Time zone database attacked but finds a new home [LWN.net]

Time zone database attacked but finds a new home

Posted Oct 21, 2011 2:48 UTC (Fri) by njs (subscriber, #40338)
In reply to: Time zone database attacked but finds a new home by giraffedata
Parent article: Time zone database attacked but finds a new home

According to the plaintiffs (so take with a grain of salt, but it seems plausible to me), it actually is astrologers who did a lot of the original legwork to determine historical time zone information. Astrologers want to be able to use a birth certificate to figure out exactly what time people were born in UTC. So they're one of the few groups who really care what exactly the offset between local and UTC time was in, say, September 1921 in Kansas. And apparently they published this research in a book, which the TZ database folks referred to for historical TZ info.

So, uh, don't say that astrology never did anything useful for you...

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Time zone database attacked but finds a new home

Posted Oct 21, 2011 3:47 UTC (Fri) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (2 responses)

the problem with their argument is that in the USA it doesn't matter how much effort you went to to gather facts, the facts themselves cannot be copyrighted.

Time zone database attacked but finds a new home

Posted Oct 21, 2011 15:25 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (guest, #1954) [Link] (1 responses)

We have to assume that the plaintiffs are aware of that basic fact of copyright law and have some argument, however thin, that what was taken is their original expression of that time zone history.

In Feist (the phone book case), for example, the plaintiffs never claimed that they owned the phone number facts. They claimed that they owned the expression of the phone numbers as a single compilation in alphabetical order. The court found that that particular expression was not sufficiently original to be protected by copyright.

It seems to be a mistake on the astrologers' part that they published their findings. They should have sold them under NDA to people willing to pay for them. There must be more to it, like that they originally didn't think the research itself was very valuable and have changed their minds.

Time zone database attacked but finds a new home

Posted Oct 21, 2011 16:43 UTC (Fri) by andrel (guest, #5166) [Link]

It is not the researchers, nor the original copyright holder, suing.