Congressional Committee Approves Database Bill

thisissilly writes "Ready for another set of restrictions to so-called 'intellectual property'? The House Judiciary committee approved a bill to extend copyright-like protection to databases, despite opposition by AT&T, Amazon, Yahoo, and Google, among others. Currently mere compilations of facts, such as phone books, are not copyrightable. This would change that. Coverage from Cnet, Internetnews. No word on a Senate version. Let's stop this one before it grows."

Comments

ACM Policy Position

[Squeamish Ossifrage]

The ACM is currently surveying its members on whether or not to oppose this and similar measures. If you're a member, you've probably already gotten e-mail. Be sure to follow up on it if this issue is important to you!

The current policy committee positions are viewable on the ACM web site.

Take action before, not after...

[Dave21212]

Um, this bill has been on the table for quite a while now. (see also)

The time for action is when these bills are on the table. Granted, if AT&T can't budge the rats that passed this abhoration, what chance do you have... Write (hand written) letters to your representatives and vote your conscience this November !

Re:Notice that law isn't exempt

[ydnar]

Here is an example law, in this case building codes, being proprietary. More info here.

y

Re:Notice that law isn't exempt

[zulux]

It looks like standard-codes adopted by governemt can be copied due to a recent court ruling: more info

Re:Notice that law isn't exempt

[ichimunki]

If any of you ever bothered to RTFL(egislation), you'd have found this:

SEC. 5. EXCLUSIONS.

(a) GOVERNMENT INFORMATION-

(1) IN GENERAL- Except as provided in paragraph (2), protection under this Act shall not extend to--

(A) a database generated, gathered, organized, or maintained by a Federal, State, or local governmental entity, or by an employee or agent of such an entity, acting within the scope of such employment or agency; or

(B) a database generated, gathered, or maintained by an entity pursuant to and to the extent required by a Federal statute or regulation requiring such a database.

I leave it up to the reader to determine to what extent this protects various statute databases and other privately created systems housing purely public domain governmental data.

Re:Notice that law isn't exempt

[Short Circuit]

definately. Look at 6.b.1...it declares that..

(b) PREEMPTION OF STATE LAW-

(1) LAWS REGULATING CONDUCT THAT IS SUBJECT OF THE ACT- On or after the effective date of this Act, no State statute, rule, regulation, or common law doctrine that prohibits or otherwise regulates conduct that is the subject of this Act shall be effective.

Dear God...look at 7.c.2, 7.c.2.b, 7.c.2.g.

And 7.d:

(d) IMPOUNDMENT- At any time while an action under this section is pending, including an action seeking to enjoin a violation, the court may order the impounding, on such terms as it deems reasonable, of all copies of contents of a database made available in commerce or attempted to be made available in commerce potentially in violation of section 3, and of all masters, tapes, disks, diskettes, or other articles by means of which such copies may be reproduced. The court may, as part of a final judgment or decree finding a violation or attempted violation of section 3, order the remedial modification or destruction of all copies of contents of a database made available in commerce or attempted to be made available in commerce in violation of section 3, and of all masters, tapes, disks, diskettes, or other articles by means of which such copies may be reproduced.

IANAL, but That looks like it means they can impound anything that could possibly have a copy of the said material on it. Meaning, every computer, floppy and tape in a company.

And here's the punchline: (I'll let you guys play with it. I've got to go home.)

SEC. 10. NONSEVERABILITY.

(a) IN GENERAL- If the Supreme Court of the United States holds that the provisions of section 3, relating to prohibition of misappropriation of databases, are invalid under Article I of, or the First Amendment to, the Constitution of the United States, then this Act is repealed, effective as of the date of the Supreme Court decision.

(b) TERMINATION- Subsection (a) shall cease to be effective at the end of the 10-year period beginning on the date of the enactment of this Act.

fits with corporate-driven history of copyright

[kfogel]

Nothing new here :-(.

Copyright law has been extending its domain since its inception. This process has been driven by corporate interests -- not, as the RIAA would have you believe, by creators and artists trying to "protect their rights".

If, even after the RIAA lawsuits and now this, you still think that copyright is basically a socially good idea that just gets taken too far sometimes, please see

http://www.red-bean.com/kfogel/writings/copyright. html

for a possibly eye-opening history (and a blueprint for change).

Best,
-Karl

Re:Notice that law isn't exempt

[corebreech]

I see you chose not to include the very next paragraph:

(2) EXCEPTION- Nothing in this section shall preclude protection under this Act for a database gathered, organized, or maintained by an employee or agent of an entity described in paragraph (1) that is acting outside the scope of such employment or agency, or by a Federal, State, or local educational institution, or its employees or agents, in the course of engaging in education, research, or scholarship.

Why protect activities related to education, research, or scholarship?

Read The _____ Bill

[tepples]

Read the _____ bill. There seems to be a pretty high burden of proof, the republication must be "quantitatively substantial," and the information must be "time sensitive," having "temporal value."

Use a Copyright Trap

[cmcguffin]

> How do you distinguish a list from a copy? And would not the burden of proof be on the accuser? Don't they need to provide some mechanism for making the case that it was 'their' data that was 'stolen'?

You would presumably place a copyright trap in your database.

Map makers, form companies, and the like are known to insert intentional errors in their maps in order to prevent somebody who has copied their information from claiming that the information was gathered independently.

Feist does not say that.

[nudicle]

I said this in an earlier post, but if parent is going to be +5 Insightful, I'll repeat it here:

Feist absolutely does not say that compilations of facts are not copyrightable.

I promise. Go and read it. Feist says a couple things. For purposes of this thread it says that the white pages does not have a sufficient level of originality or creativity to rise to copyrightable level. The originality or creativity spoken of for factual compilations would be in their selection, coordination, or arrangement.

From the headnotes in the link you provided:

A compilation is not copyrightable per se, but is copyrightable only if its facts have been "selected, coordinated, or arranged in such a way that the resulting work as a whole constitutes an original work of authorship." 101 (emphasis added). Thus, the statute envisions that some ways of selecting, coordinating, and arranging data are not sufficiently original to trigger copyright protection. Even a compilation that is copyrightable receives only limited protection, for the copyright does not extend to facts contained in the compilation.

Compilations of facts are copyrightable if they attain a certain threshold of originality in their arrangement. If a compilation reaches this level and attains copyright, however, the facts themselves are not copyrighted.

I haven't read the new bill linked to in the original post and have no comment on how it treats protection of facts... the point of this post is just to point out a misunderstanding of what Feist stands for.

Re:Notice that law isn't exempt

[ryanjensen]

Note that the law does not protect the individual bits of data in the database, just a "quantitatively substantial part of the information" and only if:

1. the database was generated, gathered, or maintained through a substantial expenditure of financial resources or time;
2. the unauthorized making available in commerce occurs in a time sensitive manner and inflicts injury on the database or a product or service offering access to multiple databases; AND
3. the ability of other parties to free ride on the efforts of the plaintiff would so reduce the incentive to produce the product or service that its existence or quality would be substantially threatened.

Also, a database is defined as "a collection of a large number of discrete items of information produced for the purpose of bringing such discrete items of information together in one place" ... not each item idividually.

Finally, copying an entry out of an encyclopedia or almanac and passing it off as your own is plagiarism, and should be illegal in my opinion (if it isn't already).

[All italics mine.]

OT: SCO's copyright for profit argument

[realcheese]

I know this is off topic but this quote struck me as disproving SCO's argument that copyright is all about a profit motive:

"The primary objective of copyright is not to reward the labor of authors, but "[t]o promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts." Art. I, 8, cl. 8. Accord, Twentieth Century Music Corp. v. Aiken, 422 U.S. 151, 156 (1975). To this end, copyright assures authors the right to their original [499 U.S. 340, 350] expression, but encourages others to build freely upon the ideas and information conveyed by a work."

Re:Notice that law isn't exempt

[orthogonal]

Not anymore.

The US Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal (warning: pdf) (denied a petition for a writ of certiorari) of the US 5th Circuit's en banc ruling in SOUTHERN BUILDING CODE V. VEECK, PETER that re-decided the 5th Circuit's previous panel decision that affirmed the District Courts's summary judgment in favor of defendant Southern Building Code Congress International Inc, reversing the District Court and remanding the case to it for dismissal of SBCCI's claims.

Or to be less concise:

A three-judge panel, with one judge dissenting, of the 5th Circuit initially found that Souther Building Code Congress International Inc. retained copyright to its codes even though those codes were incorporated by reference in the law of, among other places, two Texas towns, Anna and Savoy. The majority's decison laregly rested on findings of other Circuit Courts, and explcitly said that "We decline to create a circuit split by reaching the opposite conclusion today." The majority's opinion held that the Supreme Court's finding in Banks v. Manchester didn't apply to the controversy at hand.

Then one of the judges of the 5th Circuit asked that the all the judges in the 5th Circuit decide the case -- this is called the circuit sitting en banc -- and a majority of the 5th Circuits judges agreed to hear the case en banc.

The decision of the majority (9-6, with the Chief Judge dissenting) of the entire 5th Cirucit took a diferent view of Banks v. Manchester, and so reversed the Distruct's Court's summary judgment in favor of SBCCI's claim that Veeck had violated SBCCI"s copyright to the building codes at issue, by posting them on his web site.

Re:YES!!!! Thank you, Congress!

[poot_rootbeer]

Y'know, sometimes the general lack of knowledge about and understanding of priciples of copyright law on Slashdot makes me irritable and upset. This is one of them.

Take every bit of personal information you can think of, stick it into a database, and file for a copyright on it. Poof, you've just made every company out there trying to gather data on you guilty of a copyright violation for which you can sue them

Simply replicating a piece of information does not constitute a copyright violation. You have to demonstrate that the copy was DIRECTLY DERIVED FROM your original. Did the company access your database server to get their copy of your information? If not, your allegations of copyright violation won't get very far.

Here's a sentence I just made up: "I do not like them." This same sentence happens to appear in Dr. Seuss' book, "Green Eggs and Ham", but does that mean I've violated Seuss' copyright by typing that sentence? No more than a company that gets your name and address from somewhere is guilty of violating the copyright on your imaginary database.

Re:Notice that law isn't exempt

[orthogonal]

Second, I don't think this will have any effect on public access to law.

Court decisions and statute law are public domain, by long established precedent reaching back to the US Supreme Court's findings in Wheaton v.
Peters, 33 U.S. (8 Pet.) 591, 668 (1834) and Banks v. Manchester, 128 U.S. 244, 9 S.Ct. 36 (1888). Banks relied upon a decision of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, Nash v. Lathrop, 142 Mass. 29, 6 N.E. 559 (1886), which held that "justice requires that all should have free access to" both court decisions and statute law.

Furthermore, the 1976 Copyright Act (at 17 U.S.C. 105) specifically denies copyright protection to federal statutes and regulation; the state basis of Banks implies that state and local laws are also not copyrightable, and this is upheld in Veeck v. Southern Building Code Congress International Inc., No. 99-40632.

Indeed, as the Veeck decision reminds, "Justice Harlan, writing for the Sixth Circuit [in Howell v. Miller, 91 F. 129, 137 (6th Cir. 1898)]: 'any person desiring to publish the statutes of a state may use any copy of such statutes to be found in any printed book . . .'" (emphasis mine).

Re:actually, factual compilations are (c)able

[nudicle]

Ok, IANAL. I am a second year law student at the university of virginia and before I went back to school I was a unix systems programmer.

That being said, I think you are correct. The facts in the the actual tuples would not be copyrightable. One of the Big Deals in copyright jurisprudence is that facts themselves are not copytightable and neither are ideas. What is copyrightable is expression (your particular expression of ideas or facts rather than those ideas or facts themselves).

So, the data in the tuples, if we're talking about just facts, are not copyrightable. If you generated a report from the database it might be copyrightable if its "selection, coordination, and arrangement" were sufficiently creative. "sufficiently creative" is a blurry concept, I know. Here is a summary of Feist's holding, from findlaw.com:

Rural's white pages are not entitled to copyright, and therefore Feist's use of them does not constitute infringement. Pp. 344-364.

(a) Article I, 8, cl. 8, of the Constitution mandates originality as a prerequisite for copyright protection. The constitutional requirement necessitates independent creation plus a modicum of creativity. Since facts do not owe their origin to an act of authorship, they are not original, and thus are not copyrightable. Although a compilation of facts may possess the requisite originality because the author typically chooses which facts to include, in what order to place them, and how to arrange the data so that readers may use them effectively, copyright protection extends only to those components of the work that are original to the author, not to the facts themselves. This fact/expression dichotomy severely limits the scope of protection in fact-based works. Pp. 344-351.

(b) The Copyright Act of 1976 and its predecessor, the Copyright Act of 1909, leave no doubt that originality is the touchstone of copyright protection in directories and other fact-based works. The 1976 Act explains that copyright extends to "original works of authorship," 17 U.S.C. 102(a), and that there can be no copyright in facts, 102(b). [499 U.S. 340, 341] A compilation is not copyrightable per se, but is copyrightable only if its facts have been "selected, coordinated, or arranged in such a way that the resulting work as a whole constitutes an original work of authorship." 101 (emphasis added). Thus, the statute envisions that some ways of selecting, coordinating, and arranging data are not sufficiently original to trigger copyright protection. Even a compilation that is copyrightable receives only limited protection, for the copyright does not extend to facts contained in the compilation. 103(b). Lower courts that adopted a "sweat of the brow" or "industrious collection" test - which extended a compilation's copyright protection beyond selection and arrangement to the facts themselves - misconstrued the 1909 Act and eschewed the fundamental axiom of copyright law that no one may copyright facts or ideas. Pp. 351-361.

(c) Rural's white pages do not meet the constitutional or statutory requirements for copyright protection. While Rural has a valid copyright in the directory as a whole because it contains some forward text and some original material in the yellow pages, there is nothing original in Rural's white pages. The raw data are uncopyrightable facts, and the way in which Rural selected, coordinated, and arranged those facts is not original in any way. Rural's selection of listings - subscribers' names, towns, and telephone numbers - could not be more obvious, and lacks the modicum of creativity necessary to transform mere selection into copyrightable expression. In fact, it is plausible to conclude that Rural did not truly "select" to publish its subscribers' names and telephone numbers, since it was required to do so by state law. Moreover, there is nothing remotely creative about arranging names alphabetically in a white pages directory. It is an age-old practice, firmly rooted in tradition and so commonplace that it has come to