Who Owns The Database?

dkm writes "The Boston Globe has an interesting article on legislation in Congress to make databases copyrightable. " Copyright issues are so nice and stickey; but at least it's not patents. Yet.

Comments

Expiry Times Are The Issue

[Christopher B. Brown]

I think the point that you're trying to make is that the expiry dates for the "protections" provided by current mechanisms are somewhat too long.

Supposing there were some equivalent to copyright that retained proprietary rights to software and/or data that expired, putting the material into the public domain, after (say) five years, this would provide a substantially better "regime" than the present situation where:

• Copyright protects for longer than an author's lifetime, and corporations are trying to turn it into perpetual control, and
• Patents protect for longer than anyone could conceivably wait for an "Internet technology."

I'm not sure what the "excuse" would be for cutting the expiry times; in order to push this through legal channels, it would have to be shown that this provided some benefit over the present "expiry regime."

This is going to be very messy

[Kaa]

Ability to claim ownership of information just because you organized it into a database is a dangerous thing. The danger is that information that used to free will find itself in "owned" databases and so will stop being free. That is not a good thing.

Besides, the laws regarding it will necessarily be either very vague or quite arbitrary. Let's say I compiled a list of all cow manure suppliers in my area and put it on the web. This is now a database, worthy of protection. Can other people copy the whole database? Not under the proposed law. What about one address? two addresses? five addresses? What if another guy goes to yellow pages and compiles his own list? Will he be required to prove "clean-room" conditions? What if he compiles his own and then cross-checks it against mine?

Lawyers will be very happy.



Kaa

What do you mean atleast not a patent

[color of static]

While databases really couldn't be patented (not the data that is) I'd rather see that then a copyright. Patents expire and then become available to the general public to extend the state of the art. Copyrights can last an awful long time and can be stickier in many different ways.

Of course databases have never been copyrightable before. Collections of data were just that. Your formating, layout, or other presentation could be, but not the collection of data. Granted many copyright holders used armies of lawyers to make people act as if their databases were copyrighted just becuase who can afford to fight it. The ARRL has done this multiple times with their repeater directories (that's why you can't find it online), and I think it's been done with different sports scores with varying amount of success.

Copyrights are to protect the creator of intellectual property. Software, art, literature are the products of the intellect. A collect of data is not.

Stallman warned about this

[jflynn]

Stallman wrote a feature for Linux Today over a month ago on this subject here. As you might expect, he's strongly in favor of open databases.

I certainly understand why someone who compiled a data base would feel ripped off if someone copied it for profit, or maintained an out of date mirror that caused harm. On the other hand you can see how great public good can come from free availability of certain databases. Perhaps the government should exercise eminent domain over the databases that need to be public?

Urrrrghhh...

[Amphigory]

I see us, as a society, heading for a situation where every facet of our lives will be dominated by intellectual property law. Want to think about "physics"? Sorry ma'am, we own that word. You'll have to pay us $5 every time you use it.

The problem our society is facing is that information has gotten radically easier to reproduce. It use to be that if you wanted to reproduce a "database" (then usually in book form) you would have to go to great effort and expense to typeset it, then print it, then distribute it.

None of these could be done casually, and it simply wasn't possible to easily undercut the original publishers. The problem is that computer technology has changed that. I can duplicate your whole database, world-wide, in a matter of minutes.

So what is the solution? Not more laws!!! I think that, ultimately, we are going to have to accept that IP is an obsolete concept -- indefensible in an electronic world. Everything is going to have to become open source. Emergency rooms need a database of antidotes? Great. Then they can pay someone to compile one on a contract basis.

You didn't contribute to the list this year? Sorry, you don't get access to it. I seriously doubt that, if the emergency rooms had to directly subsidze the creation of the list, they would be very eager to give it out to their stingy colleagues (especially in an industry as competitive as medicine). In the end, social pressures would encourage payment.

Let's not forget classical research either!!! The publication of open source databases is something that the Universities could do very effectively and would fit well with their classical role.

Bottom line... We don't need laws. We need a more enlightened attitude. Maybe it's time to campaign for the total abolition of IP law, worldwide. Otherwise, we will soon find that we have given soulless corporations the most basic of freedoms: freedom of information.

Databases, compilations, works of art

[Anders Andersson]

I'm somewhat confused by the situation. While it's true that mere collections of information probably aren't what the legislators had in mind when copyright was established, they may still represent an essential investment to the compiler - not in storage costs, but in the effort needed to collect the data in the first place.

The Swedish Copyright Act has for quite some time contained a special kind of protection for collections of large numbers of information items (Article 49), similar to the protections given to audio or video recordings. It differs from normal copyright in a number of ways:

• There is no requirement of artistic creativity, i.e. the collection need not be devised or expressed in any novel way.
• The compiler enjoys only financial rights, but not any moral rights similar to those awarded to authors of literary or artistic works.
• The duration of this protection is based on when the compilation was created, rather than on when the compiler died.
• The duration of said protection is much shorter than that given to literary or artistic works, today 15 years after the compilation was created as compared to 70 years after the author of a book died.
• In addition to enjoying this simple kind of protection, a collection that has literary or artistic merit may enjoy normal copyright protection as well (imagine a telephone directory decorated with flower ornaments between every five subscribers).

As with books, general provisions for fair use, private copying etc. apply, and as with books, nobody is prevented from extracting individual items of information from the collection, as long as you don't simply copy the entire collection.

These provisions predate the appearance of computerized databases, and were appearantly intended for printed catalogues, directories and the like. However, I think they apply equally well to digital collections, and I'm not aware of any legal major disputes over this matter in Sweden.

Then we started hearing complaints from several other countries that databases weren't protected by copyright, that such protection had to be established, and that it must be international. Funny they didn't seem to notice that Sweden already had that kind of protection, but went ahead outlining that protection from scratch. Then we were essentially required to adopt whatever they came up with, so now we have two kinds of protection covering approximately the same thing, but with very different rules.

Now I hear that the USA still has no database protection at all - and I was under the impression that the USA was the place where these desperate cries for database protection originated. Was I wrong? How many different kinds of database protection will be imposed on smaller countries before the USA gets its act together and implements even one of those, wreaking havoc with existing legal concepts everywhere?

Re:Owning your personal data

[Kaa]

I am a lawyer...

IANAL, but I can still argue with one, cannot I?

My name is my own, and I have every right, through possession and grant, to restrict how it is used: Why do you think that companies who give out prizes require you to sign a release so they can use your name? If my name was not owned by me, where's the hang-up?

Such companies want releases mostly to avoid being sued under tort law. Tort law and property law are very different approaches as you probably know. Whether your name is your own (in the property sense) is rather doubtful. You cannot destroy it or change it without the consent of the government. You do not get to pick it (again, without govt consent). Your rights to restrict its use are rather limited, and they disappear if you are a public figure. The phone company includes it in white pages by default, unless you specifically instruct it (and pay it!) not to.

To reiterate, your control over your name's use is accomplished through tort law, not through property law.

Banking and medical records are, again, owned by me (and restrictable: See the FCRA and privacy conventions) as they were created by a direct result of my actions and my doing ...

That may depend on a state, but I don't believe you own your banking and medical records. Try instructing your bank or your physician to destroy them -- see if they comply. Try telling the bank not to use your records for e.g. marketing by its insurance arm -- the bank may agree, but out of politeness, not because they have a legal obligation to do so.

Besides, the bank records are not created by you. You make actions, which are then recorded by your bank. Granted, you are the cause, but it is the bank that actually creates the records. The records reside on bank's computers and are its intellectual property. If you are believe they have been misused, you will sue the bank under the tort law and not under property law.

Also, my address is mine, simply because I can control its use. ... Possession is 9/10ths of the law, and control presumes possession

Come on! Go back to your first year of law school and re-read the Property textbook. Just because you happen to control something does not mean you own it.

I may keep my address private, if I choose. "But, wait Mr. Lawyer, can't someone look up your address at least in the county's Hall of Records?" Yes, they can. However, that does not give them permission to use my address for their purposes.

And, pray tell me, why not? Or rather, why do they need your permission? If your name is Guppenblinken and I happen to collect the addresses of all Guppenblinkens in the world, I can perfectly well get your address, store it in my database, post it on the web, send you mail, etc. If you don't like it, you can sue me under torts, but for the n-th time, there are no property issues here. You cannot sue me for theft.

If what you say were true, then my address would be available for others to use for the same purposes I do, such as receipt of mail.f my banking records were not mine, then others could use them to place transactions against.

Nonsense. Receipt of mail is a function of the physical location of your house/apartment and the matching of that physical location to the Post Office database. The banking transactions involve actual assets in your account, which you definitely own, not *records* of past transactions.

I am sorry, you have to come up with better arguments.


Kaa

The Scientific Point of View

[LL]

For people that are interested in the value of databases for science, take a look at Bits of Power: Issues in Global Access to Scientific Data. The recommendations (much abridged) are

• scientific data should be priced at cost of distribution
  
• if the distributor subsequently adds value to the data, then the price should be no higher than the marginal cost of adding value
  
• advocate the incorporation of equivalents of "fair use" as part of any regulatory structure applying to databases as such
  

While there has been some debate with scientific data (rather useless outside specialist fields), the case of commercial data is less obvious. There have been a few historical cases which have given people pause about the monopolisation of data. One specific example was the privatisation of some early LandSat satellite imagery which according to one viewpoint, was immediately priced to the legislated maximum which effectively stunted academic research into algorithms for processing satellite imagery and any follow-on applications. Other raw data by definition can only have value if shared, e.g. is meterological data spread across multiple countries. With the increasing automatic data collection and computerisation, the potential of conflict for owners and users of databases will only increase.

One of the biggest issues is how to "price" the assembly and aggregation of disparate data. Even pure scientific data could have some commercial value (e.g. genetic codes) under the right circumstances. One solution may be to provide the raw data and the processed value-added stuff and let the market judge whether it is cheaper to massage the raw themselves or save time in purchasing the processed.

Another approach is to create data rights limited by geographical, time, or functional scope. However, this in turn raises more problems in debating to what extent data can be altered before it is considered a unique "new" work (compare with music mixes or composition of existing recognisable art scenes). How far down the value chain is one allowed to claim a slice of the action (compare music score composers claiming a slice of movie soundtracks of their songs)? These are still unanswered questions.

A collection of innoculous facts (e.g. mouse-clicks) can be transformed into a perpetual watch on your web-browsing habits. Given enough time and persistance, any digital event can be tied to a personal profile. Who "owns" this data? A satellite can take pictures of people sun-bathing, some countries would be paranoid to define this as invasion of their sovereign air-space.

In short, the information age will create a whole new raft of problems which will require some legistlation just to clarify any ambiguities. IMHO some time limits would be the most likely solution, even sensitive federal data can be declassified after a suitable cool-down period. But unfortunately I suspect that until some people have seen how far the system can be abused, I doubt whether there will be any popular outcry for safeguards.

LL

Is a Linux distribution a database?

[crow]

I don't see why a Linux distribution wouldn't be considered a database. This could, indeed, have some nasty implications unless the law is written very narrowly (which would surprise me).

The big question here is how the copyright on the database relates to the copyright of an individual entry within the database. If the two are legally independent, then even if all the packages are covered by the GPL, a given distribution may be proprietary, requiring a separate license for each installation.

They're already protected

[Analog]

Picture this: A scientist spends years compiling the world's largest book of poison antidotes. Then, shortly after it's published, he turns on his computer to find a competing researcher has photocopied the book, posted it on a Web page, and splashed it across the Internet.
Legal? Yes, under current law.

BS. This is no more legal than would be doing the same thing with Steven King's latest horror epic. At least they let us know up front what the factual content of the rest of the article is liable to be.

Why would anyone spend $2 million to create a database if it's not going to be protected?'' said David Mirchin, of SilverPlatter Information, a database publisher in Norton, Mass.

Gee, I don't know. Why do they do it now? The fact is, databases are protected. Taking a database someone else has compiled and republishing it is a violation of law. The courts have ruled on this several times as specifically regards the internet in the last several years. However, the information in the database is not necessarily protected. If said info is otherwise publically available, then you cannot prevent others from using it.

What you see here is a push (not a new one; it's been going on for a while) to allow someone to create a database of freely available information, and make that information proprietary. The rationale behind this has been that it's the only way to ensure that the information hasn't been 'stolen' from the database, rather than gathered independently. Of course, it's not hard to see what the real motivation is; it's becoming very easy to gather large collections of freely available information. Many people see this as an opportunity to grab a free ride and make a lot of money.

I'm sure most everyone here can see the obvious problem with allowing the proprietization of this information. If you obtain it independently, how are you going to prove it? And if you create an independent database? Yes, you can document your sources, but unless you can afford to defend yourself in court, this information will be effectively off limits to you unless you pay whoever has bothered to gather it into one spot.

I keep hearing so much about how Americans are doing so well, how strong our economy is, how much everybody has. Why then, is greed becoming the defining trait of our culture? Are not Bill Gates' tens of billions enough? I kid you not, we as a culture and as a country are headed down a very ugly road; should we persist, we most certainly will get what we deserve.