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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'?"

13 of 210 comments (clear)

  1. Why ask slashdot? by Umbral+Blot · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Good Idea: asking a lawyer for legal advice
    Bad Idea: asking /. for legal advice

    --

    Philosophy.
    1. Re:Why ask slashdot? by MBCook · · Score: 5, Funny

      Good Idea: Having breakfast served to you in bed.
      Bad Idea: Having tennis balls served to you in bed.

      Sorry, I had to. I don't get to use that reference much.

      --
      Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
  2. What freedb is.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Here's the wikipedia link..
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedb

  3. My position... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    FWIW, my position is that I felt really F'd over, years ago when CDDB decided to start selling the info I had helped them collect. I thought the whole idea of FreeDB was to correct the mistakes of the past so that this could never be done again.

    So yeah, I think this data should be public domain, and I'm not entirely convinced that databases-- collections of facts-- should be able to be protected as intellectual property at all.

    1. Re:My position... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      In your point of view, all the credit card and bank databases should be public domain too? For this information, I think maybe it could be public domain, but regardless of what happens I think the RIAA will sue in the near future. They can sue people for anything.

      A couple of key differences:

      1. I never said that all databases should be public domain. I said that I wasn't convinced they should be considered intellectual property, a term used to describe artistic works and forms of expression. That's what copyright was meant to protect.

      2. I am not against the protection of proprietary information in general, such as medical records, bank databases, or the recipe for coke. If anything, the owner if this information should be YOU, the patient, bank customer, or coca cola company. Aggrigators or maintainers of databases, should have an interest in keeping this information private to protect your interest, when it makes sense to do so. But really, I don't see anyone as "owning" the fact that you have such-and-such a credit card number, or the fact that you once had an AIDS test. You may seek or expect to have this information considered private or protected in some manner by whomever maintains it in accordance with a privacy polciy, but this is different from claiming "ownership" of collections of unfiltered, uninterpreted facts.

      3. This is the same kind of intellectual property insanity that leads to companies "patenting" parts of the human genome.

      Sooner or later, all this arbitrary classification of information is going to get a major reality check.

    2. 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?

      --
      Thinking outside my Head
  4. Legal has nothing to do with it by BVis · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The RIAA will soon assert that the information is their IP and therefore using FreeDB will give them all the information they need to sue you.

    And in this country you can sue anyone for anything, provided you can pay for your lawyers' fees. In the RIAA's case, they're betting (usually correctly, by making sure they sue people who can't afford to defend themselves) that you can't, and therefore will have to do whatever they demand.

    --
    Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
  5. FreeDB already has their data online... by tlhIngan · · Score: 5, Informative

    They supply copies of their databases via BitTorrent - http://tracker.freedb.org/

    (which arguably is more valuable than the server side software).

  6. Selected Sections from FEIST by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Since Slashdot users aren't lawyers, here are some selected sections from Feist, the most prominent on-topic case on this issue, decided by the Supreme Court holding that telephone book was not copyrightable. The CDDB and FreeDB databases are very similar to the telephone books in Feist: a compilation of facts, no selection criteria (anything they get, they put in, it's not a database of someone's subjective evaluation of the best CDs), no originality in arrangement.

    The more interesting issue is to what extent contracts can modify the background rules of copyright and allow someone to exert copyright-like control over non-copyrightable works. See ProCD. Since the GPL purports to be a license, rather than a contract, it is only enforceable if the underlying work is copyrightable.

    FEIST PUBLICATIONS, INC. v. RURAL TELEPHONE SERVICE CO., 499 U.S. 340 (1991)

    [11] Originality is a constitutional requirement. The source of Congress' power to enact copyright laws is Article I, 8, cl. 8, of the Constitution, which authorizes Congress to "secure for limited Times to Authors . . . the exclusive Right to their respective Writings." In two decisions from the late 19th Century -- The Trade-Mark Cases, 100 U.S. 82 (1879); and Burrow-Giles Lithographic Co. v. Sarony, 111 U.S. 53 (1884) -- this Court defined the crucial terms "authors" and "writings." In so doing, the Court made it unmistakably clear that these terms presuppose a degree of originality.

    [16]Factual compilations, on the other hand, may possess the requisite originality. The compilation author typically chooses which facts to include, in what order to place them, and how to arrange the collected data so that they may be used effectively by readers. These choices as to selection and arrangement, so long as they are made independently by the compiler and entail a minimal degree of creativity, are sufficiently original that Congress may protect such compilations through the copyright laws. Nimmer 2.11[D], 3.03; Denicola 523, n. 38. Thus, even a directory that contains absolutely no protectible written expression, only facts, meets the constitutional minimum for copyright protection if it features an original selection or arrangement.

    [17] This protection is subject to an important limitation. The mere fact that a work is copyrighted does not mean that every element of the work may be protected. Originality remains the sine qua non of copyright; accordingly, copyright protection may extend only to those components of a work that are original to the author. Patterson & Joyce 800-802; Ginsburg, Creation and Commercial Value: Copyright Protection of Works of Information, 90 Colum. L. Rev. 1865, 1868, and n. 12 (1990) (hereinafter Ginsburg). Thus, if the compilation author clothes facts with an original collocation of words, he or she may be able to claim a copyright in this written expression. Others may copy the underlying facts from the publication, but not the precise words used to present them. In Harper & Row, for example, we explained that President Ford could not prevent others from copying bare historical facts from his autobiography, see 471 U.S., at 556-557, but that he could prevent others from copying his "subjective descriptions and portraits of public figures." [p*349] Id., at 563. Where the compilation author adds no written expression but rather lets the facts speak for themselves, the expressive element is more elusive. The only conceivable expression is the manner in which the compiler has selected and arranged the facts. Thus, if the selection and arrangement are original, these elements of the work are eligible for copyright protection. See Patry, Copyright in Compilations of Facts (or Why the "White Pages" Are Not Copyrightable), 12 Com. & Law 37, 64 (Dec. 1990) (hereinafter Patry). No matter how original the format, however, the facts themselves do not become original through association. See Patterson & Joyce 776.

    [18] This inevitably means that the copyri

  7. 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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  8. 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.

  9. profit by freedb by freqmod · · Score: 5, Insightful

    1. Get an agreement to write code for freedb
    2. Don't release the source code
    3. Let the admins of freedb quit
    4. Make the freedb contents public domain
    5. Incoperate the public domain code in a new (closed) solution
    6. ?????
    7. Profit!