Australian Judge Rules Facts Cannot Be Copyrighted

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.

Comments

Re:Settled law in the United States

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting. So the publication of facts is uncopyrightable.

If I really wanted to go to extremes, could I demand that documentaries, photographs, or other representations of "facts" as being uncopyrightable as well?

I'm really just confused as to what extent we can classify things as facts or not facts.

Re:Settled law in the United States

[Trepidity]

To give a not-yet-litigated example of what I think would be the 3d analogy: A 3d model exactly capturing the surface of the Washington Monument is not copyrightable, because it's mere facts. However, particular photographs or films of the Washington Monument are copyrightable, as they have creative presentation. However (again), someone who collected a bunch of photographs or films of it and extracted a 3d model of the Washington Monument from them, would not be violating the copyright on the photographs or films, because they were merely copying the facts (the 3d spatial position of the stones).

Re:US Law

[MrNaz]

You're playing fast and loose with the definition of a fact. If you take your attempt here, then nothing is copyrightable, because it is a "fact" that the writing on the pages of this particular book are what they are, therefor nothing is copyrightable.

You can't just meta factualise the entire universe and render copyright law null.

Re:Settled law in the United States

[Trepidity]

If it was not copyrightable then there would be no way to recoup the cost of creating 3-D models of buildings. Think of how much it would cost to 3D model New York City.

Isn't that essentially the "sweat of the brow" argument U.S. copyright law explicitly rejected? The mere fact that it takes a lot of effort to compile some facts doesn't make them copyrightable.

(And in any case, it actually isn't very expensive to crowdsource a 3d model of a whole city.)

Re:How about databases?

[pdabbadabba]

Bear in mind that even if copyright law provides no protection to databases, a database owner can still choose to only allow you access to their database under a license that prohibits you from reselling the information (and I believe many large database owners do just this). So, what you can't enforce through copyright law you probably could enforce through contract law.

(I am a law student, not a lawyer)