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Australian Judge Rules Facts Cannot Be Copyrighted

Posted by timothy on from the same-time-same-channel dept.

nfarrell writes "Last week, an Australian Judge ruled that copyright laws do not apply to collections of facts, regardless of the amount of effort that was spent collecting them. In this case, the case surrounded the reproduction of entries from the White and Yellow Pages, but the ruling referred to a previous case involving IceTV, which republishes TV guides. Does this mean that other databases of facts, such as financial data, are also legally able to be copied and redistributed?" Here are analyses from a former legal adviser to the directory publisher which prevailed as the defendant in this case, and from Smart Company.

11 of 234 comments (clear)

  1. Settled law in the United States by Kirijini · · Score: 5, Informative

    This has been settled law in the United States since the Supreme Court ruling in Feist Publications, Inc., v. Rural Telephone Service Co. (1991). You can read the whole opinion on Google Scholar. I highly recommend reading it, it's a classic in American copyright law.

    1. Re:Settled law in the United States by Trepidity · · Score: 5, Informative

      Particular representations of facts, like documentaries or photographs, can be copyrighted. It's the underlying facts that can't be, so you can't stop someone else from publishing the same facts in a way that doesn't use any of your creative presentation of them. In Feist, the court held that there wasn't any creative presentation at all, because listing all people in an area code in alphabetical order was just the bare facts, with no presentation that rose to the level of something copyrightable. If they had done something creative, they could copyright that part, but anyone could still extract and republish the names and phone numbers, because that bare list isn't copyrightable.

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    2. Re:Settled law in the United States by JorDan+Clock · · Score: 2, Informative

      That's a fact based on a creative work. Not a creative work based on a fact.

    3. Re:Settled law in the United States by tepples · · Score: 2, Informative

      My understanding is that an original rendering with an original arrangement of lights on the (uncopyrightable) 3D model would be copyrightable, at least in the United States.

    4. Re:Settled law in the United States by Trepidity · · Score: 2, Informative

      In philosophy and logic, question-begging is basically a fancy term for circular argument: using the thing you want to prove, or something equivalent to it, as part of your argument for that same thing.

      Oddly that "correct" usage is itself actually somewhat of a corruption. Aristotle considered circular argument different from question-beginning, and defined question-begging as asking your opponent in a debate to conceded a point that was equivalent to the point being debate. They're somewhat related concepts, though.

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    5. Re:Settled law in the United States by jklovanc · · Score: 2, Informative

      You missed a key point of the the rejection;
      "The arrangement and presentation of a collection may be original, but not if it is "simple and obvious" such as a list in alphabetical or chronological order."
      The arrangement of 3D data is neither "simple" nor "obvious" for the reasons I already stated. If you disagree ask an average adult to create a 3D model of a building.

    6. Re:Settled law in the United States by mpeskett · · Score: 2, Informative

      So circular argument would be "X therefore X" whereas begging the question would be "Do we all agree that X? Well then Y" where X = Y, but phrased differently. Either way you're taking the conclusion of your argument as a premise; the difference is in whether you're stating it as your premise or asking an opponent to agree with it as a premise.

      If your goal is just to show that your opponent agrees with you, begging the question could be a valid argument - if the question you've 'begged' and the conclusion reached really are logically equivalent, but your opponent professes to agree with one and disagree with the other, then you've effectively shown their position to be self-contradictory. Says nothing about the actual truth of X (and it's easily abused by people claiming two things to be logically equivalent that aren't) but as a method of argument it could work.

  2. US Law by Toonol · · Score: 2, Informative

    May be worth noting that "collections of fact" have long been recognized as uncopyrightable in the US. However, if significant creative work went into filtering the facts in a certain way.. like I picked out all the funny-sounding names from the phone book... the resulting list may be copyrighted.

  3. Re:What about... by JorDan+Clock · · Score: 2, Informative

    That's a collection of facts based on a creative work. This kind of ruling doesn't apply to that. The creative work is already copyrighted and thus protected from such reproductions.

  4. Re:Sounds like a sensible man by sictransitgloriacfa · · Score: 1, Informative

    While I agree that Justice Gordon is sensible, I'm pretty sure the Honorable Michelle Marjorie Gordon (photo) is not a man.

  5. Re:Of course Financial Data cannot be published by Xugumad · · Score: 2, Informative

    I believe the submitter was talking about stock market prices. While end of day prices are readily available, high precision data (the sort of stuff you'd need if you're backtesting automated traders, for example) is fairly pricey. For example, CBOE back data:

    http://www.marketdataexpress.com/servicePriceList.aspx

    runs to about $200/month per symbol, or $1,250/month for all available options, for per-tick quotes. Of course, a lot of what you're paying for is the knowledge that the information is correct, and there are cheaper options (for example many real time data feeds come with some amount of historical data, and you can always collect information over time) if you're happy dealing with the data integrity issues yourself.