Re: Ah, wonderful copyright

It might be cheaper to have an X-Price to replace OCLC than test its
claims in court.

Mark Andrews

-----Original Message-----
From: Next generation catalogs for libraries
[mailto:NGC4LIB <at> listserv.nd.edu] On Behalf Of Tim Spalding
Sent: Monday, April 30, 2007 9:46 AM
To: NGC4LIB <at> listserv.nd.edu
Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] Ah, wonderful copyright

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.