Calblog

"Your humble blogger is not worried about the law per se - the notion that a copyrighted work must be original is a Constitutional requirement."

My humble blogger may not be worried, but your arrogant commenter is. Perpetual copyrights are unconstitutional, too, but the current court has ruled that that requirement means next to nothing, as does racial discrimination as long as you stop doing it in the next 25 years or so. Hell, they recently had an opportunity to uphold the basic meaning of the free exercise clause of the First Amendment, and they couldn't even get that right!

I say, if this dreadful bill passes, be afraid. Be very afraid.

Good point. Touche.

I took leave of my senses and forgot that we can't afford to rely on the Supreme Court to uphold either the text of the Constitution, precident in interpreting it, or common sense.

No matter how you slice it, Congress should catch hell for even suggesting this bill.

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The data in the database is not unique, but the arrangement of it in the database, the database rules, and other similar stuff is unique, and should be copyrightable.

After all, a book is copyrightable even if none of the words in it are neologisms, right? And all a book is is a unique arrangement of words. Like a database is a unique arrangement of data and structures around data.

Now, it may still be a bad policy to allow copyright to extend to databases, but it can't really be for the reason of not being "unique", no?

Sigivald,

If the database has an original creative arrangement of its facts, then the arrangement can of course be copyrightable. Nobody is arguing that. But that is not what this new proposed law is trying to protect (obviously, since the current state of the law already protects such creative arrangements. Why would Congress propose a law that already exists?? ). So I am afraid that your "book" analogy is way off the mark.

This begs the question - what is an "original" arrangement? The plaintiffs in the Feist case tried to argue that the White Pages were an original work because the listing of names were in alphabetical order which was "original" and thus others should be preventing from listing the information in the same manner.

The Court correctly held an alphabetical arrangement is a functional arrangement, not a creative one, and thus could not be considered "original".

That is the issue here. You can't copyright an arrangement of data that is either in alphabetical order, numerical order, arranged by size, or other fashion that is inherently logical and serves a function of being able to retrieve the data in a quick and efficient manner. The data in these databases are all arraigned in a logical, functional fashion - not a creative one.

I have no idea what you are referring to when you say "other similar stuff is unique", so I can't comment on that. But the rest of your comments remain unconvincing and indicate that you fail to grasp the true purpose of this proposed law.

All of this reminds me of how Leonardo DiCaprio tried to trademark his own name a few years ago. There must be someone else in this country who is named Leonardo DiCaprio, just as there was a kid in my elementary school named Patrick Ewing. It's ridiculous.

I have one question, however. If someone uses an original equation or something to try to arrange a database, is that creative, even if it has a functional purpose? I'm thinking about something like the BCS rankings or the Blog Influence Quotient.

There are a lot of people named McDonald, too, but that doesn't mean they can all go out and open new hamburger restaurants under their own name. My guess is that any other Leo DiCaprio who wants to go into acting will be well advised to consider a stage name. Contrast this with the blogosphere, where Calblog, Kalblog and the Calgary Bloggers can all coexist peacefully. [Yes, I did omit another Calblog from that list. Expresio unius exclusio alterius est.]

As to algorithms, my understanding is that they can't be copyrighted, although some can of course be patented.

By "other similar stuff" I meant things that are part of the DB, but are not the tables or the contents. I didnt' want to go into technical detail of stored procedures, functions, or the like. (Of course, those are themselves definitely copyrightable, as they're "creative", just like any programming code. I work with databases for a living, so maybe it's just my use of "database" as"the sum of the data, tables, relations, and procedures" rather than "the data, tables, and obvious relations that aren't creative products". Then again, lots of the work at that level is really non-obvious and involves a lot of what certainly feels like "creativeness" to us programmers...)

Hmm. From what I understand, a lot of those court battles basically turn into contests to see who has more money, so unless you've got more dough than McDonald's or Leo, you're out of luck. For example, there was a spat in New York because there was a Patsy's pizzeria which is very famous, and his son, also named Patsy, started a pizzeria bearing the same name, but then several years later, after his father died, the older pizzeria got sold and the people who bought it sued his son, and the son didn't feel like mounting a serious challenge, so he changed it to Grimaldi's. Both are very, very good pizzerias, btw.

Hmm. I wonder whether Justene or I has more money. I'm out of work, so I'd probably lose that fight.

Actually, if another Leo DiCaprio tried to become an actor, he would be unable to join the Screen Actors Guild under the name Leonardo DiCaprio. Union rules forbid any two members from working under the same names.

That's why a British actor named James Stewart became known to moviegoers instead as Stewart Granger.

Actually, if another Leo DiCaprio tried to become an actor, he would be unable to join the Screen Actors Guild under the name Leonardo DiCaprio. Union rules forbid any two members from working under the same names.

That's why a British actor named James Stewart became known to moviegoers instead as Stewart Granger.

I did not hit "POST" twice.

I did not hit "POST" twice.

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