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

[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

[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.

Complaint Text

[apilosov]

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

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

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?