Posted by Csaba Gabor on 12/17/38 11:53

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.

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superceded or its precedent has been mollified by subsequent cases, but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.

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.

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.

> 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).

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?

> This has been upheld many times in courts around the country.
>
> IANAL - but I got a good education on it when I sued a company for
> taking my courseware for their own use. Their legal department settled
> quickly - they knew they would lose in court. But in the meantime my
> attorney provided me with lots of good info.

Your case seems like a straight copyright issue to me, too.

Csaba

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