Re: Ah, wonderful copyright

To clarify and expand on some of the statements made in this thread, here's
some stuff I culled from my notes.  I am not a lawyer. I'm just a lone duck,
trapped in a world he never made.

1) OCLC has claimed only a compilation copyright in bibliographic records,
and not in the record itself.  The thinking behind this is explained quite
well in Rowland C. Brown, OCLC Copyright and Access to Information; Some
Thoughts, 11 J. Academic Librarianship 197,198(1985).

2) Copyright was applied for in December 1982, and was granted
restrospective to that time in December 1984. Over 100 letters were sent to
the LC Copyright Office during this period  arguing against granting
registration. Janice R. Franklin, Database Ownership and Copyright Issues
among Automated Library Networks: an analysis and case study 86 (Ablex
Publication Corp, 1993) (hereafter Franklin).

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).

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