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Should freedb's Data Be Public Domain?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the cd-information-wants-to-be-free dept.

Horar asks: "There's been a lot of recent fuss over freedb. My position is that freedb was just not free enough, and I would like to find a way to bring all the data into the public domain, just as MusicBrainz has done with much of their data. I had not thought that this would be possible until I received advice from various parties suggesting that it was. So now I ask Slashdot if this is true? Can the freedb data legally be brought into the public domain at this time, and if so how? Most importantly, would it be 'The Right Thing To Do'?"

4 of 210 comments (clear)

  1. Re:My position... by NixLuver · · Score: 5, Interesting

    "So if I spent 3 billion dollars and mapped out every cubic meter of NYC in 3-D, to within a few meters accuracy, and used that in the next Grand Theft Auto game, you are saying you should be able to just copy that data wholesale and use it in Flight Simulator 2007?"

    Mmmm.... What commitment have you made to the original architects of the buildings that you've mapped out in NY? To the workers that built the streets? Are you paying them royalties or license fees? Do they 'own' their 'design'? Will your hypothetical "GTA-The Big Apple" make less money if our friend does use the same database in Flight Simulator? The point many are missing here is that databases are not creative acts, ie, not what IP was designed to protect; they are in fact labor intensive, even tedious. A 'database' is most saliently protected as a 'trade secret' or some such nonsense, but in the end I'm not sure it matters; as I said, does your game make less money if another game uses the same database describing New York?

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    Thinking outside my Head
  2. Submitter let freedb die! by ballermann · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Please note that Horar (the submitter) is the one who effectivly let freedb.org die. He worked with them for two years but didn't release any useful code. Now he is activly promoting his own project freedb2.org, promising to release the source but it is still not available.

    I wonder why he should care about the data not being public domain, if his software is to be supposed GPL licensed? Unless well... think for your self.

    I can't belive he just got more advertising on slashdot.

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    1. Re:Submitter let freedb die! by ballermann · · Score: 5, Interesting

      ..promising to release the source but it is still not available.

      Some of his code is already available and the rest he is working on. I personally know Horar to be a firm beliver in OSS but he needs some time to organise and document the code. Have a little patience.

      As far as I understand it he promised to show up the code for the last two years. Look: there a very simple thing he can do to make me and everyone else shut up: releasing the code. All of it. Not just tiny bits of character conversion scripts. The code for his currently working freedb compatible server. It doesn't matter if it is messy or uncommented. He just needs to tar it all up, put it under an open source licence and put it on his webspace. If he really wants to open his code he just needs to do this and his creditability is restored. Or he can just say "sorry I was bullshitting you and I'm going to build my own propritary nonfreedb".

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  3. Need to sue Horar if he continues by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    You are totally right. He's clearly managed to destroy cooperation within FreeDB, set the contributors against each other, and now it looks like he's planning to rip off the whole contribution. Something has to be done to stop it. I've contributed to FreeDB; My entries involved careful choice and selection of how to lay out and present the titles. I believe that they are copyright protectable and they were put in purely on the GPL License.

    Further, I believe that the heavy level of mistakes and different representations of the same data in the FreeDB database actually helps us in this case. It's clearly an original work and not just a factual representation.

    I'd like to get a group of people in a similar situation together to put up a class action suit against Horar. The primary aim will be to restrain him from further license infringement, but I'll put any money recovered from damages awarded towards

    We'd need
    * some money
    * a lawyer
    * a good place to organise.

    To begin with, we'd try to get him to settle out of court; something like
    * ceases to work on FreeDB2 or any related projects
    * pays some compensation to the FreeDB project people

    But we would have to be willing to go the whole way. Who would be up for joining? Can anyone set up a site for this. It would be a good chance to test the limits of copyright and also to set an example of GPL enforcement.