There's a good discussion on BitLaw.
http://www.bitlaw.com/copyright/database.html
The question is if the OCLC catalog can be described as "selected,
coordinated, or arranged in such a way that the resulting work as a
whole constitutes an original work of authorship," and, if so, whether
OCLC itself is the author and not the libraries with membership in
OCLC. Anyway, even if the whole can't be copied, you can extract a lot
of facts (ie., MARC records) from it without touching the "work."
I think we're set on copyright, but we need a deeper look at the OCLC terms.
Maybe we should have an X-prize for testing OCLC's claims. I'd put
some money up.
On 4/30/07, Jonathan Rochkind <rochkind_at_jhu.edu> wrote:
> Simon Spero wrote:
> > 3) The legal theory behind the registration was that of "Sweat of the
> > brow", which held that the mere collecting of data was sufficient to
> > permit granting of a compilation copyright. (Franklin 84-85).
> >
> That's odd, because I was taught in my copyright class that 'sweat of
> the brow' was no longer a valid legal concept in US copyright law, and
> did not serve to justify copyright. Of course I'm not a lawyer either.
> But that goes with your next point 4, that "copyright in a factual
> compilation is thin", regardless of how much sweat was put into it.
>
> > 4) The landmark case on the scope of compilation copyright in "mere
> > facts"
> > is Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Co., 499 U.S. 340
> > (1991). In this case, the Supreme Court held that "[...]copyright in a
> > factual compilation is thin. Notwithstanding a valid copyright, a
> > subsequent
> > compiler remains free to use the facts contained in another's
> > publication to
> > aid in preparing a competing work, so long as the competing work does not
> > feature the same selection and arrangement." (Feist, supra). Indeed,
> > "[t]his result is neither unfair nor unfortunate. It is the means by
> > which
> > copyright advances the progress of science and art." (Feist, supra)
> >
> > 5) Standard arrangements based on alphabetic, numerical, or
> > lexicographic
> > ordering are public domain. (Feist, supra). Exhaustive enumeration
> > exhibits
> > insufficient creativity in selection to pass the constitutional
> > requirement
> > of creativity (Feist, supra).
> >
> > 6) Congress has repeatedly considered creating a sui generis right of
> > protection; these attempts have not repeatedly failed. The ALA has
> > strongly
> > opposed these efforts - details of their work can be found online at
> > http://www.ala.org/ala/washoff/woissues/copyrightb/dbprotection/databaseprotection.cfm
> >
> > .
> >
> > 7) Assessment Technologies of WI, LLC v. WireData Inc, 350 F.3d 640 (7
> > Cir. 2003) suggests that under the doctorine of copyright misuse, some
> > provisions of OCLC's licensing might not survive a public records
> > request.
> >
> > ------------------
> > Editorial:
> >
> > OCLC's real asset has never been the data it holds. OCLC has two real
> > assets are the people; people like Jay Jordan, Lorcan Dempsey, Thom
> > Hickey
> > and Stuart Weibel; and the daily reminder of the legacy of Fred
> > Kilgour that
> > it is their duty to uphold.
> >
> > If you look at the direction that OCLC has been taking under Jay
> > Jordan, it
> > seems clear that his underlying strategy is based on recruiting top
> > staff,
> > creating new and innovative services, and bringing them to much wider
> > audiences; if protecting the database was what mattered, Open WorldCat
> > could never have happened.
> >
> > For what is essentially a private Memory Institution that does not yet
> > have an endowment big enough to guarantee survival for the deep time
> > horizons such institutions must have, keeping revenue flowing is
> > critical.
> > Once new sources of income are in place, I would be suprised if OCLC
> > didn't
> > move to open worldcat even more.
> >
> > Simon // Visualize Whirled Cats
> >
>
> --
> Jonathan Rochkind
> Sr. Programmer/Analyst
> The Sheridan Libraries
> Johns Hopkins University
> 410.516.8886
> rochkind (at) jhu.edu
>
Received on Mon Apr 30 2007 - 08:41:03 EDT