Slashdot Mirror
Do You Have A License For Those Facts?
spikedvodka writes "Wired is reporting that the "Database and Collections of Information Misappropriation Act (HR3261)" is under consideration. It passed the house Judiciary Committee, and is on it's way to the Commerce Committee. This bill would allow companies to copyright databases. (Think phone-number databases) and goes directly against the idea that nobody can own a fact." (See this earlier posting.)
What's copyrightable in an almanac is the presenation and exposition of the facts, not the facts themselves. It's the same principle under which photographs of works in the public domain are copyrightable. There's a section in the copyright statues about it.
First, the original intent of copyright has nothing to do with allowing creators to realize the fruits of their labor. If _labor_ were important, than we'd already have database copyrights since they operate entirely on a 'sweat of the brow' argument.
No, the intent of copyright is to promote the public good, specifically the dual public interests of seeing that more original and derivative works are created, and that more works are in the public domain.
Second, you're wrong about phone books. If a database isn't copyrighted you can indeed republish it exactly as-is.
Facts are uncopyrightable. Compilations of facts _may_ be copyrightable, but only if they are themselves original, and even then it doesn't protect the contents. A typical phone book is not original -- the selection is all-encompassing within a given area, so that's not protected, it lists unoriginal information such as name, number, address, so that's protected, and it arranges it alphabetically by last name, and that's not original nor protected.
This is a ridiculous law, but you don't seem to know much about our extant ridiculous laws.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
As for database overlap, that wouldn't be a problem if this law were implemented. Separate creations of the same set of facts are still separate.
There was Cowboy Neal at the wheel of a bus to never-ever land.
Before getting all pissed off, Take a look at the bill. Among other things, it explictly makes allowances for educational and scientific purposes, as well as for news and sports. This isn't about "owning facts", it's about protecting the interests of those who take the time to compile a database and preventing others from obtaining that database and sellling it for themselves. You can sit at an NBA game and edit your web pages in real time, if you want. You can't slurp Yahoo's NBA page, reformat the text, and place it on your own page for profit. This seems perfectly reasonable to me.
Good grief, you are correct;
n avby=search&case=/data2/circs/5th/9940632cv0.h tml
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?
Insane.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
No, Im not kidding.
There _was_ someone who tried to fight this by posting the laws online, but I am unsure what happened.
I'm pretty sure you're talking about building codes being copyrighted even after enacted into law. Some links regarding this:
construction works article
slashdot article
A search on the Supreme Court's site seems to have the latest activity on June 27, 2003:
02-355 SOUTHERN BUILDING CODE V. VEECK, PETER The motion of respondent for leave to proceed in forma pauperis is granted. The petition for a writ of certiorari is denied.
As far as I can tell, this means that they declined to hear the case, leaving the ruling of the lower court (5th Circuit Court of Appeals) stand, which was to rule in favor of Peter Veeck for posting the building code online.
Actually the most relevant case is Feist vs Rural Telecom. There the supremes used two branches of logic to overturn the lower courts rulings that the white and yellow pages of Rural were protected by copyright:
"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
And
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.
The first point (and to me the more important one since it is based on constitutional law) still stands. However the second one is basically eliminated since Congress is amending the copyright law to include sets of facts.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
The EFF provides an easy way to tell your representatives what you think on this. Just go to action.eff.org and it will let you send comments to the government. Be sure to put your personal thoughts in the comments because they give more weight to non-form letters.
Why can't I moderate something "Wrong" or at least "Grossly Misinformed"?
That case is FEIST PUBLICATIONS, INC. v. RURAL TEL. SERVICE CO., 499 U.S. 340 (1991).
There was Cowboy Neal at the wheel of a bus to never-ever land.
Actually, the fact that everyone is missing has nothing to do with the article in question, because the article in question misses the key point: the only news item from today that is noteworthy is that an alternative bill is being put forward in the House Energy and Commerce Committee that will specifically alter the sections the House Judiciary Committee proposed.
The Wired story is out of date. I'd link to the article in CQ today, but it's restricted. HR3261 will hopefully be beaten by the energy and commerce version, which will bring the database protection under the scope of the FTC, rather than under an individual corporation's scope.
I think there's a real chance of it being declared unconstitutional,....
Eldred V Ashcroft will tell you all you need to know about how limited those limited times are, ie: they aren't.
According to 4(a), you don't really own the facts in the database. What you own is the database itself. If I can gather the same facts some other way, I'm entitled to that. I'm only forbidden from accessing your database and using it myself.
"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."
That seems fair to me, actually. The goal overall of this bill is to say that if you put forth effort to gather a bunch of data, the effort of gathering it is worth money. The information is free, but the actual gathering of it is an artifact.
It makes a database like a book. Even if you eliminated copyrights, it would still be illegal for you to steal an actual book from me. Obviously the usual arguments that a database is not an artifact apply. I'm not going to argue them here; I'm just pointing out what the bill says.
Ah, but while the individual comments are copyright the poster, you must set aside literal geekthink and look from a lawyer's perspective. The individual facts (comments) are owned by the posters, the database comprised of the facts (Slashdot) is copyright OSDN. Thus, the poster may reuse a comment elsewhere, but to reference more than one comprises a copyright violation on the database.
I feel dirty now... I so despise copyright law...
You can have it fast, accurate, or pretty. Pick any 2.
Think about it this way: you can copyright a guitar riff, but you obviously can't copyright a note. A note is a basic, concrete thing, you can't CREATE a new note. Does this fact bely the creation of original songs? I don't think so...every time music seems stagnant, somebody finds a new way to make it.
Ok, now if you take your collection of notes, and randomize the order they're in, you have something totally different. Now, take your database, and randomize the records in that. You still have the same exact database. They are two totally different ideas.
Copying what I wrote from the last time, I'm continually amused at the people who are disagreeing with you. Basically, all this bill is proposing to do is punish BLATANT direct copies of a database or large portion thereof. Note the following exceptions to the law, from the last time I looked at it:
SEC. 4. PERMITTED ACTS.
(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.
(b) ACTS OF MAKING AVAILABLE IN COMMERCE BY NONPROFIT EDUCATIONAL, SCIENTIFIC, OR RESEARCH INSTITUTIONS- The making available in commerce of a substantial part of a database by a nonprofit educational, scientific, and research institution, including an employee or agent of such institution acting within the scope of such employment or agency, for nonprofit educational, scientific, and research purposes shall not be prohibited by section 3 if the court determines that the making available in commerce of the information in the database is reasonable under the circumstances, taking into consideration the customary practices associated with such uses of such database by nonprofit educational, scientific, or research institutions and other factors that the court determines relevant.
(c) HYPERLINKING- Nothing in this Act shall restrict the act of hyperlinking of one online location to another or the providing of a reference or pointer (including such reference or pointer in a directory or index) to a database.
(d) NEWS REPORTING- Nothing in this Act shall restrict any person from making available in commerce information for the primary purpose of news reporting, including news and sports gathering, dissemination, and comment, unless the information is time sensitive and has been gathered by a news reporting entity, and making available in commerce the information is part of a consistent pattern engaged in for the purpose of direct competition.
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.