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Re: [cc-licenses] Does data mining count as creating a derivative work?

From: Terry Hancock <hancock AT anansispaceworks.com>
To: Discussion on the Creative Commons license drafts <cc-licenses AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: Re: [cc-licenses] Does data mining count as creating a derivative work?
Date: Mon, 16 Oct 2006 19:19:00 -0500

Bradley Skaggs wrote:

Here's my question: I want to do data mining on this wiki to generate
a database (for example, a list of links between TV show articles,
and the category of the articles, but not the content of the
articles) to create a database of related TV shows. The database
would back a website that, when you enter one or more tv show names,
would generate a list of others you might like. Would this be
considered sufficiently different that I could sell this service for
a fee? Could I sell my database? Could I make this service free,
but make the site ad-supported?

They say that reading one source before writing your paper is "plagiarism", but reading six is "research". ;-)

What you're doing is the electronic equivalent of the latter, so I'm inclined to think you're alright. There may be jurisdictional issues. In the US at least, data as such is not copyrightable (only the form of its expression). So collecting information from databases is normally well within your rights.

I have much less understanding of European laws about databases, but I think you're probably still okay in this situation.

Cheers,
Terry

--
Terry Hancock (hancock AT AnansiSpaceworks.com)
Anansi Spaceworks http://www.AnansiSpaceworks.com

[cc-licenses] Does data mining count as creating a derivative work?, Bradley Skaggs, 10/16/2006
- Re: [cc-licenses] Does data mining count as creating a derivative work?, Terry Hancock, 10/16/2006