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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.)
So all I have to do is "Download the Internet" as Comcast's ads claim, then I can OWN the internet! Woohoo, where's my multi-terebyte disk array!
at LISNews (kind of the /. for librarians...)
Does /. have the legal right to talk about this bill? I mean, that fact might be copyrighted!
Can I demand an immunity deal as a condition of testifying at all?
I can see it now. An office with 2 lines. The first to file you copyright and the second to file a lawsuit against someone for violating your new copyright.
Evolution or ID?
Who has the copyright to copyright a copyright? :P
Geez. This really is getting out of hand. Copyrights (despite the fact that scholars have said that copyrights are getting out of hand) being handed out, crazy patents, SCO's antics, the DMCA, Patriot Act..
Are we legislating ourselves out of existance faster than we know it?
Corporations will squeeze every last damn cent they can out of anyone. When will the government stop this capitalism run amok? I'm all for corporations making profits, and the government helping protect this, but what is happening is that the small guy (consumers and small businesses who don't have millions of dollars to blow on lawsuits) gets hurt.
This seems like mostly the same thing. If this thing does get passed, it will probably be overturned quickly by a court.
SmashTech - No smashing of tech involved
Send a free fax to your Congressmen and Senators here.
This is a terrible idea... and that's a fact.
(Please see my lawyers if you'd like to license this fact...)
True enough.
Now. Let's consider the database as a whole.
Do you feel that any database you take the time to put together should have no protection whatseover? As a whole, I mean..
We can probably agree that wholesale copying of my database should not be allowed... even if the individual facts are not copyrightable.
The question becomes, where do we draw the line? Should the DB owner get no protection?
from the permitted acts section: (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. so fear not, you'll still be able to get that cute girl's phone number once you learn her name.
-ninjaneer
We should be moving toward more open sharing of information, not the opposite. All we'll end up with is a dearth of new knowledge. It will be like pouring hot salt water into the gears; eventually it will rust up and grind to a halt.
As usual, everyone should write to their congress critters and register their opinions.
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
Please somebody explain it to me. As far as I can see, this Act is valid only for the USA. I guess some "googlebot" launched outside the US could grab the info and show it.
I see this Act valid for some databases, but I can't see it applicable in the Internet.
As I said, this law stuff is too much to me. Any help would be great.
Now I am sad.
This bill would allow companies to copyright databases and goes directly against the idea that nobody can own a fact." Um sure, just like current copyright law for books goes directly against the idea that nobody can own a word? What planet are you from.
all the phone numbers of employees of
1. credit card companies
2. free vacation offers
3. home mortage companies
so I can harass them back...
-Grump
Is it true that more people vote for the winner of American Idol, than vote for the president? -Ali G.
(c)SoupGuru Enterprises. Any use other than that expressly granted by the copyright holder is forbidden.
What doesn't kill you only delays the inevitable
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Licenses to use any of the information on my copyrighted list are available now at very reasonable rates. Discounts are available for bulk users. Yeah, I'm talking to you, Neal Stephenson!
We taxpayers pay the government to collect and generate lots of information (e.g. Census Data, Economic Data, the Federal Register).
To make more money , politicians and corporations have been looking for ways to turn that freely available public information into a profit making enterprise. Business owned copyrights give direct profit for the corporations, and indirect profit for the politicians, who accept bribes^D^D^D^D^D^D campaign contributions.
In the past, proposed laws have made adding page numbers, covers, etc to a document enough to put a stamp of copyright on it.
Thank goodness for "activist judges" who recognize that what we pay for is ours, and not theirs.
Presumably if a company wants to claim intellectual property rights over, for example, a consumer information database, they will pay me for use of information about me. I happen to keep quite a lot of data in various records. I would be willing license use of this information to other database providers for a small payment. Kidding aside, if they are going to claim some form of rights over data and not just how it is presented, they are going to have recognise the interests of individual data subjects.
I've finally got around to changing my sig
This bill would be the end of libraries as we know them. Other than copyrighted books, there's not much they would be able to have in their collections. How could they afford what would be the new astronomical prices of those indexes and journals once the 'fact tax' is paid to all the corporations that claim ownership to the facts?
It doesn't mean you can't quote a fact from an almanac, just that you can't steal large portions and claim them as yours.
A dictionary is like a database of words. The dictionary provider doesn't own the particular words, they own the collection of them. Sometimes dictionary makers put false words in there to catch competitors stealing their lists.
Putting together a database can be very hard work and if someone can just rip off the whole thing, it makes providers think twice before they bother to do it.
WWJD? JWRTFA!
Isn't a phone book a kind of data base?
He also says that despite Kupferschmid's characterization, the bill puts no limit on the amount of information someone needs to take from a database to violate the law.
So if I write down a phone number out of a phone book would I be thrown in a pound me in the ass prison
i am we todd did... i am sofa king we todd did
As long as *individuals* can also copyright information, it's okay by me. Build up a db of info about me, copyright it, BAM, I can sue people/companies with my personal information.
Sounds like Webster's is in for a big payday. Every word is now owned by them.
Rule #1 -- Politics always trumps technology.
The ACM had a vote (in which I voted) about this very issue. The vote was in responce to this bill and used it as an example, but the concept that we (the members of the ACM) were deciding was generalized. The winning opionion by far was that current legislation already offers sufficient protection. As such, additional legislation can only be rudundant or bad.
So in order to actually pass this bill, both houses need to consider why a huge organization of professionals (as opposed to some slashdotters and pirates) are against it.
"Never, never suspect the dreams within the dreams of dreaming children." ~The Amazon Quartet
It was reported out of the Commerce Committee today. 2 versions, one that codifies the HotNews case, and is very mild based on common law precedent (and pretty much how the courts currently interpret these issues), and the more onerous one which was reported unfavorably. So it looks like it may be stalled and not reach the floor.
This is a good thing!
Register yourself as a company.
Make a database of your personal information (Name, phone number, address, family history, etc).
Sue other companies for using your "copyrighted data", which is held by your company.
Profit! (For the lawyers anyway)
=Smidge=
It seems to be like this is more about copyrighting collections of facts than the facts themselves. For example, if it is a trivial collection of facts (for example, the collection of information "My name is Foo"), I don't believe it is coverable. Thusly, the companies couldn't copyright a pairing between you and your phone number and then sue you for giving your number out. Similarly, a maker of encyclopedias couldn't copyright the fact "The marmot is a mammal." and then sue other people/companies who also make the claim that marmots are mammals.
In the case of encyclopedias, the collection of information would already be covered by copyright (it is a written work). However, legally, the idea of databases as copyrightable material is a little shakey. Is it a work of art? A written work? It falls under that hard to define region of 'other' works of authorship. The law aims to clarify this.
Oh, and make the overlords happy.
====
Crudely Drawn Games
Knowledge in the form of an informational commodity indispensable to productive power is already, and will continue to be, a major-perhaps the major-stake in the worldwide competition for power. It is conceivable that the nation-states will one day fight for control of information, just as they battled in the past for control over territory, and afterwards for control over access to and exploitation of raw materials and cheap labor.
- Jean Francois Lyotard (b. 1924), French philosopher. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, Introduction (1979).
"The law of unintended consequences in this case has the potential to be huge," Brodsky said.
Actually, I think the law of unintended consequences has been licensed and copyrighted to the Elect Ralph Nader Committee for quite some time now.
I haven't looked at the details of the bill. I am staunch defender of copyleft and I am the first to oppose the current copyright regime. In fact, all of my work is released under a creative commons license.
But, and here's the part where I get sent to burn in karma hell, there are "collections of facts" that should be copyrightable.
Let me give you an example, quality multi-lingual terminological databases and glossaries are multi-year projects that demand a great deal of capital and human labor.
These terms are out there for anyone to do the work and compile them, yet no one will do this kind of tedious and thorough work unless they have a reasonable guarantee of being properly remunerated for their efforts now and into the future.
I would argue that a 10-year copyright period is more than sufficient for this kind of work to thrive.
In an ideal world, universities would band together to create these works and then release them to the public domain, but most universities these days operate as large corporate conglomerates and have very little interest in producing public goods.
Pragmatism as an ideology is not particularly pragmatic in the long term. Keep it in mind when you dismiss Free Software
Most legislatures are made up of at least a plurality, if not a majority of lawyers. And they have, so far, pretty much prevented any real reform in the legal system. In fact, the slower it goes, and the more complicated it gets, the more benefit to the lawyers. If the cases drag for years, they can bill for years.
The entire system needs to be simplified and speedier. It can takes years to get simple cases resolved. Even ones that are downright silly.
But legal reform isn't the only thing needed - the entire federal and state criminal and civil codes need to be re-written and simplified, along with IRS codes, etc, etc. Just think about the time and money wasted because of the foolish complexity of the system. Any party that is truly committed to simplification of the system will get my vote. And neither the GOP nor the Democrats are interested in anything but more complexity - which allows them to help their pet special interests at the expense of the public.
Section. 8.
Clause 8: To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
How does this advance Arts or Science? It's a real stretch to say that a list of customer data is a Writing or a Discovery.
[
The price of Trivial Pursuit will go up exponentially as they begin to be bombarded by invoices from encyclopedia licence owners.
And Jeopardy! will be run into the ground. Each question will cost them a fortune.
A database can be considered intellectual property and a trade secret without being copyrightable, thereby providing any corporation any legitimate protection they may need.
The catch is as soon as you share, your secret isn't a secret any more, and this is where the corporate money-grubers don' want the the process to stop.
IP laws (and the agencies responsible for them) are broken and badly need fixing.
The problem will get worse before it gets better.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
> "The sky is Blue."(C)
>
> (C) International Business Machines, Inc. 2004
"The Screen is Blue." (C)
(C) Microsoft Corporation
Now I am sad.
This doesn't allow you to copyright facts. It even says so in the linked slashdot blurb. It bears some similarities to copyright, but it's a completely different class of law.
The last thing we need is for slashdot to misinform everyone on something that fundamental about the bill.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
... the interesting question is that could this be used by various bio-tech companies to start claiming genomes (of rats or rice or humans) as similar protected 'collected' data. if so, there is an interesting debate to be had there for 'open source' sequencing (mySequence!) and how to make the results available for research. same goes for proteomics and gene expression research. arguably, they are just uncovering 'facts' and the groups they occur in...
Companies (and individuals) expend a great deal of time, energy, and resources to compile information. Why should they not be afforded some protection for that effort? The example of legal databases from the article is a perfect one -- it takes time, money, and a large amount of effort to enter cases and decisions into a database. This proposed law will not make those cases copyrighted, but simply the aggregated collection of cases in the database. There's a world of difference.
All this means is that you can't freely copy a set of information compiled by someone else without their permission. Seems fair to me. It's not the facts themselves (e.g. phone numbers, stock quotes etc.) that would be copyrighted, but some specific collection of facts. If you really want a database of stock quotes, you're free to create your own (or ask the copyright holder if you can use theirs).
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.
I realized some time ago that it'd be relatively trivial for someone to come along and scrape all the URLs I link to, put 'em on a page with a buncha ads, and try to make a buck off stuff I'd spent a lot of time on. But I'm not terribly concerned about it happening. Why?
There's no law saying that database output must be presented in a format that's easy for people to scrape, any more than email addresses.
to create some new category regarding information? It seems like everyone has a hard time deciding how things like data fit into existing copyright law, so why not sidestep copyright altogether and create new laws which are more applicable to private and public data stored on the internet?
The legal system needs a reset button.
Free Mac Mini Yeah, it's
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.
In a landmark case, the Supreme Court ruled that copyright "rewards originality, not effort." That's the principal that needs to be applied. A publisher may spend a lot of time, effort and money promoting (say) a reprint of a book originally published in 1900, but even if the book practically owes its current existence to their hard work, it is still in the public domain.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
In my opinion, there's only one answer: amend the US Constitution so that Reps and Sens can only serve two terms (like the President) and limit campaign contributions to $100 per person to each candidate in each election. No PACs, no unions, no companies and no churches, only voters can give.
But of course Congress would kill that in a second.
Rome is burning and George II is just playin' the banjo to some corporations music.
"And a voice was screaming: 'Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?'" - HST
We must remember that copyrights and patents exist for a single purpose, to foster the growth of knowledge and innovation. There is no abstract "right" for any person to hold a monopoly on ideas or information except as such "rights" foster the growth of knowledge and innovation.
So we must look at this case. Has there been a lack of growth in factual databases due to the inability to profit from them in the same way that, say, the author of a novel can? No, I think not. If then is the case then it seems to undermine the whole enterprise of copyrights and patents altogether. For it seems that if a company can and will go through so much trouble to create a database of phone numbers without any monopoly protection, that lesser efforts will surely happen with or without such protections as well.
So, if these legal monopolies were created for a purpose and they no longer serve to help fulfill that purpose, then what good are they? None at all.
Simliarities? If you own something as general as a "fact" you're becoming close outright declaration of possessing ideas, and who owns ideas sounds frighteningly simliar to what you're allowed to think and thus act on, which sounds reminiscent of "thought policing". Insert "idea expression policing" perhaps in this scenario, because under these rules something as intangible and ambiguous as "facts" will be copyrighted. Thus, you better be careful what facts you use and access - that notion is sounding more and more preposterous the more I think about it.
It's not a slippery slope analogy, because owning the rights to general "facts" is close enough to warrant outright concern in and of itself.
It kind of limits self-expression, doesn't it? I feel like this is sort of an ammendment issue almost. It's one thing for databases to charge fees for use, as harvesting information these days is a huge job. But *what* they harvest shouldn't belong to anybody, unless it's under a privacy issue or other disclosed / copyright issue / blah blah blah.
you can probably copyright an organization system, but you can't own a fact. facts are just THERE. "the sky is blue"(r) is not property.
in fact, until there are some competent reviewers, I suspect it would be good if all further patents, copyrights, and laws regarding digital matters just freakin' S T O P.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
So I guess the (high priced) LexisNexis feels threatened by the free information provided by Google et. al.
An encyclopedia site not only could own the historical facts contained in its online entries, but could do so long after the copyright on authorship of the written entries had expired. Unlike copyright, which expires 70 years after the death of a work's author, the Misappropriation Act doesn't designate an expiration date.
Finally we're getting perpetual ownership of information. It's only a matter of time before it gets put into regular copyrights in order to harmonize the laws. Disney's wet dream come true.
Commercial database companies say they invest millions of dollars in collecting, editing and organizing information for their customers, but don't have adequate protection to prevent someone from stealing the information to compete with them.
To me this is the worst possible justification for a new law. No one made them invest millions of dollars.
Some laws are copyrighted, and you need to pay hundreds of dollars just to get a copy of that law.
Not quite.
The laws themselves aren't copyrighted, but they may say things like "we incorporate National Electric Code 99 by reference." NEC 99 is copyrighted, and that's what you have to pay to get a copy of.
The effect is the same, of course, but it's not as if a government can run around copyrighting laws willy-nilly and then busting you for violating them. If you're an electrician, you pretty much had to have access to a copy of NEC 99 to get certified in the first place, so it's not really a hugely onerous requirement.
Slashdot's token middle-aged housewife
Given that the human brain is a data storage and correlation device, and given that it operates on electronic principles, I hereby submit that the facts in my brain are in fact stored in a correlative, referential database using an entropic indexing key. Therefore, presentation of these facts would in fact be a violation of Copyright. Further, since the data is stored in an encrypted form, decrypting that data without expressed written authorization of the creator of that key $DIETY would be a violation of the DMCA.
You can have it fast, accurate, or pretty. Pick any 2.
... and yes, I am aware of the irony regarding the usage of the U.S. Army's slogan (An Army of One!).
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"?
Google has a database of a large part of the web and usenet. Some of the fields in that database are the pages and images themselves.
Does this mean that Google can have copyright over just about everything online and in the retail sector?
All your pages are belong to Google?
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.
It is interesting to note that, whereas many have been paranoid about government's intention to censor speech and communication (which are ultimately made possible by the possession of information), now it appears that the right of possession of information may be on the verge of being controlled and censored - but with a twist. The bill would allow private companies to tie our hands while the government washes its own.
" All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest (C) 1997-2004 OSDN."
"Democracy is three wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner."
Think a little bit... who can profit of a judgment that permit the copyright of databases?
Lawyers of course!
In america, so called "justice" is a market like everithing else.
"Insanity in individuals is something rare, but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs it is the rule." - Nietzsche
Section 3(a)(1) requires that "generated, gathered, or maintained through a substantial expenditure of financial resources or time".
"Substantial", of course, is undefined, but I wonder if this means that a company's catalogs would be included, or not. While it would take me great effort to suck in Wal Mart's entire pricing structure, they presumably get it pretty easily.
When I read the headline and the short slashdot summary, I hadn't had a chance to think through the issue as thoroughly as I should have. In fact, this portion of the article is downright scary:
"Unlike copyright, which expires 70 years after the death of a work's author, the Misappropriation Act doesn't designate an expiration date."
So I retract my comments. I have thought it over and it looks like this law would do more harm than good. I would not oppose something that would codify databases if it did so in very careful terms and for no longer than ten years.
Pragmatism as an ideology is not particularly pragmatic in the long term. Keep it in mind when you dismiss Free Software
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.
This is actually kind of a dumb, extremist reaction to a very useful idea.
First of all, it's not FACTS that are being copyrighted. It's databases. Yes, a database is a collection of facts -- but it's the concept of collection that's being protected here, not the concept of facts.
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.
In the same way, you can't copyright a word, but you can copyright a book. You can't copyright red, but you can use it in your painting.
The creative act of assembling a database -- and if you don't think it's creative, you've never done it, it takes a TREMENDOUS effort to assemble and maintain a useful data relation even if you're using publically accessible information -- is something that should be protected. It gives data warehousers the same assurance that other content creators receive, so that they can offer access to their systems without worrying about losing the value...something which in my experience has plagued content creators greatly.
In fact, I see no reason why databases can't be fairly used same as any other created work. For example: let's say I run a sports website. If I wrote an editorial, and you wanted to quote a few lines on your own site, you'd be allowed to. But copy all the text and you're in violation of copyright. It'd be the same with databases. Want to quote a sport score or two? No problem, that's fair. Want to present all of yesterday's results? You'd better ask permission or start compiling them yourself. I don't have a problem with this.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
"(Think phone-number databases) and goes directly against the idea that nobody can own a fact." This is not a law that allows someone to have exclusive ownership of a fact. It simply means that you can't steal someone elses database and sell it as your own. Therefore, two competing companies can each have phone books with the same data in them. However, I can't take company A's phone book, copy the white pages, and then start my own company selling with a new yellow pages that ive accumulated for revenue. It takes work to create a specific set of data, and no one should be able to just copy that exact database without your permission. If they independently arrive at the same database, however, that is ok, and the law in question does not consider this wrong.
Vote for Pedro
The weather for today is heavy rain, with a chance of flooding, or not. We really can't compare this storm to ones we have had in the past. This station can not afford to check the past weather history for this area because we can not afford the costs to access the database. Maybe this is normal, maybe you should head for higher ground, we just don't know. Good Luck.
In fact, I see no reason why databases can't be fairly used same as any other created work
You can't??? How about the fact that practically all other creative work is STATIC, and most databases are DYNAMIC??? See the problem now? It's relatively easy to define a copied work of a static object, but how do you define a copy of a dynamic object? It would be a nightmare. This is a serious problem.
To ensure perfect aim, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target
Please. Every time a band plays a song they wrote, it's subtly different. This doesn't mean that a live version of a song has no copyright. Nor does it mean that you can change a few words of a novel and be free of copyright fears.
In fact, I'd say it would be impossible to have copyright at all if your type of definition were essential to copyright law. Luckily, it isn't. In fact, the definition is quite loose and most analysis of derivation is performed by the courts. Database copyright would be the same, but first it has to be declaratively illegal to steal from a database. This requires the law to recognize databases as a copyrightable entity, which is what this is about.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
> The creative act of assembling a database -- and if you don't think it's creative, you've never done it, it takes a TREMENDOUS effort to assemble and maintain a useful data relation even if you're using publically accessible information -- is something that should be protected.
Firstly, I'd like to dispute the implication that something is "creative" or somehow intrinsically worthwhile simply because it is difficult. Database construction may or may not be creative, I don't know, but the fact that it's difficult is not evidence one way or the other.
That said, I think I'd be willing to accept conceptual ownership of data collections provided it came with some responsibilities, mainly, database owners should make (enforceable) promises about the integrity of their data. Too many databases just hoover up information and put it in the tables, without ensuring that it correlates with the real world at all. If a database has an owner, then it creates the possibility that someone can be held accountable for the fidelity of the data.
I think this could go a significant distance to easing people's fears about data collection.
2*3*3*3*3*11*251
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.
I call 2+2=5.
Double plus good, eh?
If I wanted easy I wouldnt be an engineer or a patriot.
>> ...goes directly against the idea that nobody can own a fact.
If you are going to argue against copyright, at least use your head.
A "fact", e.g., "4 +4 = 8" cannot be copyrighted. The symbolic representation of that fact, can be. "4 + 4 = 8" is one symbolic representation of a fact. "IV + IV = IIX" is another. Same fact, different symbols.
Facts aren't symbols. Awareness of facts can only be transmitted by symbolic expression. Those expressions are works of language and, hence, can be owned and protected, i.e., copyrighted.
(Utopian dreamers who want to rant about the wonderful ineffable nature of knowledge and its "unownability", please go away. Copyright isn't about knowledge.)
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
This bill would allow companies to copyright databases. (Think phone-number databases) and goes directly against the idea that nobody can own a fact.
Let me make this clear: I believe the database bill to be terrible and dangerous legislation. I also believe that the technical community can be instrumental in helping to stop it.
Let me make this clear as well: If the technical community persists in their decade-long strategy of histrionic "chicken-little" screaming every time a bad bill comes out, we will once again see nothing but bad legislation pass.
This is what happened with DMCA, it is what happened with the Patriot Act changes, and it is now happening again with the database bill. Note that the database legislation was originally attached to DMCA, but withdrawn due to excellent lobbying. That can and should happen again, unless we screw up the way we did with DMCA.
Meaningless or false statement (depending how you define terms) such as the ones above serve noone but those who support the bill. The bill does not provide copyright protections (it is a different kind of right, both less and more in different ways), nor does it provide ownership of "facts."
Oh, yes. There are probably rationalizations that foolish people might proffer to defend these remarks, but by the time they have finished confusing those who do not need to be converted, they have long since lost credibility, and the attention of every relevant legislator or person who might otherwise have moved favorably from the fence.
So, please, oh please! STOP THE MADNESS. Remember the line from Apollo 13: "Gentlemen we are not going to do this, we're not going to go bouncing off the walls for ten minutes because were just going to end up right back here with the same problems."
If you are interested in this, and you should be, take the time to read the bill and learn what there is to worry about. Don't oppose it as a knee-jerk, and focus on what is wrong with the bill. Maybe it can be completely defeated, maybe not. But it will never be defeated, and like DMCA, is far more likely to be passed entirely, unless we show an intelligent, balanced and "straight-shooting" front.
The bill needs to be defeated. I assure you that remarks like the foregoing are not the way to do it.
I am a huge database containing data organized in a complex biological pattern of questions and answers.
Some right - some wrong - some ridiculous.
But that doesn't matter - it is a database anyway.
And while we are at it - I would like to copyright 2005 calenderwise. I will make one and you ALL have to pay royalty if you use any day of that year.
Hmm - what about personal information? I know what I bought at the store. The store will now being infringing on my copyright since they are copying my database into theirs?
This message is subject to the GPL. You may copy it.
No, but you can trademark it. It is legally acceptable to own a trademark on a color. I discovered this when I was looking at an issue of Inside UPS (a magazine for UPS employees) and noticed on the back that it said to the effect, "UPS, the package logo, the shield logo, and the color brown are all trademarks of United Parcel Service, Inc." This was quite a shock to me, so I ran to Google and found that the Supreme Court allows color to be registered as a trademark. A color can't be part of the function of a product in order to be trademarked, however. So we're safe from someone suing stainless steel manufacturers because they own a trademark on the color silver.
Suppose you "copyright" the first hundred million digits of PI. You put them in a database. Are you saying that it's ok to prevent me from calculating my own hundred million digits of PI? This is ludicrous, but you can't deny that digits of PI are indeed facts and can be put in a dictionary. So your "reasonable" analysis is really (probably unwittingly) justifying a truly evil proposition.
If one can copyright a riff, assuming a range of ten physically possible frets can be held in a chord, on a bass guitar, you get 10^4 chords per fret range. 22 frets, so 13 different ranges of ten frets, so 13*10^4 possibly chords. Assuming you can copyright a riff with as few as 4 chords, you could copyright 13^4*10^16 chords, and then sue all bassists, because (together, now)...
All your bass are belong to us.
I didn't meant to imply that database creation is creative because it's difficult. I meant that original effort goes into its assembly, and the result of that effort is a often a new creation, even if no visible changes have been made to the original data. It's creative because it takes a basic structure and creates a more complex one with different meaning.
Say I have a list of names , and another list of colours. If I make an association between the names and the colors, I have created something new, even if I didn't create the colors and I didn't create the names. You can now get a list of names that are associated with the color blue. That association is my creation. This new law would say that I own the association. It doesn't say that I own the names and colors.
And as for That said, I think I'd be willing to accept conceptual ownership of data collections provided it came with some responsibilities, mainly, database owners should make (enforceable) promises about the integrity of their data: ownership is not the same as copyright. You don't have to have accurate data to copyright a book...you could copyright a book comprised entirely of lies. Anne Coulter has done it several times. All copyright does is say "I made this. You can make your own, but you can't copy mine unless I say you can." Ownership of data is something completely different...something that's very difficult in a digital environment.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
That's right people, from now on, when you install a default SQL Database (read: empty), you OWE me $1200 licensing fee's as I've patented the idea of having an "EMPTY" and/or "DEFAULT" database. Also I've patented any database named "TEST" or "DEV". Send your payments to me so I can get taxed 55% by my gov't.
I also plan on patenting the subject line "FIRST POST!!!" - BEWARE!
Thanks.
-Patent pending-
Mod +5 Drunk
One can copyright a riff. The trick here is that the riff must be central to the piece and sufficiently complex as to convince a jury nobody else could come up with it.
So if you were planning on arguing that people owe you licensing fees for your database of in order prime numbers, you'd be out of luck. No jury would let you get away with it...I hope.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
It seems to me that one of the major problems is that the concept of public domain is going away at a very rapid pace. The database is just another part of that but most people don't understand and they don't want to.
So you have to bring it down to their level. I think that "Happy Birthday" should be in the public domain. So is "God Bless America." Did congress even considering asking about copyrights before they were on the steps singing it to an audience of billions (based on world wide tv coverage)? As congress critters are now answering questions in public, it might be a good question to ask.
Back to Happy Birthday... Who here has ever heard of live performance by the author of that song? Who learned the song from copyrighted sheet music? I contend that the vast numbers of people who have no idea that it is even copyright is very strong proof that it is in the public domain.
The odds of getting sued for singing "Happy Brithyday" to someone is very, very small but the RIAA has gone after 12 yr olds in the past. Is that song worth your life savings? If more people understood that, then congress would be forced to protect the public domain.
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.
You can now get a list of names that are associated with the color blue. That association is my creation. This new law would say that I own the association. It doesn't say that I own the names and colors.
Yet you suggest that you would now own the association "sky is [blue]".
Your associations are still just facts, which would be discoverable by anyone willing to put forth their own resources. You haven't created something new, only collected a bunch of facts to create new facts.
That you cannot copyright a collection of facts is because anyone else can collect them for themselves but be barred from sharing their independent collection for which they exerted their own efforts just because you got there first.
It's bringing the worst parts of patent law to bear in protection of databases.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
While the links at the site mentioned are all biased against this legislation, and many of those links provide only knee-jerk, "the sky is falling", "keep your hands off my facts" reactions (e.g. Phyllis Schlafly's) so typical to slashdot responses found here, there is at least one lucid presentation of the situation. Anyone really interested in this topic should at least read William A. Wulf's testimony. He summarizes the problem well. Here's my summary of the problem (not the testimony).
1. NOBODY is trying to COPYRIGHT ANYTHING! NOBODY is trying to OWN FACTS! (Please repeat this to yourself three times before continuing to read anything anywhere)
2. Big database companies (like West) are worried that other companies can slurp up large parts of their data and turn around and sell it. Everyone agrees this is unfair and shouldn't be allowed.
3. Big companies now KNOW that COPYRIGHT DOES NOT PROTECT THEM from situation 2 above because of Feist. (Google it with copyright).
4. Big companies want some law to point to when situation 2 actually happens.
The real problem(s):
a. Situation 2 may not be a real problem. No one has shown that this is actually happening.
b. Big companies (like West) like to sue honest competitors to gain any advantage they can. That's their job. (Google West and Lexis)
c. The new legislation may be addressing a non-problem while facilitating expensive, unnecessary lawsuits designed to harass competition.
d. (The big one for me) The new legislation may chill the activities of companies like Google who might inadvertently become liable.
Hey man, can I bum a sig?
Your associations are still just facts, which would be discoverable by anyone willing to put forth their own resources.
Uh huh. And if they want to do just that, they'd be welcome to. But they better be prepared to prove that they produced their work without stealing it from my database. Which shouldn't be too hard if they didn't...because my database has trick data in it, similar to the nonexistant streets inserted into copyrighted maps to check for infringement.
See, patent law says that you can't create anything new that looks like my product...but copyright law just says they can't take MY database and call it theirs. It's still up to me to prove they're infringing.
This law is giving databases the same rights as all other content. I have no problem with that.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
The general idea behind this bill is maybe, possibly, OK in a grey-area sort of way, but my serious complaint against this is that the bill is terribly written. It is so dangerously un-specific as to be easily abused. I really hope this can be stopped because this could be legislative disaster on the scale of the DMCA.
We may experience some slight turbulence and then...explode. -Capt. Mal Reynolds
When I look back on history, Mankind has grown only when the free exchange of information was enabled. Progress was slow for us until we invented the written word. Things moved at a breakneck speed, compared to the past, after that. Then came the printing press. Now we could get the "Combined Human Knowledge" out to the masses. We now have the ability to share information instantaneously. We have arrived. As long as we keep the flow of Information FREE for EVERYONE, we will prosper and flourish. If it goes away, we will wither and die. Pay attention. I don't see why or when the American people asked the government to favor the rights of corporations over citizens. Why are they involved? Why do they care?
Under the proposed law, who's to say what consititues a "datum" in a database? Wouldn't a word be sufficient? Why couldn't the author of a novel (who expended a considerable effort to assemble that particular collection of words), claim the novel is a database and sue someone, who uses the same words in a different novel, for infringement? This is the logical conclusion of such a faulty bill and is, of course, absurd.
I don't know why anyone thinks that this isn't the case already. People pay good money to retrieve "facts" from information services. The example in the top article was phone numbers. How about TV Listings, UPC codes, traffic jam info, movie listings, even weather climate data (forecasts aren't facts) - all of these things are available in some limited way in advertiser paid form, but people who need that info for a living pay big bucks for it. You can't own a fact, but you sure can make big bucks organizing facts for easy retrieval by others!
The content (facts) they are selling are court opinions, which are about as far into the public domain as you can get. They add value by correcting judges's mistakes (i.e. in referring to another case) and by adding headings, summaries, cross-references and keywords. It has also been true that some courts have regarded the page numbering in one of the databases (I believe it was WestLaw) as THE way to make references in legal briefs filed before a court. The owners of that database have fought to keep a 'copyright' on their 1, 2, 3 ... page numbering, absurd as that sounds.
Their additions are helpful to busy lawyers and are in some cases something that can be copyrighted. But the real meat of what they're trying to protect is unarguably the text of those court decisions, which they can't own. Someone with WestLaw access can grab those public domain decisions and post them in his own database, charging little or nothing. He can even collect all the decisions that appear under a particular keyword and publish those in some fashion.
I haven't had a chance to read this bill, but I suspect it is an attempt to give copyright-like protection to something that can't in itself be copyrighted. They're attempting to get around a general principle of copyright law that labor itself can't be copyrighted (i.e. the labor of getting copies of court opinions), only the creative element (i.e. keywords and summaries).
I can offer a parallel. I've published books (i.e. The Pivot of Civilization in Historical Perspective) that bring together public domain magazine texts from a particular era to show how the debate on a particular topic (i.e. birth control) developed over time. When I applied for a copyright for that book, I had to be careful to state that all I was copyrighting was the particular arrangement of those articles in my book and my modern-day comments. Other people have as much right to take the text of those old articles from my book as from their original texts. I don't own them. Under copyright law, I can't own them.
But if I understand this bill from the remarks that are being made, if those texts were placed in a database, perhaps of periodical articles, the text itself would acquire a copyright-like protection, including nasty punitive damaages.
That illustrates one of the many problems with this bill. Why should the labor of putting those old texts in a book be less protected than the labor of putting it into an electronic database?
To a great extent this legislation is being driven by the same greed that drove copyright term extension in the late 1990s. And unless we make a fuss, member of Congress from both parties likely to pass this bill, eager to make large donors happy. They could care less about the grief they cause others.
--Mike Perry, Inkling Books
http://www.InklingBooks.com/
I don't agree.
There's nothing unfair about selling, re-selling, borrowing, or trading facts, in any way shape or form. There is nothing wrong with re-typing 25 pages out of the phone book and then selling them to some schmuck.*
As far as Lexis-Nexis is concerned, there is some concern that their "monopoly" (that's in quotes because it's probably an exaggeration but still mostly true) - their monopoly may already be restricting access to public information. Apparently since you have to pay for Lexis-Nexis, and L-N is the only place to get legal info, that means that poor people simply don't have access to legal info.
*A more likely scenario is that someone would reprint the phone numbers in a phone book and sell advertising space. Who cares? Who really cares about stealing phone numbers from the phone book? Instead of legislating the solution, maybe they should take a cue (sp?) from mapmakers, who have some very crafty ways of protecting the data that they sell.
Kind of hypocritical that Rep. Coble's homepage mainly features unattributed quotations, plagarism soon to be criminalized by his own Act.
--
make install -not war
Today the Commerce committee voted to support its own version of the bill that is very different than the Judiciary version. The Commerce bill is sponsored by Congressman Stearns and only protects databases in certain circumstances and doesn't allow companies to sure each other. They would have to go through the FTC. The Commerce Committe flatly rejected the Judiciary Bill. Commerce Chairman Barton supports the Stearn bill. According to published reports, Congressman Stearns also believes the Judiciary Bill will "chill the use of information". Co-sponsor Schakowsky also dislikes the Judiciary Bill because it would "turn facts into property." While its not final yet, this was a big victory in this battle.
I think what Mablung was trying to say was that Big database company, while they don't really much care for the individual data they collected, worried that other company will steal a LARGE bulk of their database, the database they have been constructed, organized, sorted and collected overtime. It's not the data themselves they're sweating over about, its the cost they spent constructing the database and they don't want other reaped the benefit of their hard work. As far as Lexis-Nexis is concerned, as long as they don't stop others from getting information from their source (the places they get the data to put into the database), I see no problem in that. It cause time and money to put those information together.
In US, you can easily buy enough major firearms to wipe out your neighbourhood but a few little fireworks are banned.
The people that are screaming about the sky falling clearly cannot read, or choose not to, have no concept of how horrendously expensive it is to design, build and maintain large database collections, and have no concept of how many "collections of facts" are out there that are already protected because they take more tangible physical forms, are prohibitively expensive to copy, or impossible to access without signing tediously lengthy contracts, so people just buy access to them or go to a library that has purchased access to them.
By insisting that you should have no right to protect your particular system of organizing a collection, the detractors are, knowingly or not, pushing to destroy, hinder the creation of, or make the access to increasingly more difficult, a huge amount of useful products. This is a very good bill and it covers all the caveats people think it does not.
If only they would read and comprehend it this argument would be over.
Say I have a list of names , and another list of colours. If I make an association between the names and the colors, I have created something new, even if I didn't create the colors and I didn't create the names. You can now get a list of names that are associated with the color blue. That association is my creation. This new law would say that I own the association. It doesn't say that I own the names and colors.
And you think this is a GOOD thing?
Let's say that I take a list of cheeses and match them to either "sweet" "sour", or "salty". I create a database of these foods, which I now own.
Now let's say you want to create a list of foods and classify them as "sweet", "sour", or "salty".
Guess what! You can't include cheese, because I own that database.
What a nightmare!
The bill is sponsored by three Republicans and two Democrats. Their names can be found at:
( +@ 1(H.R.+3261)++@1(H.+R.+3261)++)
. vote-smart.org/bio.php?can_id=H4340103a tive F. James Sensenbrenner, Republican Congressman from Wisconsin
m art.org/bio.php?can_id=BC040489
t e-smart.org/bio.php?can_id=MOH52826v e Michael R. Turner, Republican Congressman from Ohio
s mart.org/bio.php?can_id=H3021103
- smart.org/bio.php?can_id=BC042391
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?r108:@OR+
http://www.house.gov/sensenbrenner/
http://www
Represent
http://www.wexler.house.gov/
http://www.vote-s
Representative Robert Wexler, Democratic Congressman from Florida
http://www.house.gov/miketurner/
http://www.vo
Representati
http://www.house.gov/portman/
http://www.vote-
Robert J. Portman, Republican Congressman from Ohio
http://www.house.gov/delahunt/
http://www.vote
Representative William D. Delahunt, Democratic Congressman from Massachusetts
Perhaps this is another case of technology making another business model obsolete.
Afterall, if this is public information in the database (and if it weren't then it would not be sellable to the public), then that information is out there. Now, the technology is ready and the infrastructure is rapidly becoming ready - how long before we just ask our computer to compile the data as needed.
A clever software agent could do the work for us.
Nobody would 'own' the data or the database, but some companies might run a compilation service. That is similar to the model we're talking about but not the same: would a rival compilation company go to another to get the data they wanted? Well they might if they were selling for more than the other company, but that's called sub-contracting.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.