Feist and Database Rights

[kragen@pobox.com (Kragen)]

All three of you webmasters have businesses built on publicly-available
data from telephone books.  This is possible because of the Feist
decision declaring that copyright doesn't inhere in straightforward
collections of factual data.

You might know that Bruce Lehman, Reed Elsevier and West Publishing are
pushing various governments to create intellectual-property
restrictions similar to copyright, only more restrictive, concerning
databases; that they have succeeded in getting the European Union to
pass a resolution (Directive 96/9/EC of the European Parliament,
available at <http://www.ispo.cec.be/infosoc/legreg/docs/969ec.html>)
calling for the implementation of such restrictions; and that they are
pressuring the U.S. government to pass laws implementing such
restrictions as well.

Each of you would likely be instantly bankrupted by such a move, as you
can probably tell from reading the EU's Directive, and each of you has
enough daily web-site hits to raise some public awareness of the
issue.

I care about this because I don't want to live in a world where facts
are owned by one person or another.

Some Web pages on the issue:

The directive itself: http://www.ispo.cec.be/infosoc/legreg/docs/969ec.html
How the UK intends to implement the directive: 
	http://www.ukpats.org.uk/snews/consult.pdf
One person's thoughts on how these restrictions exceed the restrictions imposed
	on copyrighted material by copyright law:
	http://www.nap.edu/readingroom/books/BitsOfPower/box5.4.html
The National Research Council's opposition to such laws:
	http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,9598,00.html
Extensive information on this issue:
	http://www.nap.edu/readingroom/books/BitsOfPower/5.html

Kragen