Re: Lawmakers to Weigh Database Protection Bill

["Richard Gottlieb" <rhg@greyhouse.com>]

Ms Cabell's message regarding the Database Protection Bill, is incorrect.
If I as a publisher spend tens of thousands of dollars compiling
information from dozens of sources, in a unique formulation, to meet a
specific and important need for a specific professional audience that's
"plagiarism"?  Of course that is different from a "scholar" who uses
dozens of secondary sources to write a journal article, which of course is
a "creative" effort, worthy of copyright, royaltys and academic promotion.

Further her model regarding compiling "addresses" is simplistic and wrong.
It is not hard to prove one's innocence.  The paper and electronic records
one generates to produce the database are an ample creation record and
defense.

And let's not even go to the "rights" of the library community and its
patrons to receive free access to content, copyrighted or not, because
after all "information wants to be free".

Richard Gottlieb
Grey House Publishing.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Diane Cabell" <dcabell@law.harvard.edu>
To: <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, September 09, 2003 6:52 PM
Subject: Re: Lawmakers to Weigh Database Protection Bill

> I strongly disagree that people have nothing to fear from this
> legislation.  If you create an alphabetical list of residences, and I
> create the same list independently, you are still going to make a claim
> against me under your sweat right.  All you have to do is file a
> complaint, the burden will be on me to show that I didn't copy it from you
> (to prove a negative which is not an easy task).  Most folks can't afford
> criminal justice, much less pay for a sophisticated copyright defense.
>
> It seems to me that the sweat is a far lesser skill than the creative
> intellect.  The sweater is, after all, stealing other work himself. He is
> nothing more than a plagiarist.  I see no particular reason to reward that
> kind of sweat with rights equal to copyright.  The "first to market"
> advantage may not be as much as the sweater would wish, but I don't see
> any logical or social argument why it should be so when it will become
> such a pitfall for those trying to use the data.  And it is becoming
> incredibly easy to amass such databases using computer technology, the
> even less sweat is required.
>
> Expensively produced databases can just as easily be protected by the
> terms of subscription contracts that prevent reproduction outside some
> norms.  Of course, the risk there is that those contracts would eliminate
> the user's fair use rights entirely.
>
> Diane Cabell
> Harvard Law School