The Database and Collections of Information Misappropriations Act (H.R. 2361) was officially introduced in the House yesterday, co-sponsored by Representatives Coble (R-NC), Greenwood (R-PA), Hobson (R-OH), Sensenbrenner (R-WI), Rep Smith (R-TX), and Tauzin (R-LA). The bill would give quasi-copyright protection to compilations of fact and make it a crime to copy and distribute them without permission. It would not balance this protection with fair use, limited term, or first sale, the important counterweights in standard copyright law. News coverage. Watch the video of the hearings on the bill (thanks to ResourceShelf) or follow the debate on the ALA page on the bill. (PS: Credit for the great phrase, return of the anti-Feist, goes to my Public Knowledge colleague, Mike Godwin. Feist is the 1991 Supreme Court case holding that telephone white pages are an unoriginal arrangement of uncopyrightable facts, and that copying them without permission is not infringement.)
Posted by
Peter Suber at 10/10/2003 08:41:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
