Civil Suit Filed, Involving the Time Zone Database

An anonymous reader writes "Arthur David Olson, the creator and maintainer of the timezone database used in about every unix/linux platform in use on the planet, just sent the message to the timezone mailing list: 'A civil suit was filed on September 30 in federal court in Boston; I'm a defendant; the case involves the time zone database. The ftp server at elsie.nci.nih.gov has been shut down. The mailing list will be shut down after this message. Electronic mail can be sent to me at @gmail.com. I hope there will be better news shortly. --ado' A Google search does not yet reveal anything about this; does someone know what is going on?"

Comments

Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[millert]

Not a lot of detail here:
http://www.rfcexpress.com/lawsuits/copyright-lawsuits/massachusetts-district-court/82641/astrolabe-inc-v-arthur-david-olson/summary/
http://dockets.justia.com/docket/massachusetts/madce/1:2011cv11725/139342/

but appears to be a copyright infringement suit.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[idontgno]

This blog article has an analysis of the action. It appears, essentially, that Astrolabe publishes an altas that the tz database is based on (in terms of reproducing time zone information from the atlas in the db):

Defendant Olson's unauthorized reproduction of the Works have been published at ftp://elsie.nci.nih.gov/tzarchive.qz, where the references to historic international time zone data is replete with references to the fact that the source for this information is, indeed, the ACS Atlas.

I thought the issue of whether you could copyright facts (e.g., phone numbers, timezone values for specific locations) was already settled law.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[Tridus]

This is America, lawyers don't bother with minor details like the law before filing lawsuits. There's lawyer fees to be made!

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[grimmjeeper]

The law may be settled but that doesn't stop people from filing suit anyway. They may either think they have a notable enough exception or they're just working with a lawyer who knows he's going to lose but is getting paid to do what the client tells him to do (after doing his due diligence of informing them of the probable outcome).

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[AlienIntelligence]

I thought the issue of whether you could copyright facts (e.g., phone numbers, timezone values for specific locations) was already settled law.

I think facts are different than 'facts arranged in a database'.

Ever written a database...? It's a non-zero time event. I'd
want to get paid if someone used a db I created.

*Mind you I'm not making a direct statement about the
pending lawsuit since it seems there isn't much info.

-AI

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[NeutronCowboy]

About Astrology software? I have no idea how this could work. Only thing I can find is http://www.alabe.com/, but I have no idea how that could be tied to the timezone database. Then again, filing a lawsuit requires absolutely nothing more than the desire to file a lawsuit.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[Anonymous Coward]

The US does not allow a sweat-of-the-brow argument for copyright. Facts are not copyrightable without creative expression.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[julesh]

The facts were, to all appearances, copied out of a book and inserted into a database by the defendant. No selection was applied at any point; the time zones for every recognized country is included in both sources, so I don't think there's any argument that creativity is involved. I don't think database right applies here.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[PaulDSonntag]

The law may be settled but that doesn't stop people from filing suit anyway. They may either think they have a notable enough exception or they're just working with a lawyer who knows he's going to lose but is getting paid to do what the client tells him to do (after doing his due diligence of informing them of the probable outcome).

Bingo. Additionally, merely being in the right doesn't mean that it's cost-effective to prevail in court. Often it's cheaper to simply pay off the predator in a settlement than it is to pay your defense lawyers to win the case.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[Surt]

But whether or not any given defendant will surrender before fighting you for years to verify that is an open question.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[DigiShaman]

While the outcome may be obvious, there's still a strategic advantage of stringing the whole thing out. The idea being that if you have deeper pockets, you'll force your opponent into bankruptcy. Sacrifice your own money to bleed them dry.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[timster]

I have to ask: is "sweat-of-the-brow argument" an actual legal term?

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[Unequivocal]

I believe it is possible to assert copyright on the formats in which the facts are presented, which may be the problem in this case. I don't know enough to say, but if they aren't just copying facts but structures containing the facts (and what fact doesn't have a structure?) there could be grounds..

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[Unequivocal]

That's a good point, and I would case the whole case will center around that issue.. Thanks for pointing it out so clearly.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[Nethemas the Great]

I can't help you there but I've got a hot time from their website, it's a good time to meet females!

Applying Moon Trine Mercury
Communications flow smoothly now. Feelings and emotions are expressed naturally. It's a good time for meetings with females.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[kevin lyda]

I emailed their sales department to inform them that I would be actively encouraging people to avoid their products.

http://alabe.com/contact.html

Of course they peddle astrology shit so it's not like I'd buy from them anyway.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[loftwyr]

Looks like the Plaintiff's Lawyer don't care about a lot of things: "Sandwich Planning Board Member Julie C. Molloy Fined $3,000 for Improperly Representing Clients Before the Sandwich Zoning Board of Appeals"
http://www.mass.gov/?pageID=ethpressrelease&L=4&L0=Home&L1=Commission+Meetings+and+Publications&L2=Commission+Press+Releases&L3=2008+Ethics+Commission+Press+Releases&sid=Ieth&b=pressrelease&f=2008_molloy_0521&csid=Ieth

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[Nethemas the Great]

Even better. It applies to us!

Applying Venus Trine Neptune
This transit stimulates artistic creativity, spiritual inclinations, and romantic interests. Rules and restrictions are relaxed and there is compassion for the less fortunate.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[Myria]

While the outcome may be obvious, there's still a strategic advantage of stringing the whole thing out. The idea being that if you have deeper pockets, you'll force your opponent into bankruptcy. Sacrifice your own money to bleed them dry.

I have a feeling that their lawyer isn't quite aware of the hornet's nest she's stirred up here. The zoneinfo database is pretty much everywhere outside of Windows. There's even a copy on my iPhone. She's indirectly picked a fight with the largest corporation in America.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[aevan]

Apparently.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[Ghostworks]

As usual, IANAL, but...

The trouble is, you now CAN copyright databases. It's been made explicit in EU law, but I think it's still defensible under US law. The idea is that the organization of facts is copyrightable (take for example, encyclopedias, atlases, etc.). The trouble is, copyright transcends specific media, while a database separated from a specific medium is a mundane collection of facts. The argument here is that Olson's TZ database just cribbed Thomas Shanks' atlas.

This seems like it's troll action. They're not going to be able to get anything of value out of Olson, so they probably want to get a judgment against him as leverage for payments from companies that uses the timezone database through Linux. On the other hand, those companies would be insane not to just bankroll Olson's defense. It's seems like a pretty weak case in a gray area, so it could go either way. Since Olson has announced his desire to retire from the project, I guess this was a "now or never" opportunity for the trolls.

As a side note, the infowars portion of the suit has begun. The reference to Shanks on the "Tz database" page was added as close to the top as could be managed by user JulDes on Sept. 3, which seems to be the day the account was created. As of May 2006, "Thomas Shanks" on Wikipedia redirected to Irish footballer Tommy Shanks. As of One month ago, it now instead has information on the otherwise unknown author of the American Atlas, 1978, ACS publications. The editing account, "TZ Master" seems to have been created expressly for the purpose 5 minutes earlier.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[Phoenix Rising]

Which opponent does Astrolabe think they'll force into bankruptcy? This move is sure to draw in the orbital lawyer brigades from IBM, Apple, Microsoft, Red Hat and pretty much every other OS and device manufacturer in today's tech world. Maybe they thought they'd start small with Olson, but the presiding judge is going to soon be overwhelmed with amicae briefs.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[Anonymous Coward]

*North America.

We sincerely couldn't care less for the legal abominations happening on US.

Your IP system is so medieval that trolls are legit.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[dougisfunny]

With that argument, I could make a database filled with the real number line from 1...n and copyright that because it took work to fill the database.

Think of the profits I could make....

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[Anonymous Coward]

What is the intended usage for a reference work such as an atlas?

Easy fix, just compile the information indepently and organise a boycot of astolabia. I'm sure there are universities the world over that would contribute to a freely redistributable list.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[Anonymous Coward]

The facts are not copyrighted, but the compilation is. The allegation is that he really just republished the compilation in whole or in part. Perhaps in a different form. The copyright on compilation is meant to protect the work required to compile the facts, which of course can be very significant. It would appear that reproducing the compilation in database form would be a pretty clear infringement. Unfortunately. I don't particularly like this aspect of copyright law, but one can see the point. Compiling time zone data would be very hard. It looks like this guy perhaps just copied large portions from an existing compilation. Very unfortunate. Perhaps the transformative nature of his work will be recognized. If I recall correctly that could be an affirmative defense.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[blair1q]

The title of that makes me hungry, and I just ate lunch.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[Myria]

Microsoft

I'm fairly sure that Windows does not use the zoneinfo database. Their time zone list is organized in a very different way, and it doesn't even use the time zone names the Unix world is used to, like America/New_York.

But pretty much everyone else does.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[Anonymous Coward]

She's indirectly picked a fight with the largest corporation in America.

Corporations, plural.

All the Unix vendors use it (Sun, IBM, HP), as do Linux and the BSDs (Apple, Juniper, Isilon/EMC). Java and Oracle DB use it, so that brings up Oracle (again).

If Mr. Olson needs a legal defense fund and amicus briefs from lawyers, I think there's a good chance that a lot of these companies would be willing to shoot off a couple of broadsides from their armadas of lawyers.

Of course if Anonymous gets tweaked on this company picking on a few geeks who are trying to provide a public good then heaven help anyone associated with this organizatio.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[shutdown -p now]

I think facts are different than 'facts arranged in a database'.

Not in U.S.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately, this is true.

It is also why we need "Loser Pays", at least to some extent, for the winner's legal costs.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[jythie]

Which can actually be a 'good' tactic. I recall years ago there was a troll that had a patent on some web technology that many huge companies were using, but they only went after low margin adult sites that were willing to settle rather then go to court, which gave them both a war chest and precedent to take on the larger companies later.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[mcmonkey]

Which opponent does Astrolabe think they'll force into bankruptcy? This move is sure to draw in the orbital lawyer brigades from IBM, Apple, Microsoft, Red Hat and pretty much every other OS and device manufacturer in today's tech world. Maybe they thought they'd start small with Olson, but the presiding judge is going to soon be overwhelmed with amicae briefs.

You're looking at this from the wrong angle. It's not Astroglide^H^H^H^H^Hlabe v. the world. It's Astrolabe's lawyers v. the Astrolabe bank account. The lawyers aren't looking to win the case, they're looking to maximize billing hours.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[Anonymous Coward]

Dang It! Now I'm hungry!

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[nedlohs]

because astrologers are one group of people who do give a shit about historic timezone information and hence keep a database of it that they claim was copied.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[spud603]

Please do it!
If you managed to create a database with every real number between 1 and n, for any value of n, (not just a program that can generate arbitrarily precise real numbers from that range) you would deserve a lot more than a copyright.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[spud603]

sorry:
* for any value of n not equal to one

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[Fnord666]

Then again, filing a lawsuit requires absolutely nothing more than the desire to file a lawsuit.

That is not true. You also have to pay a filing fee.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[sexconker]

Please do it!

If you managed to create a database with every real number between 1 and n, for any value of n, (not just a program that can generate arbitrarily precise real numbers from that range) you would deserve a lot more than a copyright.

If it's a black box, you'd have no way of knowing.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[Gideon Wells]

You forgot hoping for a stupid defendant who would settle instead of fighting.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[Peter Simpson]

Change of ownership of "ACS Atlas database" from ACS to Astrolabe in 2008: http://alabe.com/history.htm
" The ACS PC Atlas, the premier longitude, latitude and time zone reference for astrologers. Astrolabe worked with Astro Computing Services in the early 1990s, advising on the user interface for the PC version of their well-known reference work, and in 2008, Astrolabe bought the rights to the Atlas. Astrolabe and ACS (now Astro Communications Services) maintain a mutual dealership agreement for each other's software products."

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[grimmjeeper]

Yes, that too.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[Anonymous Coward]

What the heck is a "Sandwich Planning Board Member"?

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[Anonymous Coward]

You can only copyright creative expressions. Are you asserting that a format is a creative expression?

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[SuricouRaven]

You might be surprised. A lot of these quacks have a craving to be legitimate, and so they will put in all the effort. Your typical newspaper horoscope writer doesn't, but if you go to a specialist they will consult tables, study star charge, compensate for calander drift, calculate the position of planets as they were down to the minute of your birth. The results are still just as worthless as if they generated a random number, but all the effort that went into generating the worthless numbers can be seen as giving them an apparent value.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[Anonymous Coward]

A bunch standing around with "The End is Near" placards around their necks?

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[cpt kangarooski]

If I had to guess, I'd say it might be a member of the planning board for the town of Sandwich on Cape Cod in Massachusetts.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[Philosa]

Not to state the obvious, but Sandwich is the name of a town.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[imp]

Actually, the work is transformative. The form of the facts was changed from the form in the book to the form in the database. Creativity was certainly involved there.

But that misses the point. It is 100% legal to copy phone books verbatim with no transformative work because they are just tables of facts. It isn't clear that these tables of facts even qualify for copyright protection at all, since they are very similar to telephone numbers and addresses listed in phone books.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[Guy Harris]

This blog article has an analysis of the action. It appears, essentially, that Astrolabe publishes an altas

Astrolabe, in Brewster, Massachusetts, appears to sell an application called "the ACS American and International PC Atlas for Windows".

The comments in the TZ database:

# From Paul Eggert (2006-03-22):
# A good source for time zone historical data in the US is
# Thomas G. Shanks, The American Atlas (5th edition),
# San Diego: ACS Publications, Inc. (1991).
# Make sure you have the errata sheet; the book is somewhat useless without it.
# It is the source for most of the pre-1991 US entries below.

and

# From Paul Eggert (2006-03-22):
# A good source for time zone historical data outside the U.S. is
# Thomas G. Shanks and Rique Pottenger, The International Atlas (6th edition),
# San Diego: ACS Publications, Inc. (2003).

speak of two atlases from ACS Publications in New Hampshire, The American Atlas and The International Atlas. It's not clear what connection there is between Astrolabe and Astro Computing Services/Starcrafts Publishing/ACS Publications; perhaps Astrolabe licensed Astro Computing Services' ACS Atlas Software for their product.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[X0563511]

America is the US by shorthand.

North America and South America are used when referring to the continents, and "The Americas" is used when referring to them as a whole.

Eat shit and deal with it.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[John Hasler]

> It is also why we need "Loser Pays", at least to some extent

We have "loser pays" to some extent. Judges can and sometimes do order the plaintiffs in egregrious lawsuits to pay all of the defendants costs and legal fees.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[demonbug]

What the heck is a "Sandwich Planning Board Member"?

Well, obviously you can't just jump right in and make a sandwich. My God man, what if something goes wrong? You could have mayonnaise, pickles, and cold cuts everywhere! No, any responsible community will have a Sandwich Planning Board to ensure that sandwich preparation follows rigorous guidelines to avoid this kind of disaster. This Ms. Malloy probably represented to the Board that her clients were experienced in the proper production of PB&J sandwiches when in fact they had never successfully completed even a PB sandwich, never mind the added complexity introduced by the use of gelatinized fruit products.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[SeNtM]

They determine the towns official days to endorse certain Sandwich types. Ie. Monte Cristo Mondays, Turkey Club Tuesdays, Wheat Bread Wednesdays, etc...

She was fined for her endorsement of Spam Sub Sundays.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[zdammit]

Looks like the Plaintiff's Lawyer don't care about a lot of things: "Sandwich Planning Board Member Julie C. Molloy Fined $3,000 for Improperly Representing Clients Before the Sandwich Zoning Board of Appeals"

You can't even plan lunch now?

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[residieu]

Well, then you should protect your database so no one can take it and use it, because copyright isn't going to help you.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[perlchild]

So?

Unless they WANT to fight this in court, they're not that threatening, and most of the big iron unix have a history of settling. SCO got beat by novell, not IBM, and IBM didn't dance on SCO's grave, so we don't get the impression that challenging IBM is that bad.

Apple does mind when someone steps on their iphone, usually by making a lookalike product, but they've not gone around and said "You threaten us, you die" yet either...

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[Anonymous Coward]

can't lawyers be disbarred or otherwise legally chastised for bringing such vexatious and blatantly stupid litigation?

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[John Hasler]

ROFL. In much of Europe databases are protected by copyright and so this would be a sure win for Astrolabe. In the USA only creative expression is protected (see Feist v. Rural ) and so Astrolabe will almost certainly lose (and there is a chance that they will be ordered to pay legal costs and expenses). Then there are the parts of Europe where the case would not be heard at all for at least ten years due to the ludicrous backlogs...

BTW the other two nations in North America have different IP laws from those in the USA.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[cdrudge]

Oh, so it's only IBM, Apple, Red Hat et al. I bet that is a relief for them that MSFT's lawyers won't further blacken a pitch black sky full of lawyers.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[John Hasler]

> It's Astrolabe's lawyers v. the Astrolabe bank account.

And thus is a self-limiting problem.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[John Hasler]

That sometimes works in patent law because defending against allegations of patent infringement can be extremely expensive. Defending against copyright infringement allegations is much cheaper as there is usually no need for expensive discovery proceedings and expert testimony. This case, if it goes to trial, will depend entirely on the judge's interpretation of the law. The facts will consist of little more than the tzdata document, the Astrolabe document, the contract between Astrolabe and the author of the document, and the copyright registration.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[Guy Harris]

As a side note, the infowars portion of the suit has begun. The reference to Shanks on the "Tz database" page was added as close to the top as could be managed by user JulDes on Sept. 3, which seems to be the day the account was created. As of May 2006, "Thomas Shanks" on Wikipedia redirected to Irish footballer Tommy Shanks. As of One month ago, it now instead has information on the otherwise unknown author of the American Atlas, 1978, ACS publications. The editing account, "TZ Master" seems to have been created expressly for the purpose 5 minutes earlier.

Looking at TZ master's contributions, he or she appears to be a tz database nerd; the "Thomas Shanks" edits might have been his or her first edits, but they are far from his or her last edits.

Besides, JulDes, not "TZ master", was the person who made the "Thomas Shanks" page talk about the time zone atlas person. From JulDes' user page and contributions, I see no reason to assume he or she is part of the Evil Astrolabe Cabal, either.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[VGPowerlord]

The trouble is, you now CAN copyright databases. It's been made explicit in EU law, but I think it's still defensible under US law. The idea is that the organization of facts is copyrightable (take for example, encyclopedias, atlases, etc.). The trouble is, copyright transcends specific media, while a database separated from a specific medium is a mundane collection of facts. The argument here is that Olson's TZ database just cribbed Thomas Shanks' atlas.

It may be explicit in EU law, but the US Supreme Court made collections of facts non-copyrightable in the US in 1991. And this case was brought up in a US Court.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[afidel]

Uh, IBM's suit was stayed pending the outcome of the Novell suit given the fact that if SCO lost they would have no grounds to sue IBM.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[Gman14msu]

FYI for you out-of-staters, Sandwich is a town here in Massachusetts. I know we supposedly have an over-bearing government here but that doesnt include a Planning Board for your lunch.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[camperdave]

Map and atlas companies frequently add deliberate errors to their maps to detect copies. If Astrolabe's atlas contained a deliberate error, for example an island off the coast of South America with its own time zone, then what you have is not a database of facts, but a work of fiction. If Olson copied this honeypot data into the time zone database, then Astrolabe may have a case. The case would be even stronger if the error only occurred on the maps and not in any list Astrolabe may have included in the Atlas.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[Guy Harris]

Change of ownership of "ACS Atlas database" from ACS to Astrolabe in 2008: http://alabe.com/history.htm " The ACS PC Atlas, the premier longitude, latitude and time zone reference for astrologers. Astrolabe worked with Astro Computing Services in the early 1990s, advising on the user interface for the PC version of their well-known reference work, and in 2008, Astrolabe bought the rights to the Atlas. Astrolabe and ACS (now Astro Communications Services) maintain a mutual dealership agreement for each other's software products."

Presumably that also includes the rights to the dead tree version, which the comments in the tz database seem to be speaking of.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[Anonymous Coward]

Databases cannot be copyrighted. Work alone is not sufficient criteria for meriting copyright.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[Anonymous Coward]

It appears there are two databases: Olson's public timezone database, and Astrolabe's proprietary ACS PC Atlas. Both reference timezone records going back almost a century. Olsen states that the source for most of his pre-1991 US entries is The American Atlas (5th edition), by Thomas G. Shanks, published by ACS Publications, Inc. of San Diego. From their website:

Shanks compiled and programmed the invaluable reference books, "The American Atlas" 1978 and "The International Atlas," 1985.
http://www.astro.com/astro-databank/Shanks,_Thomas

Astrolabe claims to be the owner of the reference book compiled by Shanks. I presume (but don't know) that Astrolabe's PCS PC Atlas database is also based on that reference book. How long has Olsen's database been available? If it's older than Astrolabe's database (that has a DOS version), then Astrolabe can't claim that Olsen's database stole information from their database (in fact, it's likely to be the other way around).

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[roc97007]

At least not this year.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[Anonymous Coward]

the lack of geographical knowledge south of the border notwithstanding.

You do realize most Americans know more about geography than that young lady in the video, right? And you look like a fool for pigeonholing an entire people based on the action of one person, right?

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[Entrope]

That is very different than a general "loser pays" system. The barriers to prove malicious prosecution (or the other triggers to recover attorney's fees, rather than -- say -- just court costs) are very high. Courts excuse a lot of things that laypersons might call frivolous on the basis that people have a Constitutional right to seek redress through the courts.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[Guy Harris]

The facts are not copyrighted, but the compilation is. The allegation is that he really just republished the compilation in whole or in part.

In whole, most definitely not. The Olson database existed long before anybody started looking at Shanks' atlases. In part - well, as the comments say, the Shanks' atlases have been consulted in some cases, but sometimes its claims were rejected in favor of other claims, for example

# From Paul Eggert (2002-10-20):
#
# The information in the rest of this paragraph is derived from the
# <a href="http://www.dlapr.lib.az.us/links/daylight.htm">
# Daylight Saving Time web page (2002-01-23)</a> maintained by the
# Arizona State Library, Archives and Public Records.
# Between 1944-01-01 and 1944-04-01 the State of Arizona used standard
# time, but by federal law railroads, airlines, bus lines, military
# personnel, and some engaged in interstate commerce continued to
# observe war (i.e., daylight saving) time. The 1944-03-17 Phoenix
# Gazette says that was the date the law changed, and that 04-01 was
# the date the state's clocks would change. In 1945 the State of
# Arizona used standard time all year, again with exceptions only as
# mandated by federal law. Arizona observed DST in 1967, but Arizona
# Laws 1968, ch. 183 (effective 1968-03-21) repealed DST.
#
# Shanks says the 1944 experiment came to an end on 1944-03-17.
# Go with the Arizona State Library instead.

and

# From Paul Eggert (1999-03-31):
# Shanks writes that Michigan started using standard time on 1885-09-18,
# but Howse writes (pp 124-125, referring to Popular Astronomy, 1901-01)
# that Detroit kept
#
# local time until 1900 when the City Council decreed that clocks should
# be put back twenty-eight minutes to Central Standard Time. Half the
# city obeyed, half refused. After considerable debate, the decision
# was rescinded and the city reverted to Sun time. A derisive offer to
# erect a sundial in front of the city hall was referred to the
# Committee on Sewers. Then, in 1905, Central time was adopted
# by city vote.
#
# This story is too entertaining to be false, so go with Howse over Shanks.

or ignored for pre-UNIX-Epoch times:

# Shanks partitioned Indiana into 345 regions, each with its own time history,
# and wrote ``Even newspaper reports present contradictory information.''
# Those Hoosiers! Such a flighty and changeable people!
# Fortunately, most of the complexity occurred before our cutoff date of 1970.

It looks like this guy perhaps just copied large portions from an existing compilation.

"Copied portions from an existing compilation", or "looked facts up in an existing compilation"?

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[Anonymous Coward]

This is America, lawyers don't bother with minor details like the law before filing lawsuits. There's lawyer fees to be made!

Is there a country where lawyers *don't* behave that way, or do you just like gratuitously bashing America?

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't want a mandatory "loser pays" system. If you decide to sue some big company because you feel you have been legitimately wronged, and they win by virtue of bigger pockets, then you get to pay their $500/hr lawyers. Better to let the judge decide.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[Grishnakh]

Exactly. It's where some guy named the Earl of Sandwich invented the sandwich....

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[evanism]

Incorrect. You are replying your experiences from an "American" perspective. Your geo-political ignorance has been validated. It's atlas buying time for you.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[idontgno]

From JulDes' user page and contributions, I see no reason to assume he or she is part of the Evil Astrolabe Cabal, either.

Other than the fact that every single contribution is focused on inserting information about the importance and notability of Thomas G. Shanks as the author of "The most extensive collection of timezone and daylight saving time history data has been published by Thomas Shanks in two volumes The American Atlas (1978) and The International Atlas (1985)." (quoting JulDes' interpolation into the Wikipedia article "Time Zone".)

The account was created on 3 September and all contributions were on that day or the next.

Yeah. smells like sockpuppet from where I stand.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[Phoenix Rising]

Yeah, my bad. Not (probably) Microsoft.

Of course, the only reason this is an issue is that Olson freely commented on the source of a lot of his data; had he not, no one would question his ability to put it all together.

So many people use the zoneinfo DB now, I'm thinking a modest effort could organize something where individual governments could - and would - contribute their changes and the DB could be recreated from scratch in short order. In fact, given that the U.S. government was hosting the package (and I saw something about the IETF taking it over?), it would almost be poetic if the tz package became the official publication of time zone data that the government points to when someone asks for a public records request on the matter - provided, of course, that it remains free of encumbrance.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[nedlohs]

I wouldn't be surprised since that's what I said, though with less words and hence more vaguely.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[Big Smirk]

If this in fact goes any further.
The defendant's lawyers are going to argue that there is no specificity in the lawsuit. They will ultimately ask the plaintiffs exactly which elements were copied and why, again with specificity, do the plaintiffs believe they have the copyright. The plaintiffs will try to song and dance around the fact that this is just 'facts'. Might be interesting to hear how they will spin this.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[Anonymous Coward]

Mmmmmm... saaaaanndwiiich

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[RightSaidFred99]

If you asked every English speaker on the continent the definition of an "American", the majority would say "someone from the USA".

So your petty pedantry is noted and dismissed as being incorrect.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not just linux that's at risk here, it's every Unix-and-Unixalike, it's Java, it's Mac OS, and quite possibly MS Windows as well.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[Antibozo]

Actually you are in North America. There is no continent called simply "America". You are a North American, as am I. There is no ambiguity when U.S. citizens identify themselves as "Americans", especially since that sort of identification is almost always unambiguously an identification of citizenship rather than continent of origin.

That said, I usually refrain from using the term "American" in this context, and prefer "U.S. citizen". This is, however, equally ambiguous, since Mexico also is the "United States", i.e. the "Estados Unidos Mexicanos". And I suppose Botswanans might resent South Africans for calling themselves that...?

As far as geographic knowledge goes, as a U.S. citizen, I can name all of the Canadian provinces from memory. I wonder if you can do the same for the states of the U.S. How about Mexico? :^)

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[AlienIntelligence]

I think facts are different than 'facts arranged in a database'.

Not in U.S.

Huh... 1991 wow, thanks... fuck I feel old

-AI

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[zentigger]

Thanks for the clarification. I though the sandwich planning board was a slab of wood that sat between my sandwich and counter-top graven with various condimentary flow-charts and cold-cut layering strategies.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[Demena]

Which continent? You would be correct for North America. Not so much elsewhere.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[Demena]

Yes. In Australia and the UK and various other places lawyers can and are sanctioned for bringing frivolous actions.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[Wyatt Earp]

The term American has been used since 1648 to refer to those living in the British Colonies of North America and the Articles of Confederation in 1777 refer to what will become the United States as America, George Washington referred to those living in the United States as American in 1796, while treaties refer to America and Americans in 1795.

So you can whine all you want about it, but those in the United States have been using America and American to refer to the United States and those who living in the United States much longer than Canada has been a nation.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[Wyatt Earp]

Many countries in Europe too

The Spanish, French, Portuguese, German, and Italian languages use cognates of the word "American", in denoting "U.S. citizen".

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[ppanon]

Ah, but do you know the names of the territories, post 1999? Also there's 10 provinces and 50 states, so the comparison isn't exactly fair. Even so, I would probably have a fair chance of getting most of the states, which is better than some of your politicians who can't even get the number of US states right.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[sg_oneill]

Just like the town of Batman in turkey where Robin first met his mentor.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[Guy Harris]

How long has Olsen's database been available?

Since 1986. However:

If it's older than Astrolabe's database (that has a DOS version), then Astrolabe can't claim that Olsen's database stole information from their database (in fact, it's likely to be the other way around).

...it's not as if the Olson database was published in 1986 and never modified (that would have made the Olson code and database not very useful - the whole point of the exercise was to allow systems using them to adapt to changes in time zone rules), and some subsequent changes cited Shanks' dead-tree atlases as sources. The database source cites later versions of those atlases (5th edition of the American atlas, 1991; 6th edition of the International atlas, 2003). It does not speak of the PC Atlas at all.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[Spugglefink]

The Spanish, French, Portuguese, German, and Italian languages use cognates of the word "American", in denoting "U.S. citizen".

Try telling that to my friends in Argentina, who insist adamantly they are "americanos" the same as I am. I really think the meanings of americano and American are so different in the two languages as to make them faux amis, even though they are cognates.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[Anonymous Coward]

Sadly, the guy who thought there were 57 states got elected.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[ysth]

"Fact" is not necessarily a word that applies to historical timezone information. For example, from northamerica:

Shanks writes that Michigan started using standard time on 1885-09-18, but Howse writes (pp 124-125, referring to Popular Astronomy, 1901-01) that Detroit kept

local time until 1900 when the City Council decreed that clocks should be put back twenty-eight minutes to Central Standard Time. Half the city obeyed, half refused. After considerable debate, the decision was rescinded and the city reverted to Sun time. A derisive offer to erect a sundial in front of the city hall was referred to the Committee on Sewers. Then, in 1905, Central time was adopted by city vote.

This story is too entertaining to be false, so go with Howse over Shanks.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[billstewart]

Actually it's why we're better off without a "loser pays" system - if you're trying to sue a company the size of Microsoft or IBM, or they're trying to sue you, and they've got much better lawyers than you can afford, then you can't risk losing, because paying their legal costs will bankrupt you. So you can't risk suing them if they've ripped you off, and if they sue you, you're better off settling right away instead of fighting, even though you're right and they're wrong.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[ScrewMaster]

This is America, lawyers don't bother with minor details like the law before filing lawsuits. There's lawyer fees to be made!

Yes, but if an attorney fails to perform due diligence and leads his client down a garden path for the express purpose of overbilling he can get in some hot water.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[ScrewMaster]

Exactly. It's where some guy named the Earl of Sandwich invented the sandwich....

Yes. I hear that, contrary to popular belief, you can't die of starvation in the desert because of all the sandwiches there.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[Anonymous Coward]

And soon M$ is all that will be out there...

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[GNUALMAFUERTE]

You are 100% right. The use that the US makes of the word America pisses me off immensely. Specially since they pretend that "The Americas" is the word for the entire continent.

And this subject is not up for debate, we can proof conclusively who is right:

America was named after Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci sometime in the 15th century. It was named so by the Spanish, who called the entire continent "America". Not "The Americas" or anything else, just plain America. 4 centuries later a group of independent states in the northern part of America unite to form a country, a coalition of states. They name themelves The United States of America. because they were a bunch of states, that united, and happened to be in America. If they had been in Africa, they would have called themselves The United States of Africa. Of course, the "of" in the name implies that they are within that territory, a part of it. So, everybody called American to anyone within the entire continent, and America to the continent itself. It wasn't until the end of the 18th century that some US citizens started thinking of themselves as Americans, and with the meaning of "American" during WWI and WWII, the deal was settled for English speakers. Of course, that doesn't change the meaning of the word, or the fact that it's wrong for US citizens to use it to refer to themselves exclusively.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[Japher]

I wasn't aware that place names weren't allowed to change over time. Do you still refer to Canada as The Dominion of Canada too, or do you just stick with New France to be safe? If you want to be truly pedantic, it should be pointed out that the term "America" was originally only applied to what is today South America, with North America labeled "Terra Incognita" or Unknown Lands. So what right to you have to say that YOU live in America at all? According to Vespucci, you may not.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[putaro]

It should be something that the judge has regular discretion to give. Also, major sanctions against the attorneys for bringing frivolous lawsuits.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[pjt33]

I don't believe that "estadounidense" is a cognate of "American". Most of the time when I hear "americano" used to refer to something specifically U.S. American it's from the lips of someone U.S. American.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[pjt33]

So what you're saying is that lawyers make so much money that they all have heated swimming pools at the end of their garden paths?

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[SuricouRaven]

Sorry, I misinterpreted the comment as sarcasm.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[billstewart]

There was one well-known study that found that the more detailed data on birth dates, times, and locations the astrologer collected, the more accurate the subject thought their horoscope was. Of course, the catch was that the "astrologer" was giving everybody the same ambiguously written horoscope, not using any of the actual data from the subject. Suckers.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[Anonymous Coward]

The errata sheet took data from the TZ database files.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[samjam]

If you can make such a black box then the CIA would be very interested...

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[maroberts]

Databases may be protected by copyright, but the TZ DB existed a long time before any DB created by Astrolabe. The TZ DB happens to contain factual information contained in the book form of the Atlas. As (amongst other reasons) it is a transformative work, it is not a breach of copyright

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[bryan1945]

Chewbacca Offense?
"Your Honor, Chewbacca is not an Ewok, and that makes no sense! Therefore our lawsuit makes no sense, so you must agree with the plaintiff!"
(sorry for the manglement of the actual quote)

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[bryan1945]

I'd love to see them come up with a DB format that hasn't been used a thousand times already. May SHIFT-F-F6- deliminated?

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[bryan1945]

Oops, sorry, that's for a spreadsheet. Got a bit mixed up there for a second.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[bryan1945]

I like the optional comment section in the form. I put in things like "I have a big dong" "I am a teacup" etc., and it still comes out the same. So then I changed my birth year to 1880- yep, same exact stuff. Even better, you get stuff like "you are very reserved, except when you want to have fun," and "you are very meticulous, except when you just take a leap."

And people somehow believe this stuff.... (well, besides me being a teacup with a big dong)

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[nosferatu1001]

You have to have what the UK does - BOTH parties have a duty to limit costs incurred to reasonable amounts. If you sue in small claims court, then turning up with an army of lawyers is likely to hurt not help your case. Even with loser pays by default you can be limited in cost recovery to what is reasonable - again, if you use QCs to defend a minor case, then youre unlikely to get your full costs back if you win.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[GNUALMAFUERTE]

The city I live in, the second largest in South America, was funded in 1536, and we've been calling ourselves Americans ever since.

Names are allowed to change overtime, but this particular name (America) hasn't changed. Only US citizens have mistakenly used that name as their own. It isn't.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[petermgreen]

I'm fairly sure that Windows does not use the zoneinfo database.

Indeed, up to XP windows only stored timezone data with one set of DST rules. With vista they changed it so it could store two sets of rules for a zone to allow them to push out timezone updates earlier but they never seemed to care about accurate conversion of past or future timestamps between local time and UTC.

Zoneinfo by contrast aims to have complete historic data to 1970 and partial historic data* before that. AIUI the historic data is mostly what is in dispute here.

*Data before 1970 aims to be correct for the nominal city of the zone but they will not split zones unless there are differences after 1970.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[j00r0m4nc3r]

I though the sandwich planning board was a slab of wood that sat between my sandwich and counter-top graven with various condimentary flow-charts and cold-cut layering strategies.

That's the sandwich construction contractors board. The planning board is where they make the flowcharts, based on various feasibility studies, usually in such a way as to completely ruin the sandwich.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[petermgreen]

Afaict astrological predictions are based on knowing where the stars were at the time a given event (e.g. someone's birth). To get that information you need to convert the time of the event in question from local time to universal time. To do that you need to know what the relationship between local time and universal time at the time of the event was. Therefore astrologers needed to compile historical information on time rules.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[KlomDark]

Good, maybe this will be the end of the Unix standard. I hate it when building a new Linux box, setting up the time info, and having to pick which major city is in my time zone (America/Chicago, even though I'm closer to America/Denver) instead of just picking (Central Time Zone). It's stupid. I hate the presumption of stupidity on Unix time zones - Even my grandma knows what time zone she lives in.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[marxmarv]

Astrologers require accurate times to create an accurate map of the sky (which is why that Sun-sign horseshit in the comics section of the newspaper works about as well as a "fair dice roll"). An almanac of the history and practices of timekeeping in various regions is indispensable to those who research the correlations of planetary positions with events.

As to how ACS and Astrolabe are connected, I think Astrolabe might have bought the rights to electronic reproduction of the ACS Atlas some time in the past ten years, when I last researched licensing the ACS Atlas for a project I was working on at the time.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[marxmarv]

Turning to look at my bookshelf, I own the Astrolabe World Ephemeris, which is a pretty half-assed ephemeris, and several quality ACS publications.

But I also emailed Astrolabe's people to inform them that I wouldn't support their trolling (and since I *do* deal in matters astrological, and have acquaintances who own occult book stores, my own complaint might carry a bit of weight).

openastro.py ftw!

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[perlchild]

I'm not saying IBM is chicken, I'm saying IBM isn't throwing their weight around at patent trolls to dissuade them from doing anything we might not like(the global citizenly "We")

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[gujo-odori]

As the only nation in the world with "America" in its title, we'll call ourselves "Americans" if we want to. Most people in the world agree with that usage. If you don't like it, you can shove it up your ass. If you really don't like it, go ahead and declare war. We'll get around to wiping out your piss-ant country eventually. You'll be dead and we'll still be calling ourselves "Americans."

HAND

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[marxmarv]

CDT6CST is still a valid time zone, if you don't need to account for the differences in Chicago's vs. Denver's historical observation of DST. Rock on, brother.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[AmiMoJo]

In the UK there are many instances where you can take a company to court or some kind of arbitrator for free or very close, with no danger of incurring their fees if you lose. Banks, for example, are regulated by the Financial Services Ombudsman and you can get them involved for free (the bank pays, win or lose, it's the cost of doing business here).

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[AmiMoJo]

I just logged in (haven't used my account in a couple of years, got fed up of the deletionists) and removed it. Let's see if we can start an edit war and get the offending account banned from editing. Knowing Wikipedia my account will be the one that gets locked out.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[jonadab]

> I thought the issue of whether you could copyright facts (e.g., phone
> numbers, timezone values for specific locations) was already settled law.

It is, and so if the defendant(s) can afford to pay some lawyers enough money to see this through then the court will undoubtedly find in the defendant's favor.

That doesn't stop the plaintiff from dragging you through the courts for months and months and running your legal fees into six or seven figures, though.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[Antibozo]

"Estadounidense" fails to distinguish U.S. citizens from Mexicans. And it's ugly, verbose, and badly formulated.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[Demena]

You are both unnecessarily aggressive and downright foolish. I simply don't care. Yet you threaten me and my country with annihilation in your foolish paranoia. As for wiping out my 'piss-ant' country, well you already overturned our democratically elected government and replaced it with puppets in 1975. Not much more you can do. At least it wasn't violent. But so what. America will eventually collapse from its own internal rot as have all other "water" empires.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[pjt33]

If you'd prefer all US citizens to be called yanquí...

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[ScrewMaster]

So what you're saying is that lawyers make so much money that they all have heated swimming pools at the end of their garden paths?

Something like that. It's one thing to charge a lot for your services, but if you're too egregious in ripping off your client you can get disbarred.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[Splab]

Around here an Amarican is someone from the US of A, a north american is someone from the northern continent and south american is someone from the south - if you are referring to the specific country of origin, they are usually referred to as for instance brazillian (not to be confused with the "hair" style).

Yes it's probably annoying (and now that I think of it, slightly confusing), but since the US of A doesn't have a proper name for the residents (an USAian?), the term American usually applies to them even though it is technically wrong. (Here being Denmark).

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[mikael]

The timezone database is stored in /usr/share/zoneinfo or /usr/lib/zoneinfo, with there being an entry for every capital pr incipal city in each country. Each entry consists of around 3K of binary data.

zone.tab has the copyright and longitude/latitude information.

iso3166.tab has the two letter codes for each country.

It wouldn't be too difficult to reconstruct these databases from a volunteer effort.

More information from tzfile, zdump and zic.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[ByOhTek]

Mr. Pratchett, is that you?

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[jbolden]

Agree with all the points historically. Problem is that the primary meaning of the word America all over the entire world is not to refer to that coalition of states. I agree it was a bad choice and that when the articles of confederation were signed they should have picked some sort of name for the place. They didn't, and the USA is simply too important not to be able to discuss.

You should petition the OAS to give the USA another name.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[jbolden]

Thank you. Excellent point that America's situation is uniquely bad.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[jbolden]

Microsoft makes Unix services for Windows, a whole bunch of cross platform products, universal communicator... I wouldn't be shocked if Microsoft has the database in 2 dozen products or so.

Re:Astrolabe, Inc. v. Olson et al

[TheLink]

Thing is there's stuff like both America/Denver and America/Phoenix can be in MST but America/Phoenix does not go to MDT (no daylight savings).

Similarly: America/Adak and Pacific/Honolulu can both be HST but Honolulu doesn't do HDT.

So people may know what time zone they are in but the computer can't be certain if you just entered 3 letters. I suppose they could have an extra page where they ask you more questions.

But that sort of thing could be a lot of work when you add the rest of the world into the picture. So the OS bunch are just going to ask you for your proper timezone name/location and you're going to have to remember it.

Civil Suit

[Rik Sweeney]

does someone know what is going on?

Yes, it's patented by Apple.

Re:Civil Suit

[colinrichardday]

Did Jesus actually get much coverage on his death?

Re:Civil Suit

[Anonymous Coward]

Well... it depend how Steve Bio's will have sell in 2000 years

Re:Civil Suit

[colinrichardday]

Will Steve's Bio be available on the iPad 4011?

Re:Civil Suit

[Anonymous Coward]

32. Steve stood upon the stage, and did turn to those gathered.
33. And Steve did say unto them "Behold, the iPad" and thunderous applause did rise from amongst the crowd.

Re:does someone know what is going on?

[roc97007]

Funny, but not very helpful.

Anyone got the time?

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone got the time?

Re:Anyone got the time?

[TheSpoom]

I'm sorry, that information is copyrighted.

Re:Anyone got the time?

[Dunbal]

I could tell you, but then I would have to sue you.

Re:Anyone got the time?

[Anonymous Coward]

You got the title wrong:

Does Anybody Really Know What Time It is?

As I was walking down the street one day
A man came up to me and asked me what the time was that was
on my watch, yeah
And I said
Does anybody really know what time it is
I don't
Does anybody really care
care
If so I can't imagine why
about time
We've all got time enough to cry
Oh no, no

And I was walking down the street one day
A pretty lady looked at me and said her diamond watch had
stopped cold dead
And I said
Does anybody really know what time it is
I don't
Does anybody really care
care
If so I can't imagine why
about time
We've all got time enough to cry
Oh no, no

And I was walking down the street one day
Being pushed and shoved by people trying to beat the clock,
oh, so I just don't know,
I just don't know
And I said, yes I said

(Background Vocal:)
People runnin' everywhere
Don't know the way to go
Don't know where I am
Can't see past the next step
Don't have to think past the last mile
Have no time to look around
Just run around, run around and think why

Does anybody really know what time it is
I don't
Does anybody really care
care
If so I can't imagine why
about time
We've all got time enough to die
Oh no, no

Chicago Transit Authority, 1968

Re:Anyone got the time?

[terjeber]

Anyone got the time?

I tried to, but since I knew when to tell you, I did not know where.

Given he had retirement plans how unfortunate

[realxmp]

Just was reading http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-lear-iana-timezone-database-04 apparently it looks like Arthur Olson was planning to retire. IETF was planning to take on the custody of the role and host the list? I wonder if this is related?

Re:Given he had retirement plans how unfortunate

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn! and only 2 days left till retirement

Re:Given he had retirement plans how unfortunate

[Unequivocal]

Might be a shakedown.. IETF probably has deeper pockets than ado and may have motivation to make this go away so they can keep the thing running.

Re:Given he had retirement plans how unfortunate

[wondershit]

Yep. Slashdot covered it in March.

Re:Given he had retirement plans how unfortunate

[chefmonkey]

The IETF has perennial funding problems. Suing for the purpose of getting money from the IETF is pretty much like rolling bums for loose change. It's just mean spirited, and you won't make any money doing it.

Re:Given he had retirement plans how unfortunate

[roc97007]

> Suing for the purpose of getting money from the IETF is pretty much like rolling bums for loose change.

That's my favorite phrase for this week.

Re:Given he had retirement plans how unfortunate

[John Hasler]

The IETF has no pockets at all. Some their backers, on the other hand, hve extremely deep pockets and a reputation for reaching into them to pay lawyers for cases of this sort.

Didn't realize it would go this far

[Anonymous Coward]

When I read that neutrinos had violated the law of special relativity.

Astrolabe

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently something to do with Astrolabe, Inc. v. Arthur David Olson et al

Re:Astrolabe

[Cito]

at least it wasnt Astroglide v. Arthur David Olson... that could get embarrassing. but would make for a more entertaining slashdot article.

Re:Astrolabe

[austinpoet]

Brilliant!

Another non-sense law-suit...

[Anonymous Coward]

Lawyers need to be reigned in due to things like this, as well as all of the fishing trying to find anyone to blame for everything that happens. I'm sure that someone couldn't understand how to use NNTP and decided to sue. Either that or Oracle is trying to claim that the purchase of Sun gives them control of time... And you now have to pay them a licensing fee...

Re:Another non-sense law-suit...

[Dunbal]

Lawyers need to be reigned in

Yes. I suggest a noose. A garotte could work, too. To paraphrase Douglas Adams: "A:you hear they are executing lawyers now?" B: "Oh yeah? for what offense?" A:"What do you mean, offense?", although in that case he was referring to insurance people...

Re:Another non-sense law-suit...

[jdgeorge]

If someone hires a lawyer to do something mean, the root cause of the problem is NOT the lawyer.

Re:Another non-sense law-suit...

[Dunbal]

Oh yes it is, because behind every law that's used to screw someone over, there was a lawyer writing it.

Found Something

[Anonymous Coward]

This link shows an action filed on 9/30/2011

http://www.rfcexpress.com/lawsuits/copyright-lawsuits/massachusetts-district-court/82641/astrolabe-inc-v-arthur-david-olson/summary/

RFC Case Number: C-A11-11725A
Court Case Number: 1:11-cv-11725-GAO
File Date: Friday, September 30, 2011
Plaintiff: Astrolabe, Inc.
Plaintiff Counsel: Julie C. Molloy - Attorney at Law
Defendant: Arthur David Olson
Paul Eggert
Cause: 17:101 Copyright Infringement
Court: Massachusetts District Court
Judge: Judge George A. O'Toole, Jr.
Notes:

Re:Found Something

[SteeldrivingJon]

Looks like a small-time local attorney. Not even a web presence.

Re:Found Something

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks like a small-time local attorney. Not even a web presence.

Or a high powered attorney who regularly upsets a lot of people such that they don't want to be found easily.

Law suit info

[mwaggs_jd]

http://www.rfcexpress.com/lawsuits/copyright-lawsuits/massachusetts-district-court/82641/astrolabe-inc-v-arthur-david-olson/summary/

Re:Law suit info

[Roxoff]

http://www.rfcexpress.com/lawsuits/copyright-lawsuits/massachusetts-district-court/82641/astrolabe-inc-v-arthur-david-olson/summary/

If you want the court documents related to this, they're also available on that site. For 99 cents or more.

Re:does someone know what is going on?

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, no, that was not remotely funny.

Over-used

[ArrowBay]

"...the timezone database used in about every unix/linux platform in use on the planet..."

But, is it used in any unix/linux platforms not in use on the planet? What about off the planet?

Re:Over-used

[nitehawk214]

"...the timezone database used in about every unix/linux platform in use on the planet..."

But, is it used in any unix/linux platforms not in use on the planet? What about off the planet?

Seems simple... The ones not in use have no need of timezone info. The ones on different planets would need timezones for whatever planet they are on.

Re:Over-used

[doconnor]

The Time Zone Database lists the time zone for different places on Earth. If you are not on Earth the database is of little use to you.

Re:Over-used

[jd]

Not necessarily. I hear that the Galactinet Engineering Task Force mandates that dates transmitted between planets be converted to and from Galactic Standard Time, to avoid planet-specific restrictions on timezone information. To do that, you'd obviously need the offset, which will vary according to where the locality is.

Re:Over-used

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not even close to being true. There are a million reasons to want to know the timezone on earth. Perhaps I'm calling my dear old mother - I would certainly want to call in the afternoon rather than the middle of the night...Perhaps I'm planning an Alien invasion, and i want to strike the east coast at dawn...

Really now. We're supposed to be nerds here. Use your imagination.

Re:Over-used

[nschubach]

The space vessel would be using GST (and likely transmit GST). It shoud be the base station that received the communication that converts it to local standard. If it wasn't setup that way... it should be. ;)

Re:Over-used

[jd]

Y'know, the IETF doesn't seem to have a copy of the GETF standard on this, would you be interested in helping me set up a working group so we can get the RFC to them, say around the April timeframe?

Re:Over-used

[Pope]

Dang. Well, Swatch Internet Time it is!

Re:Over-used

[N!k0N]

Or you're planning a zombie apocalypse, and need to make sure you're releasing the zombies in the middle of the night...

Re:Over-used

[Grishnakh]

Or you're planning a vampire invasion, in which case you definitely need to make sure you release the vampires at night because your invasion will be foiled if they're released in the daytime only to be destroyed by the sun. Of course, this assumes you're using vampire v1.0 which has this vulnerability, and not the new v2.0 vampire, shown in the "twilight" series, that just looks weird in the daytime and doesn't melt or burn.

Re:Over-used

[Alain Williams]

The space vessel would be using GST

<pedant="on"> Relativity says that there is no such thing as an absolute time reference. Sorry to spoil the joke! </pedant>

Re:Over-used

[jackbird]

At interstellar distances and the [near|above]-c speeds needed to traverse them, simultaneity (if even a valid concept) requires much more sweat and tears than an offset.

Re:Over-used

[nschubach]

I can only have meetings on Tuesdays and the day after Monday.

Re:Over-used

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, this assumes you're using vampire v1.0 which has this vulnerability, and not the new v2.0 vampire, shown in the "twilight" series, that just looks weird in the daytime and doesn't melt or burn.

I thought Twilight was using vampire v0.5

Re:Over-used

[jd]

Actually, I disagree with that interpretation of relativity. All objects have their own local time, which varies according to their relative motion and relative gravitic field, but that just means they're moving at different velocities in spacetime. In the same way that space isn't fixed because any point can be treated as zero, time isn't fixed because any point can be treated as zero. Yes, relativity introduces the complication that the size of the units also varies according to relative motion, but we're talking about Galactic Standard Time not Universal Standard Time. There's bound to be some object close to the galactic core that is rotating around that core at close enough to a fixed rate relative to, oh, say some object in one of the arms in Andromeda.

Since we can measure the angle subtended, we can measure where we are in time relative to anyone else. This will not equal the time we have experienced, any more than wall-clock time is proportional to the CPU time a computer program experiences. Doesn't matter. It's a Galactic Standard Time and relativistic effects are the observer's problems.

Astrology

[tepples]

Would that happen to be the same Astrolabe Inc. behind this company selling astrology software?

Re:Astrology

[jd]

Maybe they ran a prediction and it told them they would win.

Re:Astrology

[Anonymous Coward]

That would be the one - http://alabe.com/alabedirections.html. Same address as listed below in complaint.

Re:Astrology

[Hazel Bergeron]

Ugh, astrolabe smells horrible, but some women swear by it.

Ohhh...

Re:Astrology

[Anonymous Coward]

Wouldn't it be better to cut out the middleman and go after the astrology con-artists for criminally defrauding people on a daily basis? If they have money left over after that, then they can continue their lawsuit.

I should give them a call right now. If they ask me "do you know what time it is here?" I'll say "no, BECAUSE YOU TOOK DOWN THE FUCKING OLSON DATABASE!!!!111"

Re:Astrology

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe they ran a prediction and it told them they would win.

Possibly... Date of file is 9/30/2011. Does anyone know the time?

Re:Astrology

[marxmarv]

Speaking as an astrologer, it would be interesting to know the precise time, date and place the suit was filed... I would absolutely expect that they'd time their initial filing to their own favor. Even though I don't read horary well at all, assuming Boston at high noon leads to interesting interpretations: The ruler of the 1st house (the plaintiff) in the 5th house (speculation) and being Jupiter (expansion) well-aspected by Pluto (The Man) certainly suggests abuse of power, a bit of recklessness or that someone's looking for a windfall. The ruler of the 7th house (the defendant) in the 10th (status, exemplar) and afflicted by several difficult aspects from Saturn, Uranus and the aforementioned Pluto doesn't bode well for the defendants, though Mars (the action principle) certainly works more toward their favor than Astrolabe's.

So, basically, if Astrolabe catches the attention of Anonymous, they will be fucked sooooo hard they won't even KNOW what time it is.

Re:Astrology

[mug funky]

lol, are you for real?

i simply could never think like that, even if i was a well researched troll.

i'd like to read more of this sort of thing.

Maybe...

[mehrotra.akash]

Could it be that his email password was stolen somehow and this mail is just a hoax? Computer compromised by a keylogger,etc, so the bad guys had access to mailing list credentials,etc to shut it down as well? Just mentioning since there's no significant detail in the message

Re:Maybe...

[Guy Harris]

Could it be that his email password was stolen somehow and this mail is just a hoax? Computer compromised by a keylogger,etc, so the bad guys had access to mailing list credentials,etc to shut it down as well? Just mentioning since there's no significant detail in the message

ADO's lawyers and/or the Department of Health's lawyers probably said "shut down the mailing list and the FTP site now and say as little as possible". And, from the actual legal complaint people have found and linked to in other comments, it's not a hoax.

Complaint Text

[apilosov]

I've pulled the complaint from PACER and uploaded it to docstoc:

http://www.docstoc.com/docs/98231225/ACS-Atlas

Re:Complaint Text

[apilosov]

So, it appears that ACS is trying to claim copyright on the timezone historical data that they've compiled - and that's used in the TZ database.

Under Feist v Rural, information which has no "creative expression" is not copyright-able - but in this case, Olson can easily claim it doesn't apply.

This will be interesting.

Re:Complaint Text

[cryptographrix]

Doesn't seem to be available yet, or at least not available to download.

Re:Complaint Text

[Qzukk]

OK, so it's a copyright infringement case, claiming that ACS Atlas's compilation of historical time zone data was copied. It seems that this would fall under the "phone book" interpretation of copyright (facts cannot be copyrighted but their presentation can be) does anyone know if this ACS American Atlas software contained these historical time zones as tzdata source files that could have been copied?

Re:Complaint Text

[Anonymous Coward]

To sum it up:

Astrolabe created ACS Atlas, which has historical timezone data. Mr. Olson supposedly posted this to the elsie site, said it came from ACS Atlas, and claimed the data was public domain. Astrolabe said, "no, it's not; take it down." Mr. Olson said, "no." Astrolabe told their lawyers, "get him!"

Re:Complaint Text

[Anonymous Coward]

Olson is the defendant. Did you mean Astrolabe can claim it doesn't apply? Or did you mean that Olson could claim the copyright does not apply? Your use of "but" implies the former, and creates confusion on your point.

Re:Complaint Text

[Dunbal]

I think everyone has the right to know what time zone their country/town/state is in. Either that or the information was the property of Sir Sanford Fleming and his estate but the copyright (if such a thing were possible) from 1879 should have expired by now and the information would be in the public domain.

Re:Complaint Text

[apilosov]

Yeah, oops. :)

I meant, Astrolabe can claim it doesn't apply.

Re:Complaint Text

[Guy Harris]

OK, so it's a copyright infringement case, claiming that ACS Atlas's compilation of historical time zone data was copied. It seems that this would fall under the "phone book" interpretation of copyright (facts cannot be copyrighted but their presentation can be) does anyone know if this ACS American Atlas software contained these historical time zones as tzdata source files that could have been copied?

The comments in the tz database speak of dead tree atlases, not software atlases, being consulted.

Re:Complaint Text

[JoeF]

I've pulled the complaint from PACER and uploaded it to docstoc:

http://www.docstoc.com/docs/98231225/ACS-Atlas

How about using the RECAP Firefox plugin , so that it would get uploaded automatically to the Internet Archive?

Re:Complaint Text

[Guy Harris]

To sum it up:

Astrolabe created ACS Atlas, which has historical timezone data. Mr. Olson supposedly posted this to the elsie site, said it came from ACS Atlas, and claimed the data was public domain. Astrolabe said, "no, it's not; take it down." Mr. Olson said, "no." Astrolabe told their lawyers, "get him!"

Try:

Thomas G. Shanks created two (dead-tree) atlases giving historical time zone information. In 1986, Mr. Olson created a time zone database (and implementations of localtime() and the like using that database), without reference to Shanks, when the daylight savings time rules in the US were changed and the compiled-in time zone information in UN*X libc's were out of date . The database has been updated over the years, with Shanks' atlases being one of many sources used to supply the data; Shanks' atlases were used to provide historical data. ...

Re:Complaint Text

[Mr Z]

And I'd argue that (a) the facts (what time zone a given location was in on any given date) are a matter of public record, and (b) the presentation in a dead-tree atlas is a completely different presentation than an electronic database that's structured to make localtime() work for a given location for any date in the UNIX epoch (which is presumably why you need historicaltimezone data).

Re:Complaint Text

[Anonymous Coward]

The thing about this is their suit says nothing of the sort, there claim seems quite simple: ...where the references to historic international time zone data* is replete with references to the fact the source for this information is, indeed, the ACS Atlas.."

* this data refers to the facts gleaned from the atlas. I mean it is clear they didn't do their homework. What is concerning is if no one steps up to the plate to help them and this gets settled out of court, which could happen if no one covers their fees. I'm sure with this glaring problem in the suit though, the defendants could easily get a contingency lawyer and just countersue for attorney fees.

Re:Complaint Text

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no allegation in the complaint that the copyrighted material has been registered at the US Copyright Office, or any reference to copyright registrations. Most likely this suit can be thrown out for lack of jurisdiction, as the copyright registration has to be at least applied for before suit can be filed.
That would be the least expensive way to get this travesty dumped out of court.

Re:does someone know what is going on?

[RNLockwood]

re: 42

Copyright infringement

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.rfcexpress.com/lawsuits/copyright-lawsuits/massachusetts-district-court/82641/astrolabe-inc-v-arthur-david-olson/summary/

PACER

[pirodude]

COMPLAINT, REQUEST FOR INJUNCTIVE RELIEF, RESTRAINING ORDER,
DAMAGES AND TRIAL BY JURY
Parties
1. Plaintiff, Astrolabe, Inc. [hereinafter “Astrolabe”], is a for-profit
Massachusetts corporation with a principal place of business at 350 Underpass
Road, P.O. Box 1750, Brewster, Barnstable County, Commonwealth of
Massachusetts 02631, and is engaged in the business of publication, marketing
and sale, including computer software publications and/or programs
pertaining to the field of astrology.
2. Defendant, Arthur David Olson [hereinafter “Olson”], is an individual with a
last and usual residence at 7406 Hancock Avenue, #2, Takoma Park,
Maryland 20912, and with a usual an ordinary place of business as a computer
specialist at the Laboratory of Experimental Carcinogenesis, Building 37,
Room 4146A, National Cancer Institute, National Institute of Health, 37
Convent Drive, MSC 4262, Bethesda, Maryland 20892.
3. Defendant, Paul R. Eggert [hereinafter “Eggert”], is an individual with a last
and usual residence in the State of California, who is engaged in the business
of computer services and programming, and employed as a lecturer with the
University of California, Los Angeles, Computer Science Department, with a
principal business address of: UCLA Computer Science, Box 951596,
4532JBH, Los Angeles, Calfiornia 90095-1596.
Case 1:11-cv-11725-GAO Document 1 Filed 09/30/11 Page 1 of 5
Jurisdiction
4. Pursuant to a written agreement, Astrolabe is the copyright assignee of the
copyright owner, of certain copyright-protected computer software programs
and information contained therein, pursuant to the Copyright Protection Act,
17 U.S.C. Section 101, et seq., known as the “ACS Atlas,” consisting of both
the “ACS International Atlas,” and the “ACS American Atlas,” in the form of
computer software program(s) and/or data bases, and in the form of electronic
output and future electronic media from said programs [hereinafter “the Works”].
5. These atlases set forth interpretations of historical time zone information
pertaining to innumerable locations throughout the world, based upon the
compilation of historical research and documentation regarding applicable
time zones officially and/or in actuality in effect, given the actual latitude and
longitudes of specific locations throughout the world.
6. Upon information and belief, defendants Olson and Eggert have unlawfully
reproduced the Works, in violation of the Copyright Protection Act, without
proper permission and/or authorization from the copyright holder, and without
paying royalties due and payable to the copyright holder and/or its assignee,
Astrolabe, in computer software format.
7. Plaintiff, Astrolabe publishes, markets and sells its ACS Atlas programs (the
Works) for commercial profit purposes to, inter alia, those interested and/or
engaged in the business and field of astrology seeking to determine the
historical time at any given time in any particular location, world-wide.
8. In connection with its rights to reproduce the Works, plaintiff Astrolabe is
contractually obligated to pay royalties to the owner/assignor of the copyright
and the authors of the same.
Facts
9. Defendant Olson’s unauthorized reproduction of the Works have been
published at ftp://elsie.nci.nih.gov/tzarchive.qz, where the references to
historic international time zone data is replete with references to the fact that
the source for this information is, indeed, the ACS Atlas.
10. In connection with his unlawful publication of some and/or any portion of the
Works, defendant Olson has wrongly and unlawfully asserted that this
information and/or data is “in the public domain,” in violation of the
protections afforded by the federal copyright laws.
11. Defendant Eggert’s unauthorized repro

Re:PACER

[pirodude]

The document in PDF format will be here shortly:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/67775601

Re:PACER

[networkBoy]

he's citing sources for a collection of facts.
How the hell is this case not already thrown out?
Collections of facts can not be copywritten
presentation of those facts can be, thus, since he is presenting the facts in another way he is not infringing on that.
-nB

Re:PACER

[Anonymous Coward]

Underpass road? Sure sound like trolls to me!

Re:PACER

[Roxoff]

1. Plaintiff, Astrolabe, Inc. [hereinafter “Astrolabe”], is a for-profit Massachusetts corporation with a principal place of business at 350 Underpass Road, P.O. Box 1750, Brewster, Barnstable County, Commonwealth of Massachusetts 02631, and is engaged in the business of publication, marketing and sale, including computer software publications and/or programs pertaining to the field of astrology.

So this company are into made-up science, reading the stars and telling the future? And because the own early versions of the time zone information they've stopped everyone in the world having the latest version? What a ridiculous situation they've caused. Surely they could have seen this coming?

Re:PACER

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it just my sense of irony, but did anyone else laugh when they read Astrolabe's address? Underpass? If that's not a troll, I don't know what is. :)

Re:PACER

[DickBreath]

The word you are looking for is 'copyrighted'.

Right as in right to copy. Not Write as in pencil.

The porpoise of copyright is to codify who has the right (not write) to copy.

(The word I am looking for is 'purpose'.)

Re:PACER

[Anonymous Coward]

pirodude, you are brazen! You just published (presumably without their permission) a document that Astrolabe clearly authored. The fact that this is public record appears to make no difference to them. I suggest you lawyer up! Perhaps you and Olson can get a group rate.

Re:PACER

[galaad2]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porpoise

Re:PACER

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. Yes, that was the joke. Good boy! You got the joke! Have a cookie!

Re:PACER

[AiwendilH]

18. As a direct and proximate cause of defendant Olsonâ(TM)s unlawful and wrongful publication of some and/or any portion of the Works, he has unlawfully deprived plaintiff of income it would have otherwise derived from sales of the same, and has wrongfully and unlawfully asserted that the information and/or date taken from the Works is in the âoepublic domain.â

$ date -u
Please open your "The American Atlas" book on page xxx and type the offset for your current timezone:

Yeah..pretty sure I would have bought the book seeing the comfort it offers. Or are they talking about the ACS Atlas database for timezones? I really have no clue there...but the so called copyright infringement seems to be from the book version (At least that's how I read the tzdata comments). So...someone took a lot of numbers from a book and put them in a textfile database. Later the rights on that book get sold and the new owner also creates a DB with those numbers...and complains someone else had that idea before? For my uneducated mind this only makes at least a little bit of sense if the problem lies in taking the numbers from the book...what leads to my first comment again. ;) (Not that I think allowing a copyright on those numbers in the first place makes sense)

Re:PACER

[Anonymous Coward]

8. In connection with its rights to reproduce the Works, plaintiff Astrolabe is
contractually obligated to pay royalties to the owner/assignor of the copyright
and the authors of the same.

Now my legalese might be off, and my understanding of copyright, but..

Doesn't this mean Astrolabe is currently licencing the information in question and therefore not the copyright holder? So in my mind this means unnamed holder implied here in point 8 would be the party to file against Olson, not Astrolabe.

This observation is of course moot since the US doesn't copyright facts anyway.

Re:PACER

[Anonymous Coward]

scribd is a blight on the internet, showing up higher in search results than the original source people are actually trying to find. please don't help them.

Re:PACER

[Anonymous Coward]

Facts can't be copyrighted, but I see something else interesting about this complaint.

To sue for copyright infringement, you either have to own the copyright, or be the exclusive licensee of the copyright.

"Astrolabe is the copyright assignee of the copyright owner"

"In connection with its rights to reproduce the Works, plaintiff Astrolabe is
contractually obligated to pay royalties to the owner/assignor of the copyright
and the authors of the same."

Astrolabe is not claiming to own the copyright, neither are they claiming to be the exclusive licensee. This case should be dismissed.

Re:PACER

[cpt kangarooski]

The porpoise of copyright is to codify who has the right (not write) to copy.

Well, it's a negative right, so it would be more precise to say who has a right to prohibit other people from copying. And that's just what it is, not what its purpose is.

Re:PACER

[unitron]

Collections of facts can be copywritten, but when you're writing ad copy the last thing you want to do is clutter it up with facts.

Re:PACER

[bmo]

Doesn't this mean Astrolabe is currently licencing the information in question and therefore not the copyright holder? So in my mind this means unnamed holder implied here in point 8 would be the party to file against Olson, not Astrolabe.

You are entirely correct.

It goes to standing. The first thing one decides in a court case is "does this person have standing to sue?" This must be answered before anything else, because it's the quickest way to move the court along - by getting rid of the most bogus suits the easiest way.

In the US, only the actual copyright holder gets to sue for infringement. No third parties. Astrolabe does not own the copyright(s).

They do not have standing.

Case dismissed, summary judgment.

--
BMO

Re:PACER

[Anonymous Coward]

DENNY CRANE!!

(Well, it is Boston after all...)

Re:PACER

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. Yes, that was the joke. Good boy! You got the joke! Have a cookie!

No thanks, I've got plenty from facebook already. :)

Has to do with TZ change dates

[Phoenix Rising]

Here's a decent and quick summary, clipped in part from the complaint. Short version: Astrolabe, Inc. has purchased the copyright to the American Atlas and is claiming that because Olson and others used the atlas as a source for some timezone information, the entire database infringes.

http://www.thedailyparker.com/PermaLink,guid,c5f28bae-4b9c-41ea-b7b7-8891ad63c938.aspx

Of course, the timezone information itself is public - the atlas only collected it.

Re:Has to do with TZ change dates

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks like the key claim they will have to prove is #5 (emphasis added):
5. These atlases set forth interpretations of historical time zone information
pertaining to innumerable locations throughout the world, based upon the
compilation of historical research and documentation regarding applicable
time zones officially and/or in actuality in effect, given the actual latitude and
longitudes of specific locations throughout the world.

Without "interpretation" the work is just "historic time zone information" and is not copyrightable.

Re:Has to do with TZ change dates

[ackthpt]

Here's a decent and quick summary, clipped in part from the complaint. Short version: Astrolabe, Inc. has purchased the copyright to the American Atlas and is claiming that because Olson and others used the atlas as a source for some timezone information, the entire database infringes.

http://www.thedailyparker.com/PermaLink,guid,c5f28bae-4b9c-41ea-b7b7-8891ad63c938.aspx

Of course, the timezone information itself is public - the atlas only collected it.

Reminds me of those YOU BETTER NOT COPY THIS DVD OR WE'LL CALL THE DVD LAW ON YOU AND THROW YOUR BUTT IN DVD JAIL messages I see at the start of DVDs loaded with content from the Public Domain.

Re:Has to do with TZ change dates

[omnichad]

That's not just data. If any restoration or color correction is applied, they own copyright on the derivative work. We really need more orgs setting out to restore old films for non-profit publishing and replication. It doesn't help that the original reels are in the hands of a select few.

Re:Has to do with TZ change dates

[Guy Harris]

Here's a decent and quick summary, clipped in part from the complaint. Short version: Astrolabe, Inc. has purchased the copyright to the American Atlas

Purchased it as in "they, rather than ACS, own it now", or licensed it, so that they're not the ultimate owners, they're just a licensee? The complaint says

Pursuant to a written agreement, Astrolabe is the copyright assignee of the copyright owner, of certain copyright-protected computer software programs and information contained therein, pursuant to the Copyright Protection Act,17 U.S.C. Section 101, et seq., known as the “ACS Atlas,” consisting of both the “ACS International Atlas,” and the “ACS American Atlas,” in the form of computer software program(s) and/or data bases, and in the form of electronic output and future electronic media from said programs [hereinafter “the Works”].

and

In connection with its rights to reproduce the Works, plaintiff Astrolabe is contractually obligated to pay royalties to the owner/assignor of the copyright and the authors of the same.

which seems to suggest the latter. If it's the latter, I don't know whether that means that Astrolabe can sue, or if ACS has to be the one suing. I'll leave that to copyright lawyers, or somebody with more time than I to look at the relevant bits of US copyright law, to answer.

Re:Has to do with TZ change dates

[Lehk228]

a simple amendment to copyright law requiring that copies of out of copyright works be submitted to the LoC in order for a derivative of such a work to be eligible for new copyright.

Re:Has to do with TZ change dates

[omnichad]

And what would that do? Having exclusive distribution is essentially the only financial motive for corporations making these restoration efforts.

Re:Has to do with TZ change dates

[Lehk228]

the pre-restoration version would have to be submitted

Re:Has to do with TZ change dates

[omnichad]

I definitely like that idea, but especially the older and more flammable film stocks require a lot of delicate work. More expense would go into the scanning than into the restoration, and it would seem to the studio like not enough financial motive - since other studios can leverage the first studio's investment to create another restored version and compete with them. Your method does, however, keep all the creative portions of that derivative work protected.

Copyright on time zone

[hantarto]

I am not think that anybody can be have copyright on time. Time belong to us all. We live in it and share it.

We all should be happy friend moving harmoniously through fourth dimension.

Person who think he own time or time zone is real stupidhead haha.

Source is on ftp.debian.org and others

[sam_vilain]

The source is so widely replicated it would be difficult to truly retract, for example it's here for those who are interested in looking at it to look for potentially infringing pieces.

Re:Source is on ftp.debian.org and others

[ddusza]

Sounds like the beginning rumblings of a new patent Troll....

Hang on,

[Pop69]

Isn't the TZ database a collection of facts and therefore not subject to copyright protection ?

If I'm correct then the answer to this suit should be a very short "Fuck off, Troll"

Re:Hang on,

[Nadaka]

In a sane world? Yes. Here on earth? Maybe.

Re:Hang on,

[geminidomino]

Unfortunately, the suit is already filed. "Fuck off, Troll" might be an appropriate response to one of the extortionist nastygrams they tend to send ahead of time, but doing so now would just lead to all sorts of unpleasantness (default judgments and/or contempt, etc...)

Re:Hang on,

[Anonymous Coward]

answers to lawsuits are hardly ever short and never cheap. But I hope he gets to countersue for vexatious litigation and recoup at least 100% of his lawyer's fees.

Re:Hang on,

[pixelpusher220]

The key question is whether a specific collection of facts can be copyrighted.

Facts obviously can't be copyrighted, but if I made a piece of 'art' made up of simple facts on a piece of paper, that piece of 'art' would be copyrighted but not the underlying facts.

Could you claim a database is that piece of 'art'?

It's a pathetic copyright troll to be sure, but I'm just playing devil's advocate.

Re:Hang on,

[TooMuchToDo]

So what lawyer do I write a check to so they go after the throat of the troll?

Re:Hang on,

[Dunbal]

In the US, absolutely not, and he will be tried as a criminal.

Re:Hang on,

[Eevee]

If I'm correct then the answer to this suit should be a very short "Fuck off, Troll"

Please, this is the legal world. A simple "We refer you to the reply given in the case of Arkell v. Pressdram" would be more appropriate.

Re:Hang on,

[Time_Ngler]

Hold on there... that's for the judge to decide in a courtroom, in the game of justice. Much like the game of chicken, the only way to win is to go full speed ahead and hope the other side runs out of money first. It takes money to play the game right, and come out on top.

Re:Hang on,

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe that this is similar to the case of recipes (cooking).

You can't copyright a recipe: http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl122.html:

Copyright law does not protect recipes that are mere listings of ingredients. Nor does it protect other mere listings of ingredients such as those found in formulas, compounds, or prescriptions. Copyright protection may, however, extend to substantial literary expression—a description, explanation, or illustration, for example—that accompanies a recipe or formula or to a combination of recipes, as in a cookbook.

Re:Hang on,

[urulokion]

answers to lawsuits are hardly ever short and never cheap. But I hope he gets to countersue for vexatious litigation and recoup at least 100% of his lawyer's fees.

They don't have to countersue for vexation litigation. USC section on Copyright is one of the few area of the law where you can make a claim for expenses in defending against a copyright lawsuit. The case should be over and done with a summary judgment for the defendants.

Re:Hang on,

[cfulmer]

A collection of facts can be copyrighted, but the facts themselves cannot be. The copyright would extend only to whatever creativity it took to select and present the facts. So, for example, the white pages are not protected because it's just a list of all the names and numbers. But, if you had a directory of your favorite restaurants, then the directory itself is protected. (But, the facts in that directory are not protected.)

Re:Hang on,

[snowgirl]

Eh... you can't really get charged with contempt for telling your opposing council to fuck off... unless perhaps you do it in court and directly to them...

But you're perfectly free to tell an opposing council in a meeting to fuck off and die... sure it's not going to solve anything, and just create an escalation of aggression in the lawsuit, but then we're all just trolls 'round these parts, right?

Re:Hang on,

[Anonymous Coward]

They are claiming that the time zone atlas contains data that is not "fact" but interpretations of historical information.

Re:Hang on,

[Darinbob]

Actually from the filings it appears that the defendants ignored the "take down" notices. If so, then they were saying "go know thyself".

Re:Hang on,

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately, the suit is already filed. "Fuck off, Troll" might be an appropriate response to one of the extortionist nastygrams they tend to send ahead of time, but doing so now would just lead to all sorts of unpleasantness (default judgments and/or contempt, etc...)

In federal court, "fuck off, troll" takes the form of a Rule 11 motion to dismiss with sanctions.

Re:Hang on,

[Anonymous Coward]

.. seconded. Where do I send my money to hang this troll?

Re:Hang on,

[Anonymous Coward]

If I'm correct then the answer to this suit should be a very short "Fuck off, Troll"

Sounds like that's exactly what they did when first contacted. Paragraph 13:

On or about May 12, 2011, Astrolabe sent a “takedown notice” to both the National Institute of Health [hereinafter “NIH”], and the University of California Los Angeles hereinafter “UCLA”], which have failed and/or refused to remove the unauthorized publication and copying of the Works.See Exhibit 1, May 12, 2011, Letter to NIH, and Exhibit 2, May 12, 2011,Letter to UCLA

Complaint

Copyright infringement

[Anonymous Coward]

"Defendant Olson’s unauthorized reproduction of the Works have been published at ftp://elsie.nci.nih.gov/tzarchive.qz, where the references to historic international time zone data is replete with references to the fact that the source for this information is, indeed, the ACS Atlas."

http://www.thedailyparker.com/PermaLink,guid,c5f28bae-4b9c-41ea-b7b7-8891ad63c938.aspx

http://www.scribd.com/doc/67760407/ASTROLABE-INC-Vs-ARTHUR-DAVID-OLSON-and-PAUL-EGGERT-Complaint

To paraphrase Jerry Maguire

[Anonymous Coward]

Shut up, just shut up. You had me at "astrology".

Re:does someone know what is going on?

[jd]

Not necessarily. If the plaintiffs are the usual Eliza bots, memory doesn't extend beyond extracting keywords from the previous reply.

They've stirred the hornet's nest

[Myria]

Cue legal support from IBM, Apple and the EFF in 3...2...1...

Re:They've stirred the hornet's nest

[Anonymous Coward]

You can also contact the people at Astrolabe directly, perhaps at home, to tell them what impact this may have on your business.

http://alabe.com/history.htm

If they ask you "do you know what time it is?" then you can say that you don't know what time it is in their timezone because THEY FUCKING TOOK DOWN THE OLSON DATABASE!!!1

Copyright!

[aneroid]

The database holds timezone information...about different timezones. Did they pay the world's governments the royalties for publishing their countries' priviliged info? That is clearly a trademark violation!

Option B: Some company wielding a patent for a 'database schema specifically designed to maintain timezone information' is going after him --- with the added claim that by warning everyone in advance, he would be facilitating the propagation of the patented schema/design, resulting in a further patent violation.

(imho, must be something retarded if he's a defendant and the case involves "timezones database"...too basic to be infringing; and yet important)

Astrolabe

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like an anal lube.

Information is not protected by USA copyright.

[John Hasler]

"...defendant Olson has wrongly and unlawfully asserted that this information and/or data is in the public domain,"

Under USA law all information and data is in the public domain. Only creative expression is protected by copyright.

Re:Information is not protected by USA copyright.

[blair1q]

Under USA law all information and data is in the public domain. Only creative expression is protected by copyright.

Try that with scores for NFL games. Some data is creative expression.

This data isn't, as the atlas was created from other people's facts.

So the problem here is that the TZ database admits it took the data from the atlas.

Personally I see it as fair use of facts that didn't belong to the plaintiff. You'd think their lawyer would see it that way and tell them not to waste their money.

Re:Information is not protected by USA copyright.

[djdanlib]

That's news to me! I'd like to repeat it, if true, with more information than "I read it on a forum"... can you recall specifically how you heard about that?

Re:Information is not protected by USA copyright.

[Anonymous Coward]

every newspaper in the country publish games scores - your point is lost

Re:Information is not protected by USA copyright.

[geekoid]

I can repeat football scores all day long, there isn't anything they can do about it. Now,. showing there material is different.
Yes, please don't waste your money on me probably isn't likely to happen with this lawyer; who has a reputation.

Re:Information is not protected by USA copyright.

[blair1q]

Every newspaper has, either directly or through a parent company, obtained written permission to do so. The leagues have armies of people who do nothing but look for copyright and trademark infringement in the media, or bars or clubs that are playing games on their TVs without a proper license to do so.

Re:Information is not protected by USA copyright.

[Mr. Slippery]

Try that with scores for NFL games. Some data is creative expression.

What about scores for NFL games? Basketball scores are non-copyrightable data, I can't imagine football being any different.

So now what...

[Oswald McWeany]

So now what- all time zones cease to exist? How do I know what time it is?

does anybody really know what time it is?
does anybody really care?
....(about time)

Re:So now what...

[JWW]

oh, I can't imagine why...

Re:So now what...

[ddusza]

If the timezones will cease to exist, then I declare that my home is now on the time of UTC+4.352hrs, except on Thursdays & Saturdays where the time will be noted as UTC-6.14hrs.

Re:So now what...

[shogun]

Except it can't be *UTC* anything as UTC wouldn't exist..

Re:So now what...

[The Archon V2.0]

I hereby redefine UTC as one (1) standard amount of potato chips that I (me) eat (yum) in one (1) sitting.

the end of timezones?

[snowbike]

It is too much to hope, but what is this eliminated the use of timezones? One global clock to rule them all!!

Re:the end of timezones?

[Anonymous Coward]

Unlikely as most of the world don't give a flip what some US judge thinks in this case.

Re:the end of timezones?

[JarekC]

It's not that easy. People would still like to go to work in the morning and get back home in the afternoon. But that, depending on where they live, would mean they start their work day on one calendar day and finish it on the next one. That would be difficult to handle by HR / payroll departments, especially for companies which are not used to deal with night shifts. For example if you want a day off, which day that would be: the one you start your work, the one you end, or both?

Re:the end of timezones?

[Anonymous Coward]

Good riddance to time zones. Now when are we going to get on the metric system?

Re:the end of timezones?

[blair1q]

That'd suck. I already wake up too early.

Re:the end of timezones?

[Anonymous Coward]

It is too much to hope, but what is this eliminated the use of timezones? One global clock to rule them all!!

and to the timelines bind them?

Re:the end of timezones?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe when US use same unit system as rest of the world...

Re:the end of timezones?

[Anonymous Coward]

UTC!! UTC!! UTC!! UTC!! Come on everybody chant with me!! UTC!! UTC!!

Re:the end of timezones?

[Anonymous Coward]

If there is actually a creative part in timezones, I'm going to create my own right now. If you want to communicate with me, please make sure all your software supports my 21h 54m 30.2s timezone.

Re:the end of timezones?

[RussR42]

Remember this time people, 80 past 2 on April 47th, it's the dawn of a new enlightenment!

Re:the end of timezones?

[perlchild]

This isnt a patent anyways, just copyright on this one database. Any other database with timezones would do, or just paying ACS for their copy.
Or paying Apple, Sun, Oracle or anyone else who pays ACS for their copy.

Re:the end of timezones?

[Lehk228]

days would still end at midnight, midnight would no longer be at 12AM

Re:the end of timezones?

[mgiuca]

The thing about this is it isn't just a database of current timezones. If it was, it would be reasonably easy to reproduce from scratch. This database -- I have read it -- is a fascinating historical document, in that it does as well as it can to catalogue every single historical time zone used everywhere on Earth, since the railroad days when they realised they needed to worry about this sort of thing. This allows you to say "here is a time in UTC -- what was the corresponding local time at this location?" for any time dating back I think about 200 years. That isn't just for historical interest, but some software may actually make use of it.

So if we all decided to end timezones tomorrow and established a new global time (I suppose we might as well reset the calendar as well to 0 AJ -- After Jobs, seeing as how the world media seems to think he was the next messiah), that would simply constitute a new entry in the database, and wouldn't obviate the need for all of the old entries.

Re:the end of timezones?

[Anonymous Coward]

So you'd need some sort of "database" indicating what time midnight is at each location on Earth. To make it simpler you could maybe group places into a relatively small number of "zones" which use the same midnight everywhere in the zone even though it doesn't strictly correspond to the apparent position of the sun (or lack thereof) in the sky.

Y'know, I kinda like this idea.

Re:the end of timezones?

[jbolden]

We have that GMT.

OS TZ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Time to move to an OpenSource TZ...perhaps one without the "savings time" that cost more than they save.

All your timezones are belong to us?

Re:OS TZ?

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is, the Olson database is the "open source" (actually public domain) timezone database. To a first approximation, everyone (open and closed) uses it, everyone thought it was clearly unencumbered by imaginary property bullshit. Mind you, this company's complaint is AFAICS essentially bullshit given US case law, but that doesn't mean it's not a nasty and costly thing for a person to deal with. Olson personally maintained this stuff for years and intended to retire this year (he isn't getting any younger).

Frivolous lawsuit?

[bradley13]

Since facts cannot be copyrighted, surely this is a case where you file for damages, legal fees, and demand sanctions against the opposing attorney?

Re:Frivolous lawsuit?

[blair1q]

Facts you find can't be copyrighted. Facts you create can be copyrighted. Just try writing a story about a basketball game for your newspaper without a letter in the paper's files from the NBA saying you can publish it.

Re:Frivolous lawsuit?

[Anonymous Coward]

I always thought that rule was kind of funny. It is descended from the rule that performances are copyrightable. That is why you cannot record plays and the like. The reason for this is the creative aspect of the performers. Of course, to claim that the same applies to sports is to really say that you fixed them ahead of time and that by giving descriptions of the game, you are really giving away the story.

Of course, many scholars argue that the statement by the leagues that you cannot do stories like that is copyfraud or claiming that you have copyright when you don't.

Re:Frivolous lawsuit?

[John Hasler]

Facts you create can be copyrighted.

Wrong. In the USA only creative expression is protected by copyright.

Just try writing a story about a basketball game for your newspaper without a letter in the paper's files from the NBA saying you can publish Just try writing a story about a basketball game for your newspaper without a letter in the paper's files from the NBA saying you can publish

Citation?

Re:Frivolous lawsuit?

[blair1q]

The random portions of a performance are no less creative parts of it. The rules and situation are constructed by the league, and the teams perform the random trials within it. The data produced by it are merely an expression of that.

Re:Frivolous lawsuit?

[blair1q]

You look it up. I had this argument 20 years ago and forgot where I left that 9-track tape.

Re:Frivolous lawsuit?

[Anonymous Coward]

A quaint end to the argument! Should he get off your lawn too?

Re:Frivolous lawsuit?

[blair1q]

I had exactly that thought as I hit Submit.

L'esprit d'button.

Re:Frivolous lawsuit?

[nabsltd]

Just try writing a story about a basketball game for your newspaper without a letter in the paper's files from the NBA saying you can publish it.

Yes, newspapers and other media outlets have agreements with sports teams that give them extra access as long as they follow "the rules", and sometimes stupid teams will pull access from one or more reporters (or even entire companies).

Teams that do that are stupid because today big media actually has the upper hand, as if the NBA pissed off ESPN enough so that ESPN reduced coverage of the NBA to what they could get without that extra access, the NBA would suffer more than ESPN.

Since these rules are not law, but are merely part of the contract, nothing else can happen to the media company or reporter other than losing "special" access.

Bogus Lawsuit

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmm..."...the timezone database used in about every unix/linux platform in use on the planet..." Hmmmm...and just exactly WHO hates Linux....hmmmmmm.....?
They'll be deep this time, but keep beating the bushes! Evil will out!

Astrolo-GY?!

[Fishbulb]

Wait, wait, they're an ASTROLOGY company, not ASTRONOMY?! What, did their crystal ball tell them they'd win in court?

Re:Astrolo-GY?!

[MarkGriz]

What, did their crystal ball tell them they'd win in court?

No, but perhaps the stars and planets did.

Just ask SCO

[colinrichardday]

Does IBM use time zone info? They're pretty good at squashing insects.

End Copyright

[Zaphod The 42nd]

Can we PLEASE overhaul / ditch copyright law already? These kind of cases are getting absolutely ridiculous. Between patent trolls suing people years after the fact for something they didn't even have a patent on at the time, and trademark owners suing their own fans for making fair use derivative works, I think we can all agree that this massively hinders creativity and development of new technologies / inventions / ideas in the United States and needs to go. Now.

That most would rather settle than pay their lawyers to defend themselves even when innocent proves that the law is extremely burdensome.

Re:End Copyright

[MetalliQaZ]

In this case, the copyright law doesn't have to be modified. It already specifies that facts cannot be copyrighted.

I think what you want is tort reform.

Re:End Copyright

[dkleinsc]

Can we PLEASE overhaul / ditch copyright law already?

No, we can't. Not because it's a bad idea, but because on the side of copyright as it is we have all the big media companies which every single politician depends on for a successful campaign.

Re:End Copyright

[SteeldrivingJon]

No. Because if I write a novel I don't want some greasy Hollywood executive to make a movie from it without paying me.

Re:End Copyright

[Zaphod The 42nd]

Works are only valuable because you allow people to enjoy them.
Starwars is so huge because every kid plays it in his basement. He draws droids at school. He writes his own fanfic.
Luckily, starwars is the exception that proves the rule, in that they are generally tolerant of this sort of thing. But most copyright holders are extremely protective.

Certainly in non-commercial uses I think we can agree that you should be able to do pretty much whatever you want. Its fair use. And actually, it ADDS value to your product. Was Olsen profiting from the Time Zone database? He's not a greasy Hollywood executive.

Re:End Copyright

[SteeldrivingJon]

"Works are only valuable because you allow people to enjoy them. "

If anyone's going to *profit* from my creation then I'd better get a cut.

Look, this is a bad copyright case. But that's no reason to throw out copyright.

Sometimes there are valid copyright infringement cases, where the little guy stands up to the rich people screwing him.

Re:End Copyright

[Zaphod The 42nd]

If anyone's going to *profit* from my creation then I'd better get a cut.

Good job completely missing my point.

Re:End Copyright

[SteeldrivingJon]

No, I got your point. I'm not a freetard. Getting rid of copyright helps the powerful more than it helps the weak.

Re:End Copyright

[Zaphod The 42nd]

I very explicitly said non-commercial. If you're going to go on about hollywood stealing your ideas, go find a soapbox. It has nothing to do with TFA.

Re:End Copyright

[Zaphod The 42nd]

"Was Olsen profiting from the Time Zone database? He's not a greasy Hollywood executive." (my top comment)

Again, you fail to read what I wrote and miss my point, arguing against yourself and a strawman.

Re:End Copyright

[Zaphod The 42nd]

Also, "freetard", very nice Ad Hominem right there. Definitely proves your point.

I mean, It would be SO HARD to come up with bad names for you, so you must be right.

New Business Plan

[Anonymous Coward]

1.Create Company that loans money to 'Sure Thing' lawsuit victims at 10% return.
2.Demand compensation from claimant if won. / Claim as loss on tax return if lost.
3.Profit

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Outcome predictions obvious

[erroneus]

The defendant in this case should file an immediate claim for recover of damages for the down time suffered plus attorneys fees.

It is facts being copied, not a creative work. The facts are coming from other sources -- they are not making these facts up out of thin air. That they collected and sold the facts is not relevant -- there is no blood, sweat or tears to be accounted for in copyright claims. We have seen this before in phone books, in baseball statistics and more. I can't think of a single instance where factual data was protected by copyright and succeeded in court. (I even recall an attempt at a city or county government asserting copyright claims over laws! You know, the words on pages we are all bound by?)

So unless someone can cite a case where it was facts (and not formatting) that were successfully protected in court under copyright law, I don't think this case will fly too high.

This will be expensive for defendants, however and so I would recommend preparing to collect damages sooner rather than later.

Re:Outcome predictions obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

Even the deliberately placed misinformation in his encyclopedia wasn't enough for Fred Worth to win a lawsuit against the Trivial Pursuit inventors.
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trivial_Pursuit#Fred_Worth_lawsuit

Re:Outcome predictions obvious

[Descartess]

This is an outrageous attack against a case of perfectly legal use of published data.

Where tzdata has used information from ACS atlas, it quotes it source (Thomas Shanks, former employee of ACS Inc, San Diego, who appears as author on the printed books American Atlas and International Atlas).
In each case, the information published by Shanks was critically reviewed by the tzdata community. In many cases, Shanks' information was rejected, in many cases it was accepted over other contradicting (or confirming) information.

Shanks did not create the information in his published books, he collected it from other published sources, though the books fail to name the source of the information in nearly all case.

Relevant sources of Shanks, especially for International atlas, were
- Gabriel, Traite de l'heure dans le Monde, Paris
- Henri Le Corre, Regimes Horaires pour l'Eruope et l'Afrique
- Doris Chase Doane, Time changes in the world
- Doris Chase Doane, Time changes in the USA
- Curran and Taylor, World daylight saving time, Chicago 1935
many other publications appearing in the astrology domain.

The two books by Shanks consist to 95% of lists of towns with longitude and latitude, their assignment to counties or provinces, and their assignment to timezone
history tables.

Shanks has about 2000 of these timezone history tables, they make up about 5% of the books volume.

Tzdata quotes Shanks for about 100 of these tables, as one of the sources of historical timezone information.
In each case, the data given of Shanks were critically reviewed.

A perfectly legitimate use of published data.

The information about which time public clocks showed at a particular date in a particular country or region is by its very nature public information. It is not subject to copyright. Shanks does not own it, he has only collected it, and he is as often false as other collectors are sometimes false.

The use tzdata makes of such information is fully legitimate. It did by no means copy data from these books. It critically reviewed some of the information found there, and used a small amount (maybe 1% of the book content) in a completely different context and different representation.

The attempt by Astrolabe to claim private rights on public domain data must be forcefully resisted by the tzdata community.
I would hope that large users of tzdata, like Apple (in IOS and MAC OS-X), Redhat and other Linux distributors etc will contribute to a defense fund for Olson, and/or contribute legal assistance.

Defenses and motivations

[PatentMagus]

Whoever related this to the SCO litigation is closer than he knows. The timezone database has been widely hosted and replicated - most notably on *.gov servers. A finding of copyright infringement could allow the plaintiff to collect against all sorts of entities - including the US government. I also suspect that statutory damages are possible. So, winning this case would be a massive massive payday.

The defenses include that the data itself is factual and that the atlas data itself has been used openly and notoriously for so many years that the copyright is extinguished by laches. Something that can add strength to the defense is that the form (as in formatting, data storage, etc.) of the factual data is different.

Regardless of all that, this case could get pushed pretty far through the appeals process. Those US government pockets are deep are about as deep as they get. Someone also mentioned IBM's bug squashing abilities. Has the database been hosted off a *.ibm.com location?

For those wanting to check out the case law, the place to start is:
Feist Publications, Inc., v. Rural Telephone Service Co., 499 U.S. 340 (1991)

In a more open source centric mode, has anyone thrown down a web site for gathering timezone info?

Re:Defenses and motivations

[Oligonicella]

"Those US government pockets are deep are about as deep as they get."

Yes they are. They are also pockets that can also simply say "Piss off", so counting on that win is bad planning.

Re:Defenses and motivations

[Anonymous Coward]

The defenses include that the data itself is factual and that the atlas data itself has been used openly and notoriously for so many years that the copyright is extinguished by laches. Something that can add strength to the defense is that the form (as in formatting, data storage, etc.) of the factual data is different.

Is there legal precedent for the copyright being non-enforceable if it has been used so openly/is so well known? Isn't that kind of like the "Happy Birthday" song? I believe "Happy Birthday" is an enforceable copyright if performed with > 25 listeners.

Re:Defenses and motivations

[ShadowRangerRIT]

In more technical terms, the feds have sovereign immunity; unless a law is passed explicitly waiving the protection against a lawsuit, or the federal government voluntarily consents to the suit, you can't sue them. They don't have to quash the suit, they needn't do a thing for sovereign immunity to apply by default. And to my knowledge, there is no such law relating to IP infringement by the federal government.

Re:Defenses and motivations

[smellotron]

The timezone database has been widely hosted and replicated - most notably on *.gov servers.

I found it in my iTunes install one day. Imagine that!

Atlas companies have used copyright traps

[Jaryn]

Atlas companies have used copyright traps before.. Just add a couple fake towns on your map, and if you find another company selling a map with those towns, you know you can sue them for copying your map.

Could a company add a fake time zone to a list of time zones, name it something funny (creative), and claim copyright infringement when it appears in a database? Since really, it's not a fact at all, the made up entry was... art?

Re:Atlas companies have used copyright traps

[omnichad]

That would be a creative work protected by copyright, yeah. Though I personally think it's stupid.

Re:Atlas companies have used copyright traps

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe the makers of the game Trivial Pursuit where caught with one of these, although, if memory serves, they won. It still qualifies as a collection of facts, even if you intentionally make up "facts" because you aren't telling you're reader it's a fabrication. This was upheld by an appeals court, and the Supreme Court declined to review it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trivial_Pursuit#Fred_Worth_lawsuit

Re:Atlas companies have used copyright traps

[Anonymous Coward]

Only if you could then sue them into oblivion when your car breaks down near a non-existent town, and you suffer extreme anguish over the trek through the pouring rain, looking for help in their fictional town.

An Atlas with fake data is worthless.

Accidentally putting incorrect data could be covered under the accuracy clauses, but knowingly putting false data is different. It should fall under the category of gross negligence.

Re:Atlas companies have used copyright traps

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a difference between a lie and a work of fiction. The reason map companies can do this is because (if i remember correctly) maps are specifically protected under copyright law, not because the fake streets are "creative".

Re:Atlas companies have used copyright traps

[Sabriel]

Hmm. So the premise is: facts are not copyrightable, arrangements and fictions are copyrightable.

Bob collects, arranges and publishes a book of what he claims are facts about the world for $19.95 a copy. Tom buys Bob's book, strips the arrangement, and inputs the facts into a public database of his own devising. Bob reveals he inserted fictional items in his book of "facts" and sues Tom for copyright infringement.

Is there a "no intent" defense available to Tom? Does Tom have a case for fraudulent misrepresentation by Bob? Can everyone who bought Bob's book also sue Bob?

And if someone got killed following one of Bob's fictional "facts", is Bob liable?

Re:Atlas companies have used copyright traps

[gzipped_tar]

It's called fraud. And since it's a deliberate act of fabricating "data" it cannot be legitimately covered by those DISCLAIMER terms.

[standard IANAL disclaimer here]

Re:Atlas companies have used copyright traps

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm aware of the common practice of watermarking maps by slightly changing the shape of roads or cities or rivers, but is it ok to include totally false data into a map? Can they be sued because they provided false information to customers? After all atlas are supposed to provide factual data, not fiction and entertainment. The same applies to time zone databases.

Re:Atlas companies have used copyright traps

[Anonymous Coward]

Not the case here. Olson created his own time "zones". They have no bearing to the ones in the ACS Atlas. Different format, different structure, different data for that matter. Shanks/ACS uses a Country/possible zones for that country/City format for their data. Olson uses a city-zone format with named listed exceptions to the general city-zone structure. I can't see that it could be compared in any reasonable manner. Olson data is far more thorough than what is found in ACS (unless you are an astrologer reaching way back in time before any of us were born). Also, the organization of data in the Olson format is far more sophisticated and compact than what is found in the ACS Atlas. Moreover, ACS is in a book formation. Olson's is a web list discussion format.

Re:Atlas companies have used copyright traps

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe ACS's 'accidental' errors in data tables for Europe (missing one to three time changes in 10 to 40-ties of XX) in ACS atlas, not present in original sources (and still present in Olsen database too), were not sloppiness or typing errors, but purposedly introduced 'watermarks" to find out who copied their data and who collected it by himself?

Re:Atlas companies have used copyright traps

[onkelonkel]

"The Annihilation of Angkor Apeiron" - Fred Saberhagen

not to mention

[Anonymous Coward]

Try that with scores for NFL games. Some data is creative expression.

That that's complete bullshit. Scores shouldn't be able to be copyrighted, and if I had the money to pay for lawyer fees, I'd take on the NFL myself.

Re:not to mention

[blair1q]

It's been tried. Sports leagues are the creators of their content, and own everything about it.

Ever wonder why they read that disclaimer in every televised game? Ever notice that it includes mere "descriptions" of the game?

Now you know. They can, and do, own it.

Re:not to mention

[nabsltd]

Now you know. They can, and do, lie about the law.

FTFY

First of all, the whole "express written consent" spiel is there to make sure that nobody tries to re-broadcast the game and claim "Joe from marketing said it was OK". Second, it only applies to the exact broadcast you are watching (like all copyright)...if you are sitting in the stands, you can legally give a play-by-play over your phone, as you own the copyright on that speech. Third, despite what it the spiel about "any rebroadcast", etc., fair use still applies, so you can legally do things like use snippets from broadcasts without any permission.

Not any more

[davidwr]

Wiki-administrator David Gerard reverted it back, with the very telling comment "rv apparent vanity entry to redirect".

Re:Not any more

[Guy Harris]

Wiki-administrator David Gerard reverted it back, with the very telling comment "rv apparent vanity entry to redirect".

What the comment "tells" me is that Gerard may have misjudged JulDes' and "TZ master"'s motivations. It sounds to me as if they just wanted to give information on the author of the atlases used as a source for some of the tz database entries. (Whether Thomas G. Shanks is notable enough to deserve a Wikipedia page is another matter, on which I have no opinion.)

the TZ list is dead. long live the TZ list.

[Gravis Zero]

the obvious solution is to create a new list of timezones for people to use. so... who will it be?

Attorneys email address

[jlbprof]

The Plaintiffs attorney is Julie Molloy and her email address is: jcourtmolloy@gmail.com Maybe everyone should ask Julie Molloy about this?

Re:Attorneys email address

[Anonymous Coward]

The Plaintiffs attorney is Julie Molloy and her email address is: jcourtmolloy@gmail.com Maybe everyone should ask Julie Molloy about this?

A search on that email address leads to a page full of personal info for her and a bunch of other people, including whatever IP she was using in 2007. I hope she has time to pursue her own MGL Chapter 93H action.

Presentation of facts

[Registered Coward v2]

I guess one issue would be is how different was the presentation of the facts - if the TZ DB was substantially different then it would seem that they have a strong case. Even when a company admits to copying facts (as in the Trivial Pursuit case) it seems as long as the way the facts are presented is what is key. You can't copy the book verbatim, but you can use the facts therein to create a distinctly different product. INAL, but that is what I garnered from the TP case.

Re:Presentation of facts

[John Hasler]

> You can't copy the book verbatim...

That depends on the book. If it is a simple compilation of facts lacking sufficient creative expression to qualify for copyright protection, you can.

Re:Presentation of facts

[Registered Coward v2]

> You can't copy the book verbatim...

That depends on the book. If it is a simple compilation of facts lacking sufficient creative expression to qualify for copyright protection, you can.

While that's probably technically correct - I would not be surprised if a book's layout would be copyrightable. The underlying facts aren't but a verbatim copy which includes the layout (such as scanning and creating a PDF) might, just as taking someone's electronic phone database and creating an electronic copy that mirrors the presentation layout of the original might.

Hmmmmmmmm....

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's see...the database is used by almost every Unix/Linux system on the planet......now who, I say, who hates Linux?
Hmmmm.....we'll all just have to keep beating the bushes, and eventually, they will come out. They'll be deeper in the bush, this time, but they're there, mark my words.....

ACS database

[PaperGeek]

About 10 years ago I created a startup that used the ACS database. ACS used to stand for Astro Computing Services and they used to publish ephemera as well as several publications which allowed you to lookup timezone information. This is a fairly extensive set of data if you want to translate local time at a particular time in the past (say, someone's time of birth as recorded on a birth certificate) into UTC time. Time zones have changed, time change rules have changed (for example, double summer time was observed in England during WWII) and one of the books I used to have from ACS (published back in the 1980s) claimed that this information had been compiled from a wide variety of historical records. One possible scenario is that Olson had written permission to use some parts of the data but a troll has purchased the copyright and is trying to profit from it and pretending they don't know nothin' about no permission. That would be a crying shame since putting the data in such a compressed form that is used on countless *nix servers and devices was an immense task - the original database was an ugly conglomeration of flat files that needed quite a bit of spanking to get it into a useable format, and was certainly not within orders of magnitude of the compactness of the Olson database. Anyway, on the surface, if this is the same ACS database there is quite a lot of data involved, much of it covering historical edge conditions, but I haven't checked to see how many of the edge conditions prior to 1970 are reproduced in the Olson database. From what little I know of the way these things work, the plaintiff would have to show that there was willful infringement without permission and that some damages occurred, but there would not be any value in the ACS data unless you needed to know with great reliability whether daylight savings time was in effect, say, in some rural county in Indiana at 4:06 am on 21 October 1947 (and for that matter, what was the timezone).

Re:ACS database

[Anonymous Coward]

There was no written (or other) permission to Olson to use the data... PERIOD.

Re:ACS database

[Anonymous Coward]

No permission was needed.

Copyright covers works of authorship about history, but it does not cover historical data, even when a copyrighted work refers to actual historical data within it. Historical data consists of facts, and facts are not works of authorship which can be copyrighted.

Re:ACS database

[Anonymous Coward]

needed to know with great reliability whether daylight savings time was in effect, say, in some rural county in Indiana at 4:06 am on 21 October 1947 (and for that matter, what was the timezone).

The answer is no. Indiana didn't have Daylight Savings Time until just a few years ago. I should know, I live here.

Just to answer your question. :)

Timezone was a band circa 1983 so RIAA

[gearloos]

Timezone was a band circa 1983 so RIAA (thinks they) own the rights to anything having to do with a Timezone. You have been served. Next step is everyone has to turn clocks off or pay royalties! lmao-

Fiji sues over unauthorized use of "Astrolabe"

[Anonymous Coward]

Newswire Fiji: Apparently the good folks over at the Fiji islands have a reef they call the "Great Astrolabe Reef". Obviously this natural wonder has been around for a while, predating the appropriation by Astrolabe Inc. More News at Eleven...

Arkell v Pressdram

[maroberts]

You're correct, lawyers don't indulge in such profanities

In the Arkell v Pressdram case, Fuck Off is never said directly, instead the defendants (Pressdram) ask a hypothetical question as to how Arkell would feel if the response was "Fuck Off"

Re:the TZ list is dead. long live the TZ list.

[spidercoz]

No, the obvious solution is to do away with timezones altogether. What is this, the dark ages?

Even I can write some of the defenses to this one

[maroberts]

a) ACS is not the copyright holder and therefore probably does not have the right to sue - see the recent Righthaven judgements
b) Fair Use
        i) the TZ DB is not for profit and as an information service
        ii) The historical facts with respect to dates and timezones are not subject to copyright. With specific reference to the facts presented in the Atlas, Astrolabe would only have copyright on the creative expression of those facts in the exact format of the Atlas, and not to a database table of timezones, whether they were derived from the facts contained in the Atlas or not
        iii) The work of the timezone database, whilst citing the Atlas, is transformative and therefore not a breach of the original copyright.
c) Limitation of damages
        ACS Atlas cannot claim any damages from prior to the date their own database was available (estoppel?).

I'm surprised the judge granted the temporary injunction; it could be denied simply on the grounds that innumerable third parties would be harmed in the event that the case were found to be baseless.

Incidentally, if you're someone using the database, forget amicus briefs and start filing declaration of non-infringement lawsuits with respect to the database in your own jurisdiction; they're very expensive to defend in every state ( see Righthaven)

I'm a Slashdot commentator, not a lawyer, so don't follow the above advice without consulting one.

Er...

[jhantin]

#include <std/disclaimer.h>
#include <std/ianal.h>

NFL's weapon in this context is trademark, not copyright. You can talk about the score when Oakland played Pittsburgh all day long, but if you mention the teams' actual names in a commercial context you'll likely need a license. That's also why so many ads for sports bars talk about watching the "big game" or "football championship". NFL's trademark enforcement is so over-the-top I've actually heard radio ads where they lampooned it (and probably tempted fate) by advertising a "Su[BLEEP]wl party".

Re:Er...

[blair1q]

Trademark is a different issue, and indeed is why the word "Superbowl" is only used in advertising by its owners.

You can't talk about the information created by a game at all in a money-making context without making yourself legally liable to the league.

Re:Er...

[jhantin]

You can't talk about the information created by a game at all in a money-making context without making yourself legally liable to the league.

NBA tried to claim that in NBA v. STATS. At 1088, 1093, 1094 [come on Google, put in page and paragraph anchors!]:

NBA games do not constitute "original works of authorship" and thus do not fall within the subject matter of copyright protection ... I decline NBA's invitation to stretch the Copyright Act's grant of exclusivity to subject matters so far removed and qualitatively different from those at the core of its protection. ... Similarly, NBA has failed to show an infringement of its copyright in the broadcasts of NBA games. ... The mere fact that the information conveyed by defendants often is acquired by viewing the broadcasts of NBA games does not alter the fact that defendants have not copied the "`constituent elements of the [broadcasts of NBA games] that are original.'"

A state law claim of misappropriation was dismissed on appeal on the basis that federal copyright law preempts the state law. The 2nd Circuit's decision at 851 quotes Computer Associates v. Altai at 717 (this case is a good read for the Slashdot crowd: copyright, trade secret and software):

An action will not be saved from preemption by elements such as awareness or intent, which alter `the action's scope but not its nature'.... Following this `extra element' test, we have held that unfair competition and misappropriation claims grounded solely in the copying of a plaintiff's protected expression are preempted by section 301.

That said, the above case law may be merely academic if the sports leagues are just trying to run you out of business with legal fees and hassles.

Re:Er...

[nabsltd]

Trademark is a different issue, and indeed is why the word "Superbowl" is only used in advertising by its owners.

No, "Super Bowl" is not used in advertising by other entities because they can't afford lawyers smart enough to understand trademark law.

Trademarks are used to prevent confusion, so nobody other than the NFL can hold a sporting event called "Super Bowl". On the other hand, it's perfectly legal to put something like "come down to Joe's Appliances and buy a new TV so you can watch the Super Bowl in HDTV" in your ad. The only reason this doesn't happen is because we don't have a strong enough "loser pays" system for litigation, so the NFL can pull out millions of dollars worth of lawyers to intimidate Joe.

Re:the TZ list is dead. long live the TZ list.

[mandelbr0t]

That's probably the most sane solution out there. I'd have no problem adjusting to working in UTC.

Re:the TZ list is dead. long live the TZ list.

[Gravis Zero]

No, the obvious solution is to do away with timezones altogether. What is this, the dark ages?

how would you be able to tell the relative difference in time between distant locations, genius? is everyone going to work and sleep at the same time regardless of where they are on the planet? no, of course not. so, unless you know the time difference in every location then you wont be able to communicate the relative time clearly to another person. basically, your idea is retarded.

Astrolabe is surely not going to win this

[Descartess]

This is an outrageous attack against a case of perfectly legal use of published data.

Where tzdata has used information from ACS atlas, it quotes it source (Thomas Shanks, former employee of ACS Inc, San Diego, who appears as author on the printed books American Atlas and International Atlas).
In each case, the information published by Shanks was critically reviewed by the tzdata community. In many cases, Shanks' information was rejected, in many cases it was accepted over other contradicting (or confirming) information.

Shanks did not create the information in his published books, he collected it from other published sources, though the books fail to name the source of the information in nearly all case.

Relevant sources of Shanks, especially for International atlas, were
- Gabriel, Traite de l'heure dans le Monde, Paris
- Henri Le Corre, Regimes Horaires pour l'Eruope et l'Afrique
- Doris Chase Doane, Time changes in the world
- Doris Chase Doane, Time changes in the USA
- Curran and Taylor, World daylight saving time, Chicago 1935
many other publications appearing in the astrology domain.

The two books by Shanks consist to 95% of lists of towns with longitude and latitude, their assignment to counties or provinces, and their assignment to timezone
history tables. tzdata uses NOTHING of this information, as tzdata does not contain assignments of towns to zones, except the single town in each zone used for naming it.

Shanks has about 2000 of different timezone history tables, they make up about 5% of the books volume.

tzdata has only about 400 different timezone history tables, because tzdata is historically not complete. It is only complete for the post 1970 era (where ACS is incomplete, and where ACS newer editions have used a lot of data taken from tzdata. Legitmately without quoting the source, as tzdata is public domain.)

Tzdata quotes Shanks for about 100 of these tables (I gues, I did not count), as one of the sources of historical timezone information.
In each case, the data given of Shanks were critically reviewed.

A perfectly legitimate use of published data.

The information about which time public clocks showed at a particular date in a particular country or region is by its very nature public information. It is not subject to copyright. Shanks does not own it, he has only collected it, and he is as often false as other collectors are sometimes false.

The use tzdata makes of such information is fully legitimate. It did by no means copy data from these books. It critically reviewed some of the information found there, and used a small amount (maybe 1% of the book content) in a completely different context and different representation.

The attempt by Astrolabe to claim private rights on public domain data must be forcefully resisted by the tzdata community.
I would hope that large users of tzdata, like Apple (in IOS and MAC OS-X), Redhat and other Linux distributors etc will contribute to a defense fund for Olson, and/or contribute legal assistance.

Plus: Astrolabe has very little money

Re:Astrolabe is surely not going to win this

[gzipped_tar]

> Plus: Astrolabe has very little money

Neither did SCO. Guess who's behind this whole brouhaha? /conspiracy theorist mode

It's about royalties on tzdata.

[John Hasler]

These guys probably believe that if they win they will collect royalties for every copy of tzdata distributed for the next 150 years. Instead, a cleanroom version would be rapidly produced based on primary sources. The initial version may be short on historical data but it would eventually be filled out: all the data has been published by governments. This may be done anyway.

Re:It's about royalties on tzdata.

[mgiuca]

I believe it will be done anyway, after this debacle. Strict distros like Debian won't like the fact that it contains copyrighted material, even if the case is thrown out of a US court.

Re:It's about royalties on tzdata.

[Guy Harris]

These guys probably believe that if they win they will collect royalties for every copy of tzdata distributed for the next 150 years. Instead, a cleanroom version would be rapidly produced based on primary sources. The initial version may be short on historical data but it would eventually be filled out: all the data has been published by governments. This may be done anyway.

Or, alternatively, they may believe that if they win they can shut down this guy's competing software, and have no interest in pissing off some of these lawyered-up companies by asking them for royalties.

AstroLab using PHP

[Ice Station Zebra]

On their forums which is using the tz database. Hypocrites.

They have a lot of large downloads on their site. Wink Wink Nudge Nudge.

tzdata quotes the BOOKS by Shanks, not software

[Descartess]

I think the lawsuit starts with a fundamental fault.

It refers only to the software versions published as ACS PC Atlas by ACS and more recently by Astrolabe.

But tzdata never used such software databases.

The content of the ACS atlas has been published as books, in multiple editions since the 1980ies.
Such book editions, and only such book editions, were critically reviewed and occasionally quoted as source by tzdata.

Hilarious.

[RightSaidFred99]

Here are some facts. PS: If you use them for anything, we'll sue you.

The usual response

[mbone]

It's a lawsuit.

Those who really know are not going to be able to say.

Very simple defense

[failedlogic]

If the clock don't tick, then you must acquit!

Re:the TZ list is dead. long live the TZ list.

[danlip]

In the dark ages there were no timezones. Everyone used local solar time, and nearby locations might be a few minutes different. This became a problem when trains came into existence and would collide if you made mistakes in scheduling. That's why timezones were invented.

Timezones are nice, because when I travel I know approximately when businesses open or close based on local time. I only have to adjust my clock once rather than constantly calculating the difference.

Now daylight savings time is something I would like to see abolished.

Reference book

[sjames]

What good is a reference book if it cannot be used as a source?

A quick perusal of the comments in the database show the atlas as a significant but not the sole source of data.

ass fucking ass clown ass hole ass ass ass ass

[decora]

these people are the problem in the world. These people are what is wrong with america. these people are pure, unadulterated, incarnate evil. they represent everything backward, barbaric, evil, stupid, crude, vulgar, barbarian, and moronic in our culture and in our society. they represent the death of the human spirit, the backward turning of the clock, the destruction of technology, not simply the machines, but the idea itself, the evolutionary pinnacle of the human brain is viewed as an impediment, as a problem to be solved, rather than as a fundamental miracle of the universes forward march toward destiny. these are the people who sacked rome, who raped nanjing, who seiged st petersburg. these are the foul and rotting corpse zombies of the apocalypse, the pestulant horsemen come to slaughter mankind with the weapons of dullness and a purposeful, proud ignorance. when they learned that someone threw witches into water to test whether they were guilty by flotation, they cheered that such a marvelous form of justice had been created. when they heard the inquisitor torture galileo to say the earth moved not, they were happy that right had been done. when they saw einstein chased out of germany for his heresy, they cheered because right had been protected from wrong. these are the banes of history, the anti-people who wish themselves to be lizards, so that they could crown themselves lizard kings, and rule over us in our senseless joy and invention. they pity us for our freedom and for our imagination, they view us as deformed, for having ideas, and view us as trouble, for speaking them freely.

if there is anything that will drive the exploration of the exoplanets, it is the people like those who inhabit the management offices of Astrolab, Incorporated.

Re:Even I can write some of the defenses to this o

[John Hasler]

> I'm surprised the judge granted the temporary injunction

Unfortunately the law pretty much requires him to.

Good Riddance!

[Greyfox]

I've always hated timezones! Maybe now everyone will have to just use GMT for everything! Oh wait, that's a timezone, too! I guess we'll just have to wander around randomly whenever we feel like it! That'll work a whole lot better for me!

The original time zones were probably defined in the 1500s. I've found astronomical texts that far back. You can turn them up in Google Books pretty easily. It'd be nice if an irritable judge declared all the company's copyrights to be public domain due to their attempts to enforce copyright on public domain information.

I'm sure this case will be dragged on for the next couple decades, just like SCO's bogus complaint.

Not only should every *nix vendor be outraged

[DamnStupidElf]

but every researcher who cites other works in their publications. This is a lawsuit against the process of science and scholarly review itself.

Terran Atlas was the spark that started it

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm afraid that I'm the cause of all of this or at least the spark that started it. It is a long story, but basically Astrolabe is after me because I have created the Terran Atlas that used the Olson Time Zone database (which is now in a different format from what Olson started) in competition with the ACS Atlas. Gary Christen threatened suit against me November 25th, 2010 (and investigation of the Olson time zone database) in an email to me upon which I notified Paul Eggert and Arthur Olson of what was transpiring.

In March 2006, May 2008 and Oct 2008 Gary Christen, CEO of Astrolabe tried to hire me (as well as several other companies in the field) due to the breakthrough success that I was having with Delphic Oracle. In summer of 2008 ACS went bankrupt and Astrolabe obtained the ACS Atlas. The latter conditions for hiring in fall 2008 were under somewhat unreasonable circumstances where the ACS Atlas was used as pressure (wondering if I would still have an atlas for my software) to get me to hand over Delphic Oracle and work for them. While Astrolabe initially reaffirmed the contract that I had with ACS after my meeting with them in the fall of 2008, my customers started complaining about the bad treatment that Astrolabe was giving them in the months following. One of my customers was also a programmer and was so fed up that he formatted a database of latitudes and longitudes which became part of the first version of the Terran Atlas. Afterward, I found the Olson time zone database and used that data to create my own.

I can't imagine any possible favorable outcome for Astrolabe. It is a ridiculous lawsuit because facts are not copyrightable, only the unique representation of those facts can be copyrighted.

Sincerely,
Curtis Manwaring,
CEO / software engineer
Zoidiasoft Technologies, LLC
http://www.astrology-x-files.com

Re:Terran Atlas was the spark that started it

[kevin lyda]

Can I just mention here that my opinion of astrology has plummeted even further? Seriously, don't you people have better things to do?

Re:Terran Atlas was the spark that started it

[Anonymous Coward]

In this economy, you're lucky to have a job at all.

Re:Terran Atlas was the spark that started it

[Anonymous Coward]

In this economy, you're lucky to have a job at all.

Ba-ZING!

yep

[Anonymous Coward]

did a good job proving that point.

Cutting through the red tape

[billstewart]

There's a much simpler way around the problem.

Astrolabe has a facebook page

[kevin lyda]

They seem to be censoring it, but why not keep them busy:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Astrolabe-Astrology-Software-and-Services/52527078715

Please try to avoid the jerk of the knee

[fnj]

Note: IANAL (thank god).

A very informative writeup on the copyrightability of facts and even compilations of facts in the U.S. is this.

In particular, note the specific rejection of "sweat of the brow" per se as a basis for copyright protection in matters of databases. The key is whether the database is "arranged and selected in an original manner." I can see this case being decided either way. The White Pages telephone directory is not protected, but on the other hand you cannot copy Webster's Unabridged without consequence. Whether you can copy the gist of a subset of articles in the dictionary is more arguable.

The work in contention clearly entails a whole different level of research than the White Pages, and quite possibly a level comparable in some sense to Webster's Unabridged. These are not obvious facts growing on trees.

However, to receive awards based on damages, you have to show damage! Again, that may or may not be the case here. I would suggest that plaintiff does intend to show damage. I have seen the work in question (heck, it's found on a lot of Unix-like systems and repositories). IMHO attribution is given, but there is no verbiage cautioning the reader that its use should be restricted to its intended mission: i.e., telling time in the course of normal operation of the operating system and common programs running thereon.

It would be unfortunate indeed if it has come to this merely because of a misunderstanding or oversight. I hope it can be rectified happily for all out of court, and that neither party ends up being hit with crippling legal bills. I presume all readers will agree that would benefit no one of positive value to society.

Re:Please try to avoid the jerk of the knee

[Guy Harris]

Note: IANAL (thank god).

A very informative writeup on the copyrightability of facts and even compilations of facts in the U.S. is this.

To quote the "bottom line" from that writeup:

--Facts that are readily available from numerous sources are pretty much public property for anyone to use (though even here, there may be some "hot news" limitations on how quickly such facts can be copied and republished).

--Facts published in an open fashion, without user restrictions (e.g. a book that includes facts from research that the author undertook) may be okay to use, though I am not aware of any recent case law on this particular situation.

--For facts that are subject to a user license, it is important to read the license very carefully, as for the most part, these licenses are worded to restrict use and republication of the information at hand.

I've never seen Shanks' atlases (and, at this point, I intend to avoid reading them - it's bad enough that I'm "mentally contaminated" by having seen AT&T's UNIX code, I don't want any more "mental contamination"), so I don't know what his (and, for the international atlas, his co-author's) sources were, and don't know whether his atlases read like Eggert's comments (e.g., "well, this source says X, and this other source says Y; for reason Z, I'm going with the first source") or what. He's almost certainly not the original source of the information, as he's not, as far as I know, somebody in the government who set the offset from UTC and the daylight savings time rules for particular locales, so the atlases are probably somewhere between "facts that are readily available from numerous sources" and "a book that includes facts from research that the author undertook", with the "research", in the latter case, being research in other sources.

In particular, note the specific rejection of "sweat of the brow" per se as a basis for copyright protection in matters of databases. The key is whether the database is "arranged and selected in an original manner." I can see this case being decided either way. The White Pages telephone directory is not protected, but on the other hand you cannot copy Webster's Unabridged without consequence. Whether you can copy the gist of a subset of articles in the dictionary is more arguable.

I suspect it's more like "whether you can cite the Encyclopedia Brittanica's claim of X about Y when talking about Y" - but, again, I've not read Shanks.

The work in contention clearly entails a whole different level of research than the White Pages, and quite possibly a level comparable in some sense to Webster's Unabridged. These are not obvious facts growing on trees.

I.e., just as Eggert dug into a whole bunch of documents, including but not limited to Shanks' atlases, to do his updates to the time zone database, Shanks presumably looked at a bunch of sources to produce his atlases.

However, to receive awards based on damages, you have to show damage! Again, that may or may not be the case here. I would suggest that plaintiff does intend to show damage. I have seen the work in question (heck, it's found on a lot of Unix-like systems and repositories). IMHO attribution is given, but there is no verbiage cautioning the reader that its use should be restricted to its intended mission: i.e., telling time in the course of normal operation of the operating system and common programs running thereon.

Actually, its intended mission could be summarized crudely as "make localtime() and mktime() work", and those routines are used for more than "telling time" in the sense of telling you what time it is now by feeding the result of time() to localtime(); they're used for reporting the local time corresponding to time_t values of all

Re:Please try to avoid the jerk of the knee

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never seen Shanks' atlases (and, at this point, I intend to avoid reading them - it's bad enough that I'm "mentally contaminated" by having seen AT&T's UNIX code, I don't want any more "mental contamination")

Yet another example of imaginary property "promoting science and the useful arts" by threatening people into voluntary ignorance...

Astrolabe Reef

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a container ship called Rena that's going to breakup, having grounded on the Astrolabe Reef, coincidentally happening within the first time zone, in the week after this suit was filed. Interestingly, the ship is filled with $800000 of sauvignon blanc and 1700 tons of crude oil. You won't need an Atlas to find Motiti Island.

Down with TimeZones

[Anonymous Coward]

I, for one, would really look forward to a decision for the plaintiff.

Not because I think it would be fair, but for that would probably give someone the idea to finally stop using timezones. I never really understood why a workday would have to start between 7am and 9am regardless of the place. Why not have the workday start between 7am and 9am in the UK, between 12pm and 2pm in New York, and so on?

Pick one, and stick to it. Everywhere.

That would remove pretty much all ambiguity related to times, and would surely please everyone using their iPhone as an alarm clock.

Ps, while the posting timestamp says something like 6am, it really is 1pm.

Reminds me of:

[Anonymous Coward]

This function is void,
it takes two args...
Tralalaaa

Even me pa could figure this one out ...

[MacTO]

... and he is generally more concerned about the profitability of businesses. Still, he said, a fact is a fact and it doesn't matter if someone researched the shit out of it to verify it. You can't change what it is, and you shouldn't be able to claim rights to it.

I didn't bother to mention how some databases falsify (unimportant) facts to try to prove data's origins and make copyright claims, simply because that would make his blood boil -- because the only thing worse than claiming the truth is lying.

The American Atlas, Expanded 5th Edition

[martijnd]

Can be found on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/American-Atlas-Expanded-5th/dp/0935127380

Note the various negative comments on the Atlas regarding this case, maybe mod those up a little.

Re:The American Atlas, Expanded 5th Edition

[Anonymous Coward]

Mission appears to be accomplished: negative reviews now outweigh positive by 4-1, and heavily modded up.

Has Apple sued him too?

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet Apple has sued him because Apple has invented the timezones and has the sole right to update and sell them.

Re:Has Apple sued him too?

[Guy Harris]

I bet Apple has sued him because Apple has invented the timezones and has the sole right to update and sell them.

Another case of #include <anti_Apple_rant.h> , but, in this particular case, if Apple takes any legal action at all, my guess is that it'd be an amicus curiae brief supporting the defendants....

Re:That's wrong, selection was applied

[b4dc0d3r]

This is a transformative work, and a creative work. They had to make decisions about which data to include every time a discrepancy was found between multiple data sources.

# Rule NAME FROM TO TYPE IN ON AT SAVE LETTER/S
Rule StJohns 1917 only - Apr 8 2:00 1:00 D
Rule StJohns 1917 only - Sep 17 2:00 0 S
# Whitman gives 1919 Apr 5 and 1920 Apr 5; go with Shanks & Pottenger.

The raw data was carefully selected, and merged with other data, and put into this format. It was used as a reference and properly cited just as with any scholarly work. On the other hand, it does say most data before 1991 comes from this single source, and that's a lot of data. This is not a clear case at all, and will likely require a lot of defending.

Someone else linked to this article with the above snippet.

Get a lawyer, file for summary judgement

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoever was sued should get a lawyer and file various motions, including a filing for summary judgement. You can sue for anything in the US, but that doesn't mean you'll win. This case looks really cut-and-dry; you are not allowed to copyright facts in the US. Astrolabe (who I will call "the astrologers") should lose big-time, if what I understand is accurate, and be forced to pay all costs and maybe some extra penalties for such a frivolous lawsuit. I bet several lawyers would be willing to take this one pro bono, especially since there's a fair likelihood they'd get paid by the astrologers.

I really hope that the TZ folks don't fold. I realize that the temptation is great, but if you do not fight for your rights, you will not keep them.

Let's give Astrolabe A Little /. Love

[obscuro]

http://alabe.com/contact.html

I think we need to politely explain to the marketing director et al at Astrolabe how they're action could adversely effect their brand. And how all they are doing is damaging someone who is generously providing an important service. My guess is that these guys are completely unaware of how much ill will they are in for online. For instance, a couple weeks of work by a tiny fraction of the people reading this could create an open source Astrology app that would render their offering permanently obsolete. I can't imagine how they came to launch this lawsuit in the first place but I can imagine how ignorant they could be of its implications for them and the world of computing.

Re:Let's give Astrolabe A Little /. Love

[jmcvetta]

Fuck politeness; these guys deserve none. My letter went something like this:

Loathsome Parasites:

Your attempted extortion of the maintainers of the Timezone Database threatens the security of the entire Internet. Your company therefore richly deserves failure, your executives destitution. The whole Internet spits in your face and looks forward eagerly to your bankruptcy.

With Disgust,

Re:Let's give Astrolabe A Little /. Love

[obscuro]

Nice. Did you check out the pictures of these people? They have a Facebook presence. They look like the people who get helped to their chairs at the church social. That marketing lady is going to drop her dentures on the keyboard when she reads your email then start crying. You meany!! LOL

Re:Let's give Astrolabe A Little /. Love

[jmcvetta]

Man, don't say that - I really hate the idea of making a nice old lady sad, even if the company for which she works is a menace to the Internet. Let's hope they simply didn't understand the scope & implications of their actions, and will soon drop the lawsuit.

Re:Let's give Astrolabe A Little /. Love

[obscuro]

These guys deserve anything they're getting. They asked for it. Anybody who sues someone has a bit of a responsibility to figure out who they are suing and why. I'm actually afraid they will see how critical this is and think it's a potential source of money. That would ruin them and hurt Olsen et al.

Re:Even I can write some of the defenses to this o

[Albanach]

Unfortunately the law pretty much requires him to.

On what basis? I though injunctions were typically considered unusual and awarded where there was likely to be irreparable harm to the plaintiff by permitting continued publication - i.e. harm that could not be resolved by payment of damages in the event of a successful lawsuit.

I'd like to see what the defense filed in response.

Re:Even I can write some of the defenses to this o

[Albanach]

Hang on - this case was only filed on September 30th:

http://web.mit.edu/jhawk/tmp/tz/gov.uscourts.mad.139342.2.0.pdf

Is the US District Court in Massachusetts is unusually swift, or has this not even been heard by a judge? Is there an actual opinion granting an injunction anywhere?

But enough about...

[marxmarv]

economists.

talk to Fark

[Anonymous Coward]

They fought the trolls and won - a $0 settlement. They even somehow tricked them into not forcing an NDA on the settlement.

Astrolab Data Source

[PPH]

Where does Astrolab get its TZ data? Are there any conditions attached to these sources for the use and/or subsequent release of such data.

What we need is one small town to pass an ordinance defining its time zone. And attach language to that ordinance to the effect that the release of that information may only be made in publications conforming to an appropriate open source license. In fact, I think all laws, ordinances and such should be made with such conditions.

Bad timing

[Anonymous Coward]

By my reckoning, they really picked a poor time to file a lawsuit.

http://imgur.com/QSxyI

I'm assuming that this was filed very soon before the courthouse closed. When you have litigation filing on a Friday, this is traditional.

Aquarius is rising, suggesting that the plaintiff is represented by Saturn, who is in the eighth house of death. Venus is leaving Saturn; they will find little support from others in their endeavors, though it will entail a lot of work for all involved.

Leo's on the cusp of the Seventh; the defendants are the Sun. Also in the eighth house. Mercury is with them, suggesting eloquence on their side.

The Moon is applying square to the Plaintiff's ascendant. Again, an indication that people will not like the Plaintiff for what it's trying to pull here.

Jupiter, retrograde, in the second house of property is mutually applying a square aspect from Mars, in the sixth house of illness. This litigation will be long, drawn out, full of conflict, and nobody will win although it appears the plaintiffs will lose.

Any astrologer who knew what they were doing could have chosen a better time to file this.

Set up a mirror!

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I think we have to fight this absolute nonsense. If Astrolabe prevailed in this case, which they will not, because their claim is ridicoulous, douchebag companies all around the world would try to do the same thing with other opensource projects.

If you want to set up a mirror yourself, to help spread the data all over the world, have a look here:
http://github.com/canbuffi/tzmirror

Do Astrolabe know that M$ ships TZ in windoze?

[phands]

I found this page, and just checked in a copy of windows7. MS ship the entire TZ database in the registry of every copy of windows....... http://unattended.sourceforge.net/timezones.php Which points to a registry key....... HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Time Zones And that has the TZ values in plain text..... Astrolbae should take on M$.

Re:Do Astrolabe know that M$ ships TZ in windoze?

[zoidsoft]

Wrong. Those are MS proprietary values not the Olson values.

Suggested target for Astrolabe

[dragmar]

Didn't SCO use their TZ data for years? They should send them a letter offering them generous terms for a license.