Reply to Professor Trosow

["Joseph J. Esposito" <espositoj@worldnet.att.net>]

Repeat for the third and last time:  the so-called database bill does not
make it possible to copyright facts.  The last time.  Really.

I never saw the earlier post about sole-source data.  There is of course
no such thing.  If it exists, I would not know about it, by definition.  
Unless of course I am the sole source, in which case no one else knows
about it, and I'm not talking.

On the other hand, if two or more people are familiar with the content of
an alleged sole-source database, then somehow (gremlins, perhaps) the
second person, the third, etc. came to know about the content without
copyright getting in the way, just as every reader of this list knows that
Jay Gatsby had a fantastic collection of shirts, even if he or she never
read F. Scott Fitzgerald.

With the important, vexed, and arguable exception of literature, facts are
separable from their context, which may be copyrightable.  A database of
facts can be independently re-created and violate no copyrights.

Professor Trosow says that "the database industry [I was not aware there
was such a thing] should come back with a bill that only exposes actual
commercial competitors to liability."  I don't see why.  The commercial
value of something can be undermined by noncommercial activity. Or I
suppose one could argue that the library community should come back with a
bill that protects databases without making it impossible to get access to
facts, but this is not going to happen, for the unfortunate reason that
both sides prefer to fight each other rather than to work cooperatively
toward constructive solutions.  

In any event, I am not an advocate of the proposed bill.  My point is a
simple and narrow one:  For all the many problems and excesses of the
intellectual property industries [!], providing legal protection to
aggregated databases will not "lock up" facts.

(For the record, none of my past or current publishing activity would be
affected by this bill one way or the other.)

Joseph J. Esposito