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Time Zone Database Has New Home After Lawsuit

Posted by samzenpus on from the let-us-handle-this dept.

networkBoy writes "ICANN has taken stewardship of the time zone database after its original operators were sued for copyright infringement by an astrology software company, saying they will 'deal with any legal matters as they arise'. From the article: 'Without this database and others like it, computers would display Greenwich Mean Time, or the time in London when it isn't on summer time. People would have to manually calculate local time when they schedule meetings or book flights.'"

6 of 238 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Do It Yourself by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    That's not what the TZ database contains. It has city/country to timezone mapping, but it also has historical information. Timezones change, daylight savings time changes. The TZ database contains all that. That's why it is useful.

  2. Re:So? by king+neckbeard · · Score: 4, Informative

    No, the differences here are very important. Unoriginal data isn't eligible for copyright, but a method for handling data could be, at least in lower courts. Also, copyright has independent conception as a defense, while patents do not.

    --
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  3. Re:Really? We're going to trust ICANN with this? by DamonHD · · Score: 1, Informative

    Hmm, I don't think that the (non-US) governments whose countries use those gTLDs were really keen for them to be controlled from the US...

    Rgds

    Damon

    --
    http://m.earth.org.uk/
  4. Re:Lawsuit is totally baseless by Jim+Tyre · · Score: 3, Informative

    Doesn't matter if it's baseless and would get tossed out of court -- eventually. The former database maintainer didn't have the budget to fight back.

    If you want to blame someone, blame the "justice" system that allows frivolous lawsuits to be filed in the first place.

    EFF is representing Arthur D. Olson (the former database maintainer).

  5. Re:Use a local clock? by squizzar · · Score: 3, Informative

    Actually in this universe not all days are the same length...

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

  6. Re:Wikipedia by S.O.B. · · Score: 3, Informative

    That's fine for converting current times but for comparing an historical time to the current time you need to know if there have been any timezone changes. That's what this whole thing is about.

    --
    Some of what I say is fact, some is conjecture, the rest I'm just blowing out my ass...you guess.