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Nielsen Sends Wikipedia DMCA Takedown For Station Descriptions
RockMFR writes "A DMCA takedown notice sent by Nielsen Media Research to the Wikimedia Foundation has resulted in the deletion of over 300 pages on the English Wikipedia. The pages were 'templates' and categories that listed television stations within various geographical markets in the United States. Discussion of the deletions has focused on whether this type of information can actually be copyrighted, though the content of the takedown notice have not been made public."
are not copyrightable. There is no "question" here.
Mod me flamebait if you want, but I thought Wikipedia was all about information being free. For having the tendency to cave so easily, makes me wonder what kind of people are really running the place.
... should be a criminal offense. And a serious one, too.
Actually, the ability to force someone to cease speech on simple "say-so", without ever having visited court first, should never have become law in the first place. I believe DMCA takedown notices will eventually be determined to be a classic case of unbridled "prior restraint".
You are correct in that some compilations of facts are copyrightable as compilations, though that copyright does not extend to the facts within. However, like all copyrightable works, in order for a compilation to be copyrightable, it must be creative. In this case, the selection and arrangement of facts must be creative. Selecting all the facts, and arranging them in a pedestrian fashion would not qualify. This is why, for example, the white pages in phone books are not copyrightable: the selection is everyone with a listed number in the area covered, their names, their numbers, and their addresses, and the arrangement is alphabetical, by last name. It is the acme of an uncreative work. This is all discussed at length in the famous Feist decision by the Supreme Court; I'd suggest reading it. If it's uncopyrightable, verbatim copying is A-OK. There is absolutely no 'sweat of the brow' doctrine in the US.
A creative phone book would be one that didn't list everyone, and perhaps arranged them in some creative fashion. A listing of your favorite places to go, arranged by how much you like them, would probably qualify.
Whether the material at issue here is copyrightable or not, I couldn't venture an opinion, not having seen it.
-- 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.
You'll just get Firefly canceled.
We don't know the whole story but this much is being guessed about:
Nielson divides the country into "Market areas" some of which are stand-alone metro areas and some of which are combinations of cities which may contain "creative content." For example, if the metro areas A, B, C, and D are in close proximity, you can combine them in dozens of ways, ranging from lumping them all together into 1 market area, having 4 separate market areas, or one of several combinations of 2 or 3 market areas. Doing this across the country creates a list which is potentially copyrightable because it contains the creative thought that went into deciding just where to combine the metro areas into the market areas.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Whether Nielsen is a governmental entity or not is quite irrelevant here. The DMCA notice being used to restrain free speech takes its power from the threat of legal penalty which would be inflicted by the government.
Now it may be true that this notice isn't valid, and therefore doesn't have the actual force of the government behind it (the article is sort of short on details there so I don't know), but the fact that the DMCA is constructed such that companies have every incentive to obey take down notices whether valid or not means that the law, and hence the government is responsible for the restraint of free speech, at least indirectly.
There's precedent with building codes. They're both law and copyrighted. And building codes aren't an obscure part of law - you essentially cannot get a permit to build anything without you (or your contractor) knowing the building code).
Offtopic, perhaps, but if a categorization schema can be copyrighted and summarily suppressed by Neilsen in this way, with the switch to digital in progress in the U.S., what's to prevent somebody from copyrighting and similarly suppressing transmissions themselves based upon a particular encryption algorithm used in the act of transmission? Seems like it would set the stage for blanket censorship of the media at a fairly fundamental level, and that IS worrisome. At the very least, it could require visual media to be offered on a subscription basis only, which kinda negates the concept of free speech, doesn't it?
> Maybe they agree and took it down because they personally recognise
> that the copyright belongs to Nielsen?
Er, probably not. The DCMA provides for non-judicial takedowns, but it also gives organizations which acquiesce to those takedowns a large amount of immunity to monetary damages. Practically everyone prefers to have to go through the rigmarole of removing the content, filing a counterclaim, and reinstating the content, in order to greatly lower financial exposure.
BTW, do you really think that Nielsen owns a copyright on the list of TV stations available in the Toledo, Ohio area?