On Tue, 5 Nov 96, Karen Coyle <kec[_at_]dla.ucop.edu> wrote:
>
> On Mon, 04 Nov 1996, Bruce Hayden wrote:
> >
> > I think you read Feist too literally. [snip]
> >
> > For example, my utility company keeps a database of the credit
> > histories of its customers. There is absolutely no expression (on
> > the part of the utility company) that I paid $153.75 last month. This
> > is a fact, and as such is not protected by copyright.
>
> Right. And the phone company has contributed that piece of information
> and might thus want to have ownership rights over it. But you
> contributed your name, address, credit info, etc. And it seems unlikely
> that the phone company could market this database without including
> information that came from other sources, such as its customers. So it
> really comes down to who owns what information and how do we determine
> who the rightful owner is. I would assume that part of the motivation
> in not copyrighting facts was to avoid this can of worms.
>
> The essence of the argument, in my mind, is that facts do not spring
> whole cloth from the aether into our databases - most databases are
> compilations of data that have already existed in some form. So once
> there is a compilation of a set of data, will others be able
> independently compile their own database? Or will could they be held
> liable if their compilation closely resembles another?
>
> -------------------------------------
> Karen Coyle <kec[_at_]dla.ucop.edu>
> University of California - Library Automation
> http://www.dla.ucop.edu/~kec
Although not a copyright issue, seems to me the FCC should just require the telephone companies to make the telephone directories public domain. A lot of the database protection problem is that companies are trying to protect stuff like case law, statutes, and phone numbers that are essential facilities to commerce and democracy, and which they obtained through some time of government endorsed privileged relationship or status.
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