Re: Carl Hartmann letter to Sen Hatch Regarding Database legislation and ownership of court opinions

[James Love <love@cptech.org>]

I agree with Richard.  Particularly since this year the Congress is
expected to make a much larger push for the legislation.   The bill has
been changed somewhat, and STATS, Inc, which was a group that opposed
the legislation in 1996, has been molified.  The 1996 critiques need to
be updated, bacause the bills have changed in portant ways.   I'll
forward some links to more recent analysis.  In general, the more
empircal the debate, the better off we are. Jamie



Richard Stallman wrote:
> 
> I hope that it is not too late to keep fighting against applying
> monopolies to data bases that don't come from government information.
> 
> I seem to recall seeing a discussion, a few years ago, where people
> sent in all the consequences they could think of that the database
> monopoly law would have.  For example, one consequence was that it
> would be that reporting sports scores would require permission of the
> sports league, because the scores are calculated in a computer which
> stores them in a data base.
> 
> I don't remember where that discussion happened.  Was it on this list?
> And wherever it was, can anyone find those messages?  I think that a
> concise list of all these consequences would be very useful for
> publicly attacking the database monopoly bill.

-- 
James Love, Director, Consumer Project on Technology
P.O. Box 19367, Washington, DC 20036, v202.387.8030 f202.234.5176
http://www.cptech.org, mailto:love@cptech.org