[cc-community] copyright on data?

Fred Benenson fred.benenson at gmail.com
Sun Apr 26 19:20:18 EDT 2009


Also be sure to check out Science Commons' FAQ on why database shouldn't
have any restrictions (including licenses, contracts, etc.) attached to them
even if one could do so:

http://sciencecommons.org/resources/faq/database-protocol/

Here's a relevant section:
*
As we did our research, it became clear that using the traditional Creative
Commons licenses in any way created a dependence on copyright, and that such
a dependence came with negative unintended consequences. As we note in the
protocol, even experienced attorneys have trouble knowing precisely where
copyright starts and stops in any given database - it is therefore not
appropriate to impose this level of burden on scientists. One nightmare
scenario is the scientist unwittingly infringing copyright in a data
integration project. Another is the scientist who posts a database of genome
data - believing she is protected by a non-commercial clause perhaps - who
later sees that genome data in commercial product (but, because that data
itself was not copyrightable, removing it and republishing it would very
likely be legal). Only a reconstruction of the public domain achieves all
the goals of the protocol: simplicity, accuracy, and low costs.*

Good luck!

F


On Sun, Apr 26, 2009 at 7:24 AM, Jonathan Gray <jonathan.gray at okfn.org>wrote:

> On Sun, Apr 26, 2009 at 11:12 AM, Chris Watkins
> <chriswaterguy at appropedia.org> wrote:
> > The question is: as they're under US law, is the basic data public
> domain,
> > seeing as it's something akin to a phone book? Contact details, address,
> > organization name and contact person's name - my understanding is that
> this
> > can't be copyrighted in the US.
>
> You may be interested in:
>
>  http://wiki.okfn.org/OpenDataLicensing
>
> --
> Jonathan Gray
>
> Community Coordinator
> The Open Knowledge Foundation
> http://www.okfn.org
> _______________________________________________
> cc-community mailing list
> cc-community at lists.ibiblio.org
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/cc-community
>
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