Slashdot Mirror
Oz High Court Hears Landmark TV Guide Copyright Case
highways writes "It's rare that that a copyright case is heard in the Australian High Court, let alone a case heard by all seven sitting judges. At stake is a small company IceTV (which we discussed when it launched four years back) taking on Australia's largest television station, the Nine Network, over the copyright status of the weekly broadcast schedule. That is, the schedule itself, not any synopsis or description of the individual programs. Users of PVRs such as MythTV will be well aware of the hassle it is to get a reliable program schedule stream to use for recordings. The saga has gone on for more than two years with Nine unsuccessfully suing IceTV, but later winning on appeal. At issue is whether a list of facts like an electronic program guide is a 'compilation' protected under Australian copyright law. This has implications for the copyright status of many publicly available databases and the limits to which the information can be distributed."
...A schedule isn't creative.
Why would a schedule not be considered "creative"? There are people who are paid to do nothing but come up with schedules. There is no mathematical formula and although it may appear otherwise the programming choices are not just randomly picked.
Don't get me wrong I think that it's stupid for a TV station to prevent anyone from publishing their schedule just not for that reason.
While I quite agree that a television schedule shouldn't be copyrighted, schedules can be quite creative. This is particularly true in some areas and not so much in others, at least to the POV whomever gets to make the judgement. A schedule determines the flow of events though the functionability of the events often determines the flow of the schedule, either in part or in its entirety. If schedules didn't matter then chapters in a book, even the pages themselves could fall in any order, you could randomize the lines of a program and it would run properly anyway, Operation Managers and Distribution Managers would be out of a job, etc.
There is a certain amount of creativity that can go into a TV program schedule as well, placing programs in timeslots that matches the daily schedules of life which rules the target demographic including the scheduling of specific commercials which gain the station/network more money if placed in conjunction with the marketing research of the advertiser. Programs need to be placed where they can best win viewing percentages and numbers away from other networks chosen programming as well. If this sort of creativity wasn't necessary then stations/networks could trim some staff and outside contracts. Competing networks/stations scheduling success is related to their choices for new investment in the creation of new shows as well.
Saying that there is no creativity in a schedule is an oversimplification that doesn't reflect the reality that networks/stations have to deal with. However once the schedule is made public a simple listing of those chosen programs and times should not be subject to the same respect as another station/network duplicating the times and shows.
You might be coming from a US position which has gone a different way on compilations, referable to different constitutional arrangements.
It's trite law now outside the US that things like betting coupons, train timetables, etc, get copyright protection.
The basis for protection is the skill and labour that went into them - the fact that you've created them, not a sort of artistic creativity.
Ha. In Australia, we actually know what bacon is. Our bacon is the whole thing: The long streaky part and the medallion (which you incorrectly call "ham"), all attached in 30cm of fatty goodness.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
except that originality (creativity) has a different meaning in copyright law to the everyday notion of originality. Copyright law is used to protect unfair competition in Australia, "originality" includes the skill and labour used to create a work. This interpretation of "originality" dates back to a case in 1900 (Walter v Lane). I personally don't like the use of copyright to police unfair competition, but that's just how copyright works (in Australia at least).
First article, First comment I read on a Monday morning and I'm already angry (and haven't had my coffee yet).
Mods: Any comment that attempts to put a legal argument to be with such categorical statements that do not contain IANAL are to be modded -1 Clueless.
For the uninformed, Australia is not the 52nd State:
http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/DTLJ/2001/1.html
(Albeit decision was held in the Federal Court, and this case is being heard in the High Court so a new precedent could be set, but Australian Courts have held that any non-trivial compilation can be held to have copyright subsist in its own right).
IANAL but IAALS.