Soon, You May Be Able To Copyright Facts... If They're In A Database
from the but-don't-explain-why dept
More bad news for those hoping that politicians were finally waking up to how backwards our intellectual property system currently is. In a step further backwards, the House Judiciary committee approved a bill granting intellectual property protection to databases - even if the info in the database is publicly available. The bill was supported by big database companies who are afraid that people will come along and copy their databases and resell them. Of course, such things are already covered by intellectual property law - but the firms wanted additional protections that seem to go against the Supreme Court's rulings that say you can't copyright facts. This law will have a tremendous number of unintended consequences - similar to the DMCA. All you need to do, now, to provide extra protection to public facts is put them in a database of some sort. The bill still has a ways to go before it becomes a law, but the fact that it's gotten this far isn't a good sign.
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What did you expect?
Isn't it plain enough?
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Wikipaedia
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Any doubt?
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A Lawsuit Is Pending
Sniff. Sniff. I smell lawyers.
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you may be overreacting a little
Remember: you'll still be allowed to pick bits and pieces from a protected database; just not a substantial amount of it for commercial purposes. That way, the database producer's investment remains protected, and you'll still be able to use what you want from a database, as long as it's not all of it.
Frankly, claiming that this proposal will allow facts to be copyright-protected sounds a little like you read what you wanted to read...
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Re: you may be overreacting a little
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Re: you may be overreacting a little
But a good example of why one might defend a law like this is a case that happened in the Netherlands a few years ago. A real estate trader had opened up a website displaying his database of available real estate. A competitor simply copied all the content off of his site, in an attempt to lure customers.
The real estate info is basically nothing more than facts, ergo not protected. But if copying the entire database was allowed, then why would anyone bother creating a database, just to watch a competitor run away with it, without investing a dime?
So a balanced approach seems best to me: allow extraction of information, but not of a substantial part by someone who wishes to exploit the info commercially. Which seems to be what this law is about. (caveat: I only read the article; not the proposal itself)
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Re: you may be overreacting a little
Besides, I don't buy the argument that no one would create a database without this law. Plenty of people have for many years - even though this law was not in place, and very few cases exist where someone did what you said. In most cases, there's very little value in simply copying a database like that ("I'm as good as my competitor!"). Companies that provide true value, don't need to just rely on a database of public info they put together.
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Re: you may be overreacting a little
To me it only serves to fill the pocket of those that just want to find, yet another way to sue others for very silly reasons.
I have created databases before, and found them a few weeks later on another site, intact and with my name as the author. And truely I do not care.
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