, or devised through his/her own means.
The free-market system depends on scarcity of information. You cannot profit from something that everyone has a right to. FreeSoftware companies are not an example of this. They profit from service (i.e. a collection of information services provided by said company to an customer.) or proprietary innovation (MS is an example of expanding public information).
Without resources you interests have no value to society in this context. The correlary is that only things that interest society get the most attention. That is why counting cow farts can only get supported by the government.
Interesting, and thanks for posting part of the text from the bill here. I wonder if this bill isn't being snuck through to give the likes of Wal-Mart, K-Mart, Target, etc., more ammunition in their once and future suits against folks such as fatwallet.com - particualy around this time of year. (Amungtst all the other "Corporate entitities" who'd love to see something like this)
If they can successfuly claim the publication of their price lists ("facts" in anyone's book) is somehow part of a " database (that) was generated, gathered, or maintained through a substantial expenditure of financial resources or time;" it'll just be more ammunition for them to keep simple facts "secret."
Of course, considering how much influence large corporations have over the legislature in protecting their interests at the expense of the Public Good, is a bill like this any real surprise?
Never attribute to malice what can as easily be the result of incompetence...
Innovation and invention rely on the exchange of ideas in order to happen. The more freely ideas are echanged, the greater the pace of innovation and invention. There used to be a wonderful show on TLC that illustrated this idea called "Connections", back in the day when TLC still carried original and interesting programming... It would seem to me that political interests -being wholly owned subsidiaries of corporate interests- are trying to legislate innovation and invention out of existance. Furthermore, this isn't a partisan problem: Dems and Repubs alike are more interested in serving the corporate dollars that have elected them than they are interested in serving their constituents. While we all yell about Bush, Haliburton and Diebold we are ingnoring the real problem of election reform, and if and when the Dems ever regain the high office, the problem will be as negleted as it is under the current administration. If we are to restore the free exchange of ideas to stimulate invention and innovation, we need to sperate the politicians from the corporate dollar.
99% of bills introduced into Congress are quiet ( unless you watch C-SPAN. No where in the Constitution does it say that a loud proclamation of all bills must be made.
A few quick notes:
I won't annoy all of you by requote the whole text of the bill (which I highly recommend you read before flaming). However, from my reading of it, all it seems to prohibit is for someone to make available significant amounts of a commercial database for their own profit. Basically, you can't spider Lexis-Nexis or the like and sell the info, but you CAN independently collect that data from direct sources and compete with them.
If I'm missing something here, PLEASE tell me. Again, read the bill first though, before you spew fire.
(1) the database was generated, gathered, or maintained through a substantial expenditure of financial resources or time;
...then you might have a case. This is meant to protect big business.
I've spent all my life generating, gathering, and/or maintaining every fact about it; it has taken all my money, and all my time.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Yea! Thank God they thought of the poor telemarketers!
You need to read the case about the building codes. I suggest you go to the guy's site where he tried to publish the building codes, and the case went all the way to SCOTUS.
Last time I checked (few months ago) the codes still weren't published even though he won.
I've tried getting the codes myself, for my state. They're over $70. Think about it for a minute. These aren't just a collection of facts. These codes are the LAW. So I have to pay a private company to find out what the law is.
What did the guy do? After searching through various retail locations and coming up empty, he decided to publish THE LAW of building codes for the particular town he was interested in, and he was taken to court by a private company.
I thought I could search my state/city's web site to find out what the codes were, but thanks to the private company, virtually all states/cities/towns in the US "adopt by reference", and don't publish what the actual codes are, therefore you are forced to pay if you want to know what the law is.
To make it simple, codes are necessarily published in a certain order, in a certain format. Changing the format wouldn't work. So if the private company publishes a book of codes (they do), you can't copy the book and put it on a web site, according to the proposed law. If the company also publishes the codes online, you can't do the same. So you'll go to their site you say? They don't publish all the codes. And the ones they do publish, you have to go through multiple directory trees, or they make it exceedingly and annoyingly difficult to get more than one or two sub sections at a time. If you are familiar with building codes, this is a non-starter.
The other option is 1. going to the library (it's a reference book, you can't take it out. or 2. going to the county clerk (a major pita in most cities, and it's a reference, you can't take it home).
Can you see it now?
Check the dictionary sometime, treble is a synonym for triple. Also, look at the law-specific lingo.
While I am still concerned to some extent about this bill, as I read it the situation is not nearly as dire as the posting suggests. To begin with, the claim that the bill
is untrue. It imposes no liability on users of a database. It deals only with people who
Unless I have missed something, you can make use of any data you can get your hands on. What you can't do is distribute to others the whole database or substantial chunks of it. Furthermore, the owner of the database can't just claim to own it; it has the burden of showing that it generated the database through a substantial investment of money or time.
The bill is fairly restrictive. It exempts government databases, explicitly permits hyperlinking, and contains exceptions for news reporting and educational and research uses. Furthermore, the restriction only applies if the unauthorized redistribution "inflicts an injury", where this is defined as follows:
I'm not sure how this is to be interpreted, but it seems to me that it may permit derivative works insofar as they are not functionally equivalent to the original. In sum, I'm nervous about restrictions on databases too, but this bill seems to be pretty narrow. Its possible it prohibits things I wouldn't want to see prohibited, but it doesn't seem to be nearly as awful as suggested. I'd like to see a proper analysis of the intent and legal interpretation of this bill.
This is where I wonder what could be covered by this act. Maybe if it were only concerned with databases containing, say, financial or such information it wouldn't be so bad, but how about if a company is archiving most or even all of its internal communication?
Sounds to me like the leaked diebold memos would have been a great chance for a smackdown lawsuit in this case...
Even better, how about if you are emailing something to yourself at home, maybe on a break. Even if your company didn't contractually claim exclusive rights to anything coming out of your head, if it was archived from corporate email then wouldn't this give them rights to it?
Just throwing around some basic doom+gloom, I'm sure the professionals (corporations) would be able to come around with some more advanced methods of screwing us over...
Ok. So piece of freedom in Poland.
Except of really absolutely necessary laws, the only limitation was: Don't fight the system. At least, not from outside. Which means: You could join the party, climb the career ladder and once gaining significant power, help guiding the system towards something more 'accessible'. And that was often done. They stopped condemning rock music, instead they pursued engaging it on their side (see the Manaam band), they had to ballance giving as much freedom to people against becoming "too liberal" in eyes of Moscow, especially giving real show in "fighting the enemies of the system" - the oppression of the opposition news were often bloated purposedly, just to show "how faithful we are". The police was really effective, and while you had to carry your ID with yourself at all times and show it to the police on demand (often), nobody really minded that - "Thank you citizen, you are free" was what you always heard if you weren't a criminal.
What is really important, the laws were extremely liberal. Nobody even thought about banning homosexuality. Marriages? No, not really, but prison? What for? Real law. Pornography allowed 18+, sex - 16+. No fiction of "sex since 18, alcohol since 21". Soft drugs allowed in small amounts for personal use. Hard drugs illegal and mostly unknown. Besides, the youth had far more interesting stuff to do than to drug themselves, start gang wars, rob people. Ever heard about The Palace of Culture and Science, by name of Stalin? A big building in the centre of Warsaw, impressive for its times. A network of such institutions worked thorough the whole country. Purpose: clubs, for mostly every hobby you could ever think of. Computer labs, car models, plane models, chorus, radioelectronics, carpentry, aquariums, all kinds of sport sections, games, theatre, dance, a section for any good activity you could think of for your child, could be found there - and children loved it. Funded in great part by the state, well equipped workshops, decent instructors/trainers, place for every kid and teenager to spend their time in interesting and creative way.
And criminals were really looked down upon, because people knew these do what they do just because they are too lazy for a honest job. Not to get their bread. Because despite the fact I could eat bananas maybe once or twice a year, when they appeared at the shop, everyone could afford their living, food, nobody was homeless, nobody was without work. If you happened to be without work while able to work, you were quite suspect. So called Blue Bird (polish Niebieski Ptak, russian Sinaya Ptica), either you lived from some money your family abroad sent you, or you performed some illegal activity... unless you just asked the social support for help. It was substantial enough to provide living to anyone too lazy to work, not high-standard though. Besides, it paid to work really. Forget the money, they didn't mean really much. But privledges. Vacations in your firm's contracted or owned hotel (Black Sea? Yugoslavia? Romania?), discounts on multitude of services, "christmas gifts", coupons to buy poorly available goods, countless other profits other than financial. You didn't HAVE TO work. You were just pretty much encouraged to do so.
And one wonderful thing I miss really deeply: Honesty and trust. You could travel whole eastern europe by hitchikng. You could leave your tent out in the wild for whole days without fear somebody would steal anything. You could ask a perfect stranger in the country to let you sleep overnight at their place and they would greet you warmly. Of course the unwritten rule of "do not steal" applied only to private property. Public property was stolen at will, and that's one of several reasons why the system collapsed. And if you were an artist, writer or such, you just belonged to an association which would pay you a monthly salary for writing books, playing music etc, and then provided them to the public for funny money. A record (vinyl) for as much as a loaf of bread. A book for about the same.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
WRONG!!
This bill does not give ownership of the data to the database maintainer. It simply gives copyright protetion to the collective work.
Google could not clain ownership of any data on the Internet (other than its own). Google could claim copyright of the index and search results.
What Google could do is DMCA sites for posting Google link results. However, posting a URL to Google to get the same link results is explicitly permitted in the legislation.
I read most of the bill and Phyllis Schlafly's article. I'm scared by her example of Veeck vs SBCCI, but then again I was heartened to read this passage from the bill.
(a) INDEPENDENTLY GENERATED OR GATHERED INFORMATION- This Act shall not restrict any person from independently generating or gathering information obtained by means other than extracting it from a database generated, gathered, or maintained by another person and making that information available in commerce.
By way of example suppose...
CASE 1
The phone company in my town prints its DB of customers and phone numbers and sells that book. I buy a copy of that book and take it to kinkos and give it away for free. Should I be punished?
CASE 2
Same town and phone company, but this time I go to every person in my small town and ask what their phone number is, collect that info into my own book and give that book away... "INDEPENDENTLY GATHERED INFORMATION" Seems like I'm in the clear.
On the surface I'm OK with this, but at least one problem is that the book from case 1 may be indistinguishable from the book in case 2. Will burden of proof lie with me or them?
IANAL, but this law looks OK.
It looks, on its face, to be carefully crafted to keep people from taking large chunks of other people's databases and selling them as their own.
In effect, it gives copyright-like protection to formatting information into a database. It's the format, and the particular collection of the data that is owned, not the information itself.
You must to yield now. We have own all your databases.
sigs, as if you care.
it makes it easy for big corporations with deep pockets to keep the little guy from being a nuisance/competitor
...would create a new federal property right in online and offline databases (collections of information), and give the federal courts power to police the use of information in databases.
It's much more than that. Often, "big corporations" aren't the licensees of the data; smaller entities are (such as is the case in many state data distribution contracts, e.g. DMV databases which are auctioned off like radio spectrum in an irresponsible manner). Subsequently, the "evil big corporation" matter is a red herring. We need to keep the eye on the fundamental - the government's aspiration to implement a Stationer's register system that requires the authority of the crown in order to access public information. Imagine the absolute power politicians will have in defining who can and cannot see public records.
Per the original post's critique link:
H.R. 3261
This is much more than a theft of public information (again, mirroring the FCC's approach to spectrum auctions). Much of this government information is necessary for ensuring compliance. Imagine, for instance, if driving laws were maintained in a Federal database, but access to that database required a $25,000 annual fee.
Failure to have access to this database would result in recurring noncompliance; e.g. making normal citizens recurring lawbreakers.
Certainly many politicians aspire to extend a political system that ensures all citizens are lawbreakers and subsequently dependents upon the system. Concealing public information which is necessary for legal compliance is a terrible move towards tyranny.
H.R. 3261 would allow federal courts to impose stiff penalties if someone uses information from a database that a corporation claims to own.
Almost sounds like it was written by Kafka:
"I'm sorry sir, but to divulge what crime you have been charged with, absent proper licensing and permitting of your access to the Federal crimes database, would be a crime of itself. Certainly you wouldn't wish to compound matters, would you?"
Incidentally, I see that Rep. Billy Tauzin, known as the loyal Representative from BellSouth, is a cosponsor of this bill. Good rule of thumb: if Billy's involved, it's probably not on the level.
*scoove*
The free-market system depends on scarcity of information.
No, it doesn't.
The free-market system depends on scarcity of material.
That material may be 'intellectual property', or it may be physical goods.
It's perfetcly possible to have a free market without scarcity of information.
a fortune500 can steal your data.. republish it.. then scream it's theirs and you stole it.. and you can get in trouble, and there's no way in hell you're gonna be ale to scream it's them, becuase
a) they have money
b) they have money to get the best lawyers
c) they have money to drag a case on until you're broke.
that's another scary thought.
"What's wrong here is that it makes it easy for big corporations with deep pockets to keep the little guy from being a nuisance/competitor.
Who can afford to litigate against a Fortune 500 company whether his database is or is not misappropriated from theirs?"
What follows is a general rant about "the system":
Don't blame the law (unless you think it's wrong in and of itself, of course).
Don't blame the lawyers, they're just mouthpeices: everyone (even the bad guys) needs a voice in a civil society.
Blame the elected representatives who pass bad legislation which screws up the system.
Blame the elected judges who hear ridiculous cases and who let bad legislation pass which screws up the system.
Blame the citizens making up juries who make some of these stupid court decisions.
See where this is going?
Government (and economics, for that matter) is just a way of controlling power. No matter which party you belong to, it doesn't get any more basic than this.
If you don't play the game, the folks who make the rules (your fellow citizens) will fuck you over. Democracy, capitalism, whatever -- NONE of it works if the people sit around and let a minority run the show.
Personally, I'm of the opinion that less government is a good thing: I feel that sane courts and capitalism are more effective than legislature (I trust my vote more among 200,000 corporations than than I do 2,000 politicians). I think less government could solve problems like this, but it will never happen unless lots of folks like me vote.
The same goes for you and what you believe. Welcome to the rest of your life. Put your hands on the wheel.
~Dalcius
Rome wasn't burnt in a day.
Most of Eastern Europe fell from inefficient communism into brutal capitalism because of all the money to be made (for the very few rich), when what they needed was the efficient socialism of, e.g., Sweden.
In Sweden, most people don't pay taxes, which are income based in two brackets -- the bottom bracket pays 0%, and the upper bracket, which begins at 10% above the mean wage earned amounts to a tax of 57% of the portion of income above that level. As you might imagine, Sweden's system compresses almost everyone into the middle class while still allowing for plenty of incentive. This has resulted in an economy that looks perfect from the perspective of a capitalist or communist nation, with ultra-low unemployment, inflation, national debt, poverty, and infant mortality, and ultra-high longevity, per-capita spending power, and literacy. They have a thriving economy at all sizes of business, from sole-proprietorships to multinationals (e.g., Ikea, Volvo, Ericsson.) Sweden frequently ranks as the #1 place in the world to live on aggregate quality-of-life rankings.
I don't understand why so many of the post-communist countries aren't following Sweden's lead.
I worked for a web firm that was hit with a threatened lawsuit for "copyright infringement", and did the legal research for my boss that included a guerilla study of the FEIST v RURAL decision about eight years ago...
I don't think many of the comments truly understand just how much information is on a typical web site, both on the page and in the server, that would be subject to a reversal of FEIST.
In our case, to give an idea, we presented a "how to" for homeowners on repairing common appliances and when to call the professionals.
Consider this...there are only so many ways that you can say: "Replace the worn part."
That's what we were threatened over; C&D letters and responses flying around, and out of the midst of this, researching for an attorney on our side, I ran across FEIST and Shepardized it out.
We ran with it, pointing out the case, reinforcing the decision, and having the weight of a unanimous Supreme Court decision behind it.
We won. The other guys backed down. We passed the word to a few other web sites being similarly threatened, and the attornies ran like vampires in sunlight.
But this _simple_ of an example, where a common and expected phrase becomes part of a "database", shows how HR 3261 can be applied to us all if it should pass.
This bill needs to be stopped...not just for the threat to the internet, but to basic research, to common students trying to do term papers, to authors trying to write, to even repeating breaking news from a web site or the TV.
"Eustace? Eustace? Are you there? Are you there?" = John Leeming
I'm swedish, and I like living here, but get your facts straight!
Living here is good, that is true, but it is not the utopia you make it out to be.
You are describing Sweden in the 70's, not in the 00's. (Being completely intact after WWII gave us a good head start...)
After a slight crisis in the 90's national debt is up, unemployment is up a bit, and we are over all more on par with other western european countries.
"First lesson," Jon said. "Stick them with the pointy end."