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

Protects work not data

[stoolpigeon]

Looking at the bill- it seems to me that it protects the actual collection effort not the data itself. If someone else wants to go out and collect the same information they can- they just can't steal your collection. I guess I'm missing why this is so bad.

Ok, so let's do it!

[Bad Boy Marty]

I say we should each start a database of whatever "facts" we have available to us (that aren't already copyrighted, of course), and assign the copyrights to FSF or EFF for open distribution!

When is a copy not a copy?

[El]

If I make a copy of a 1,000,000 entry database, then change one of the entries, is it still infringing? How does one distinguish a list of facts from another list of facts compiled independently? Should I be rushing out to apply for a copyright on my list of the capitals of the 50 states? If I create a database with all the elements in it, can I sue anybody who publishes a periodic table?

Amazon's Opposition?

[FJCsar]

It's kind of interesting that Amazon is among the companies that are opposing this bill. How many programs currently take data from their database and funnel it for alternate uses (i.e. Readerware)?

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

[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.]