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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."
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.
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?
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?
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? How can you ever establish that you independently generated your database?
When ownership of fact can be the basis of a civil suit, the individual is shut out. Like software patents, the big corporations will own portfolios of databases that they will cross-license to each other while they collectively collude to keep everyone else out.
When I see that the phone company and building-code associations are going out of business because bad guys have misappropriated their "databases," it may be time for such a law. Until then, what's the rush?
I wish legislators would include at least a token discussion on exactly what the problem for which they're providing a "solution." Whose databases are currently being misappropriated?
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
Welcome to my database of Elements:
Hydrogen: Atomic weight 1.00794
Helium: Atomic weight 4.002602
Lithium: Atomic weight 6.941
Beryllium: Atomic weight 9.012182
Boron: Atomic weight 10.811
Carbon: Atomic weight 12.0107
Nitrogen: Atomic weight 14.0067
Oxygen: Atomic weight 15.9994
I spent nearly an hour researching sources for all one hundred and thirteen items in that database! Do you know it took me almost eight minutes to find a source for the atomic weight for Darmstadtium alone? Element 110, Darmstadtium, atomic weight 281!
I invested TIME and WORK into building my database! I'm trying to SELL these facts! I have a RIGHT to make money selling these facts! Now, with this law I can finally sue anyone who tries to infringe my god-given right to make a profit! These are MY facts! I OWN them! Anyone who copies these facts is a THIEF! That's right! Bob over there STOLE the FACT that Oxygen has an atomic weight of 15.9994! He STOLE it from me!
And don't you dare try to STEAL the speed of light out of my database! I own that too, and I'm damn well going to make money selling it!
[/sarcasm]
Note that the mere fact that I attempt to sell this info automatically qualifies it as a "commercial database". I could have a database with the facts that 'M' is the 13th letter of the alphabet and 'N' is the 14th letter. That's a "commercial database" too, if I say it is.
The Supreme Court ruled that you cannot copyright facts, and with damn good reason. Congress is forbidden from granting copyright protection to databases of facts so they are making an end-run around the Supreme Court. They are inventing some new "right" out of thin air. A right to own facts. It's a dumb idea. You cannot "own" the speed of light. You cannot "own" the height of Mt. Everest. You cannot "own" the fact that Bob Miller lives at 8192 Binary Lane. You cannot "own" the fact that Bob Miller is 5-foot-4. You cannot "own" the fact that Bob Miller's phone number is (429)496-7296.
That last item - Bob Miller's phone number - is particularly signifigant. This whole issue started with a battle over the PHONE BOOK. The Supreme court ruled that the listings of people's phone numbers in the phone book can't be protected and can't be owned by the company publishing the phone book. This new law is an attempt to "fix" that problem. It grants the phone book publisher ownership over the fact that Bob Miller's phone number is (429)496-7296.
As for the exemptions you list, yeah, the law would devestating with out them. But it's not about what is permitted, it's about what is prohibited. The law prohibits the "misappropriation of facts". You can't "misappropriate" a fact.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
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.