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Copying phone books
Copying phone books
Posted Oct 3, 2005 22:56 UTC (Mon) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091)In reply to: Copying phone books by giraffedata
Parent article: The Authors' Guild and Google Print
In Europe compilations of facts are copyrightable, at least in the EU. In fact they are copyrighted, so you cannot redistribute databases like phone books, even if they are not creative at all. On the other hand, personal data are protected by European Directives, so phone books are doubly delicate. IANAL.
Probably the "Chinese copy writers" were just exploiting some German loophole in the law, or even more probably were mythical. As you say, it makes no sense; otherwise they could type in the latest bestseller and distribute it. Or sing Chinese a capella versions of the latest successful songs, as "you can certainly listen to music and the law cannot regulate what you do while listening".
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Copying phone books
Posted Oct 6, 2005 7:25 UTC (Thu) by Wol (guest, #4433) [Link]
ACtually, they are NOT "copyright". They are "databaseright" or whatever it's called. It's a similar, but distinct, concept of IP right.
The law places a value on the work carried out to create the compilation. So in practice, it works out just like copyright, but isn't. Just as two people could, theoretically, write the same book without knowing about the other, and copyright says "that's fine", so you have the same with databases - if my research produces the same results as yours, then there's no infringement, but if my research consists primarily of going through your database, then there is ...
Cheers,
Wol