At 04:26 AM 6/12/99 -0600, Kathleen wrote: >I agree completely that the "facts themselves" are not >copyrighted. This does not mean we have carte blanche to copy >the facts someone else has compiled and collected; it means >we can go to the original records and use the same facts >to build our own database. > >I completely disagree with any interpretation that says that >it is now legal to copy a pre-existing database. I don't >believe that's what the law says. Well, one opinion on that very topic was issued by the United States Supreme Court in FEIST PUBLICATIONS, INC., Petitioner v. RURAL TELEPHONE SERVICE COMPANY, INC. Argued Jan. 9, 1991. Decided March 27, 1991. After the decision in that case, computer software became available with all of the phone numbers in all of the phone books in the United States. The court ruled that there was absolutely no originality in a collection of names, phone numbers and addresses arranged in alphabetical order and, despite all of the hard labor of Rural Telephone, Feist Publications had the right to use the information Rural Telephone had collected. http://www.rootsweb.com/~mikegoad/feist.htm It is wrong to copy a preexisting compilation that is original in selection and arrangement. However, it is completely legal and ethical to take facts and public domain from one or more existing compilations and develop a new compilation with a different selection and arrangement. The requirement to have to develop your own work completely independant of existing works is known as "the sweat of the brow" principle which has not been recognized by the courts since the 1991 Feist decision. In fact, the Supreme Court in that case said that some earlier lower courts had been wrong to rule in favor of this principle and that such rulings misapplied the 1909 copyright law. �Just as the copyright law does not protect �industrious collection,� it affords no shelter to the resourceful, efficient, or creative collector.... The protection of copyright must inhere in a creatively original selection of facts to be reported and not in the creative means used to discover those facts.� BELLSOUTH ADVERTISING & PUBLISHING CORPORATION v. DONNELLEY INFORMATION PUBLISHING, INC. and The Reuben H. DONNELLEY Corp., United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit. Sept. 2, 1993. http://www.rootsweb.com/~mikegoad/bellsouth.htm Under the Constitution of the United States, the purpose of copyright is NOT to exclusively benefit authors. The constitution say that Congress has the power to: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;" (Unfortunately Congress has interpreted limited times to be well beyond the lifetime of the author) http://www.rootsweb.com/~mikegoad/bellsouth.htm Mike ________________ The Goad Family; Dover, AR, USA; mailto:[email protected] ; http://www.cswnet.com/~mgoad/ ; free DAR Patriot Index Lookups: http://www.cswnet.com/~mgoad/dar.html; Our on-line "bookstore:" http://www.cswnet.com/~sbooks Sponsor (Plus) of RootsWeb - To support cooperative, non-commercial, grass-roots genealogy go to http://www.rootsweb.com/rootsweb/how-to-subscribe.html