Quoting "B.G. Sloan" <bgsloan2_at_YAHOO.COM>:
>
> Curious to hear what NGC4LIB folks think about the new OCLC policy...
>
While the main thrust of the policy is the same as it always has been
(protecting WorldCat), I am glad that OCLC clarified their stand on
the copyright issue. That doesn't mean that I agree with their
copyright statement, but in the past it hasn't been expressed this
clearly and there was a lot of speculation. OCLC claims no copyright
in the bibliographic records, but does claim copyright in WorldCat as
a whole:
"While, on behalf of its members, OCLC claims copyright rights in
WorldCat as a compilation, it does not claim copyright ownership of
individual records."
It does seem that one could conclude from this statement that if OCLC
can claim copyright in WorldCat then any library could also claim
copyright in their bibliographic database as a whole. If so, then you
could conclude that the libraries have the right to do what they wish
with the database that they hold the rights to. My thinking goes like
this:
1) OCLC didn't create the records, the libraries did, but OCLC can
still copyright the database as a whole
2) the libraries have records in their databases, some of which they
created, some of which were created by other libraries
3) therefore, using #1 and #2, the library database is to the library
as WorldCat is to OCLC
4) thus, the library should be able to copyright their own database
... OR neither the library nor OCLC should be able to copyright the
database
It would be extremely interesting to see this get a legal test,
because my musing on it is really just idle brain games.
kc
--
Karen Coyle
kcoyle@kcoyle.net http://kcoyle.net
ph: 1-510-540-7596
m: 1-510-435-8234
skype: kcoylenet
Received on Tue Jun 22 2010 - 21:27:25 EDT