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Posted by Csaba Gabor on 07/26/06 23:02
You seem to be getting confused about what I want. I don't want the
kind of "good information" that you are talking about. What I do want
is to be able to form an informed opinion. That's what people all over
the world do. They don't pay a copyright lawyer hundreds of dollars
for an opionion on whether they may make a photocopy or not. What they
do is to discuss it with others, read about it, and form an opinion on
their own, whether or not it complies with actual law. It's not just
about copyright law, it's about all issues.
Furthermore, here's a not oft mentioned statistic: in 50% of court
cases with a decision, one side is not doing as well as they expected
(as in, they lose). That is to say, the information from those lawyers
was not "good information" since it did not sustain their case. Legal
advice may or may not be correct. You say that it is the job of your
lawyers to protect your assets. You might want to review your contract
and ask them to do some more educating of you because that's not their
job. If your assets become lost in a court case, you figure your
lawyers are on the hook? Not hardly. The job of your lawyers is to
advise you as to how they think YOU could best protect your assets, and
to help effect whatever you decide. That's very different from them
protecting your assets.
Lawyers have an important purpose. They (are supposed to) have a large
knowledge of case history, and they know how to navigate the system,
which forms to fill out and how, can usually advise on different
options. They do not take the place of one's brain - the individual
should be as well educated as possible on a topic to gain the greatest
advantage from their lawyer.
Maybe, instead of me going to a lawyer (a ridiculous notion in a
discussion), you should argue more cogently, and back up your "No it
isn't" with convincing citations. Otherwise, you look pretty silly.
And maybe you are getting "good information", but it's sure not
filtering through to this thread. Consider this - suppose I actually
did go to a lawyer and reported back, "Hey I did ask a copyright
lawyer, and he supported my contention." Will you all of a sudden say,
"Oh, OK, you must be right." Hardly. Proof by authority went out the
door in high school.
You tell me I'm not getting it right. But you don't back this up with
a shred of convincing argument. "He said, she said" when there is no
evidence of a deep understanding isn't worth diddly. For example, you
said I misinterpreted the library info. I provided a relevant link.
You said it doesn't apply and ask me instead to believe something that
an alleged expert told you some time ago. Argument by ignoring what
the other person says also went out the door a long time ago.
A year ago I got a letter from a bank's law firm, a specialist in IP
(intellectual property). They wanted to take away from me a domain
name I had registered in good faith. They told me that I was in
serious violation of a couple of laws. Now if you reasearch this area,
you'll find that the law strongly favours the plaintiff in these types
of cases. I did my research - internet reasearch, no less - and wrote
back. This time I got back a letter from a senior partner in the firm
affirming that I was in violation of the law (not even suggesting that
I might be, but saying outright that I was). I sent back another
letter and haven't heard from them since. Nor have I changed what I'm
doing with my domain. Now, do you figure that the bank got their
money's worth from that law firm specializing in IP? I'm guessing they
actually paid for that "good information" and got a "sorry" for it.
But because my situation had some novel elements in it, I subsequently
went to the EFF and got pointed to a law firm which did back me up on
it. In doing so, I found that the research I had done was pretty well
spot on. Oh yea, and the lawyer I presented my case to gave me plenty
of "good information."
The point is to say that the internet is actually a very useful source
of research. While I don't advocate that it be used in place of a
lawyer, it is certainly reasonable to do reasearch via the internet
(should I even need to point this out in 2006?) in forming opinions and
in preparing to present one's case to a lawyer.
I'm just thinking that maybe when people are attempting to learn PHP,
we should just tell them, "Go to a PHP professional." Clearly, that
person will do better than a dabbler who is asking for help. Yea,
people really shouldn't practise programming if they haven't been
properly trained. They will do all sorts of horrible things and ignore
industry standards and maybe even use eval.
The one thing we seem to agree on is that the OP does have some dicey
IP concerns and it would behoove him to gain some clarity on those
issues.
Csaba
Oh, and "My dad is bigger than your dad" arguments are passe, too.
Jerry Stuckle wrote:
> Csaba Gabor wrote:
> > Jerry Stuckle wrote:
> >
> >>Csaba Gabor wrote:
> >>
> >>>Jerry Stuckle wrote:
> >>>
> >>>>Kenneth Downs wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>>Jerry Stuckle wrote:
> >>>>>
> >>>>>>Additionally, do you have permission from EBay to use their information
> >>>>>>in this way? All of it is copyrighted, and using it without their
> >>>>>>permission can get you and the developer in a lot of trouble. Of
> >>>>>
> >>>>>Hmmm, I would wonder about the distinction between their HTML pages and the
> >>>>>data points.
> >>>>>
> >>>>>Copying an entire page and displaying it as part of your business would
> >>>>>definitely be a violation. Oh, except for google does that, um, they do it
> >>>>>actually with the entire internet. There have been a few high-profile
> >>>>>cases of people objecting, but by-and-large it seems to go forward.
> >>>>>
> >>>>>Ras is talking about gathering data points that they have made public. I
> >>>>>would bet (of course IANAL) that he is ok until he starts thinking about
> >>>>>going public. Then he will have to acknowledge the source of the data and
> >>>>>obtain some kind of understanding.
> >>>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>But EBay is also a data collection - and that collection is copyrighted,
> >>>>also. You can't make use of the collection without their approval, even
> >>>>if you do just excerpt data and use the data in another way.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>Copyright applies only to presentation (of data, et. al.) and not to
> >>>data itself. There was a case way back when where Ma Bell sued some
> >>>upstart for trying to make their own yellow pages and the argument was
> >>>that the information was copyrighted. I seem to recollect that the
> >>>decision went against Ma Bell (AT&T) because they could only claim
> >>>copyright on their particular presentation. If the data was presented
> >>>another way (for example, reordered by first name) then there was no
> >>>protection.
> >>>
> >>
> >>That's where you're wrong. The data itself can also be copyrighted, as
> >>when it is part of a collection. I suggest you check your sources
> >>again. There have been many claims won because the data itself was used
> >>without permission.
> >
> >
> > Evidently, I was right (except that it was white pages). It was a 1991
> > Supreme Court decision (Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone
> > Service) that is alluded to here:
> > http://www.eff.org/IP/WIPO/?f=cpt_wipo_treaty-primer.txt
> > That page is basically documenting a reaction to the decision wherein
> > WIPO is trying to get the US to sign exactly the kind of treaty
> > extending to database protections that you suggest is in place.
> >
> > Could you cite a link or two about claims being won because data itself
> > was being used without permission, where there was no user agreement
> > not to use the data? That would be very informative.
> >
> As I've said before. If you want good information, get it from a
> copyright attorney. That's where I get mine. Not internet links.
>
> And don't try to interpret what you read on the internet yourself. You
> are not getting it right.
> >
> >>>At the same time, I seem to remember that the case above has been
> >>>superceded or its precedent has been mollified by subsequent cases, but
> >>>I don't remember how.
> >
> >>I'd suggest you get a copyright attorney to give you the real facts,
> >>instead of maybe remembering something which may or may not be correct.
> >
> > When/if I encounter a situation where I need one.
> > In this thread, we're discussing our own understandings as non lawyers.
> > And citing information to the extent possible, right?
> >
> > To that end, here is a 'recent' summary (upshot: copyright law does not
> > protect data in databases) by the EFF about the state of affairs in
> > 2004:
> > http://www.eff.org/IP/WIPO/20040607_database_protection.pdf
> > which link I found at:
> > http://www.eff.org/IP/WIPO/?f=archive.html
> > Actually, two years is a long time on this front. More recent info
> > would be welcome.
> >
>
> Again - get a copyright attorney's advice. What you get on the internet
> does not qualify as legal advice and may or may not be correct.
> Additionally, you may misinterpret what it said (like you did the
> library info).
> >
> >>>Another case of data vs. presentation is the data points of the
> >>>boundaries between countries, states, counties, etc. A map is
> >>>copyrighted because it is a presentation of the underlying data points.
> >>> However, are those data points public domain? If you look at the
> >>>agreement that you have to sign with the various map companies on the
> >>>internet, they all say that you agree not to republish the underlying
> >>>data points in any form. Thus, it is not a question of copyright, it
> >>>truly is a question of user agreement.
> >>
> >>Yes, the data points are public domain. And yes, it is a matter of
> >>copyright. If not, they would have no grounds to stand on to require
> >>such an agreement. Someone could easily sue to them to provide the
> >>information.
> >
> > This is actually a fascinating area, but its own separate thread.
>
> No, it's not. I will not continue it here. It has nothing to do with
> PHP. And if you want legal advice, see an attorney.
>
> >>>I'd be at least somewhat worried in the original poster's place. I
> >>>don't see an issue of his copying pages (by the way, when I say
> >>>copying, I am thinking that what the OP is doing is extracting the
> >>>relevant data from the given pages and saving only that - why waste
> >>>extra bytes? - and plus you need extracted data to be able to work with
> >>>it) - to this point, it's all research. When he starts thinking about
> >>>publishing the data (I presume he's not republishing the pages. If he
> >>>does, he does have copyright issues) in a for sale book, then I think
> >>>it's important to do very careful legal research.
> >>
> >>And even for personal use it is liable to be a copyright violation. I
> >>would NOT want eBay's attorneys gaffer me.
> >>
> >>>>The Weather Channel is another data collection. The current temperature
> >>>>is public data - available for free from the National Weather Service.
> >>>>You cannot, for instance, collect hourly temperature readings a city or
> >>>>cities from TWC's site, because the site is copyrighted. The fact it is
> >>>>public and freely available from the NWS website doesn't matter - the
> >>>>collection on TWC's site is copyrighted.
> >>>
> >>>Interesting case. The US government's National Weather Service (NOAA)
> >>>at http://www.nws.noaa.gov/disclaimer.php does say that their data is
> >>>free (see the third bullet point).
> >>
> >>Exactly. It is free from the NWS, because it is a government agency.
> >>As a result, the data is, by definition, public domain.
> >>
> >>
> >>>However, I don't see where The Weather Channel's data is protected
> >>>after reading over section 3B of
> >>>http://www.weather.com/common/home/legal.html
> >>>In my read of the penultimate sentence, it is saying that you can't do
> >>>anything with anything from their site unless it is allowed by law. So
> >>>the question comes back, what is allowed by law as far as data
> >>>collection/dissemination goes?
> >>>
> >>
> >>Check with a copyright attorney. The collection itself, even though of
> >>public data, can and is copyrighted.
> >>
> >>
> >>>>This has been upheld many times in courts around the country.
> >
> >
> > Would you substantiate this claim?
> >
> > Csaba
> >
>
> My information comes from one of the larger copyright attorney firms (I
> am in the Washington, DC area, after all) in the country. I trust their
> information much more than anything you say or I see quoted on the
> internet. After all - they're job is to protect my assets. And I pay
> them well for it.
>
> I will not continue this conversation. My comment was to give fair
> warning to the original poster that what he is doing could get him in a
> lot of trouble. It was not to argue law with you or anyone else.
>
> You want legal advice? Don't get it from the internet. See your
> attorney. I will not quote internet sites for legal advice. And I will
> not continue this discussion.
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