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> In light of the current public health emergency, The New York Times Company is providing this database under the following free-of-cost, perpetual, non-exclus

> In light of the current public health emergency, The New York Times Company is providing this database under the following free-of-cost, perpetual, non-exclusive license. Anyone may copy, distribute, and display the database, or any part thereof, and make derivative works based on it, provided (a) any such use is for non-commercial purposes only and (b) credit is given to The New York Times in any public display of the database, in any publication derived in part or in full from the database, and in any other public use of the data contained in or derived from the database. How is this form of license valid for what's essentially just numbers from publicly available data? Do I get to take numbers from various sources and then require credit and that nobody can use them for commercial purposes?

lukevp 7y ago
Software is just numbers too.
sjg007 7y ago
Yes.
TallGuyShort 7y ago
Your personal data is also just numbers. But it does seem weird. These numbers are already only authoritatively available from the government health services, right? The New York Times doesn't own the data either, if it's public it's public, they're providing a convenience. It's actually pretty analagous to news: they don't own the fact that an event happened, but they own their wording and they provide a service in getting that wording to you. edit: Yeah, "Over months, our journalists have recorded the details on newly confirmed cases as reported by state and local officials." It's all government, just aggregated by NYT instead of the federal government.
- reaperducer 7y ago
  I think it's just the Times firing a shot across the bows of other newspapers who will re-publish the data as their own without attribution. Newspapers sometimes do jerky things like that.
  - TallGuyShort 7y ago
    Oh that makes sense. The source of the data aside, the fact that it's not aggregated by the Feds means they did do a shit ton of work here...
chapium 7y ago
"Just numbers" well not quite. They are data which can be interpreted as information. This is like saying books are just a collection of letters. This link may be informative and provide a US context. Sorry I don't have a more content specific reference. https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/63139/public-dataset-without-license-what-is-allowed https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/63139/public-da...
- paulmd 7y ago
  Phone books are actually legally just a collection of numbers and are not considered a creative work, because there is nothing creative about the mere act of collating them. Thus, they cannot be copyrighted. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_Publications,_Inc.,_v._Rural_Telephone_Service_Co https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_Publications,_Inc.,_v._R.... If NYT provides a "value add" here beyond mere aggregation and deduplication they are probably copyrightable. Otherwise they probably don't hold a copyright here (although they may attempt to claim it, just like RTS did).
  - xyz0 7y ago
    > The data is the product of dozens of journalists working across several time zones to monitor news conferences, analyze data releases and seek clarification from public officials on how they categorize cases. > In most instances, the process of recording cases has been straightforward. But because of the patchwork of reporting methods for this data across more than 50 state and territorial governments and hundreds of local health departments, our journalists sometimes had to make difficult interpretations about how to count and record cases. The "value add" here is original reporting. I highly recommend reading the README in the repo, specifically the "Methodology and Definitions" section: https://github.com/nytimes/covid-19-data#methodology-and-definitions https://github.com/nytimes/covid-19-data#methodology-and-def.... There is no way that NYT employees were able to use that license/language without having the NYT in-house team of lawyers thoroughly vet it first.
  - chapium 7y ago
    Interesting!
papercrane 7y ago
Depends on the jurisdiction. In the US I'd be surprised if this compilation met the threshold of originality needed. See Feist v. Rural for the Supreme Court decision on copyrights over compilations of data. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_Publications,_Inc.,_v._Rural_Telephone_Service_Co https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_Publications,_Inc.,_v._R....
Symmetry 7y ago
Probably not. To the extent that the numbers simply reflect facts about the world and don't involve any creativity on the part of the New York Time they aren't subject to copyright. EDIT: Some more details https://copyright.uslegal.com/enumerated-categories-of-copyrightable-works/creativity-requirement/ https://copyright.uslegal.com/enumerated-categories-of-copyr...
mikestew 7y ago
How is this form of license valid for what's essentially just numbers? Are you saying that the NYT has added no value over just an unformatted stream of raw numbers?
- papercrane 7y ago
  In the US at least the standard for copyright is originality. Value add or "sweat of the brow" doesn't come into it.
cortesoft 7y ago
All data is just numbers. A book is just numbers. Software is just numbers. If you can have a license on anything, you have to be able to license numbers. The law isn't like pure logic... not all numbers are the same, even if they are the same number. What colour are your bits? https://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23 https://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23
danso 7y ago
Have you tried tracking these numbers even at the state level? The data entry/scraping aspect alone is substantial, but when you get down to the nitty gritty of the wildly varying ways that each agency (state and county) reports these numbers, then you're essentially required to have an opinionated framework and domain knowledge to maintain a consistent, canonical dataset.
- bhickey 7y ago
  Sweat of the brow does not establish copyright in the United States.

lukevp 7y ago

Software is just numbers too.

sjg007 7y ago

Yes.

TallGuyShort 7y ago

Your personal data is also just numbers. But it does seem weird. These numbers are already only authoritatively available from the government health services, right? The New York Times doesn't own the data either, if it's public it's public, they're providing a convenience. It's actually pretty analagous to news: they don't own the fact that an event happened, but they own their wording and they provide a service in getting that wording to you. edit: Yeah, "Over months, our journalists have recorded the details on newly confirmed cases as reported by state and local officials." It's all government, just aggregated by NYT instead of the federal government.

reaperducer 7y ago
I think it's just the Times firing a shot across the bows of other newspapers who will re-publish the data as their own without attribution. Newspapers sometimes do jerky things like that.
- TallGuyShort 7y ago
  Oh that makes sense. The source of the data aside, the fact that it's not aggregated by the Feds means they did do a shit ton of work here...

chapium 7y ago

"Just numbers" well not quite. They are data which can be interpreted as information. This is like saying books are just a collection of letters. This link may be informative and provide a US context. Sorry I don't have a more content specific reference. https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/63139/public-dataset-without-license-what-is-allowed https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/63139/public-da...

paulmd 7y ago
Phone books are actually legally just a collection of numbers and are not considered a creative work, because there is nothing creative about the mere act of collating them. Thus, they cannot be copyrighted. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_Publications,_Inc.,_v._Rural_Telephone_Service_Co https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_Publications,_Inc.,_v._R.... If NYT provides a "value add" here beyond mere aggregation and deduplication they are probably copyrightable. Otherwise they probably don't hold a copyright here (although they may attempt to claim it, just like RTS did).
- xyz0 7y ago
  > The data is the product of dozens of journalists working across several time zones to monitor news conferences, analyze data releases and seek clarification from public officials on how they categorize cases. > In most instances, the process of recording cases has been straightforward. But because of the patchwork of reporting methods for this data across more than 50 state and territorial governments and hundreds of local health departments, our journalists sometimes had to make difficult interpretations about how to count and record cases. The "value add" here is original reporting. I highly recommend reading the README in the repo, specifically the "Methodology and Definitions" section: https://github.com/nytimes/covid-19-data#methodology-and-definitions https://github.com/nytimes/covid-19-data#methodology-and-def.... There is no way that NYT employees were able to use that license/language without having the NYT in-house team of lawyers thoroughly vet it first.
- chapium 7y ago
  Interesting!

papercrane 7y ago

Depends on the jurisdiction. In the US I'd be surprised if this compilation met the threshold of originality needed. See Feist v. Rural for the Supreme Court decision on copyrights over compilations of data. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_Publications,_Inc.,_v._Rural_Telephone_Service_Co https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_Publications,_Inc.,_v._R....

Symmetry 7y ago

Probably not. To the extent that the numbers simply reflect facts about the world and don't involve any creativity on the part of the New York Time they aren't subject to copyright. EDIT: Some more details https://copyright.uslegal.com/enumerated-categories-of-copyrightable-works/creativity-requirement/ https://copyright.uslegal.com/enumerated-categories-of-copyr...

mikestew 7y ago

How is this form of license valid for what's essentially just numbers? Are you saying that the NYT has added no value over just an unformatted stream of raw numbers?

papercrane 7y ago
In the US at least the standard for copyright is originality. Value add or "sweat of the brow" doesn't come into it.

cortesoft 7y ago

All data is just numbers. A book is just numbers. Software is just numbers. If you can have a license on anything, you have to be able to license numbers. The law isn't like pure logic... not all numbers are the same, even if they are the same number. What colour are your bits? https://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23 https://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23

danso 7y ago

Have you tried tracking these numbers even at the state level? The data entry/scraping aspect alone is substantial, but when you get down to the nitty gritty of the wildly varying ways that each agency (state and county) reports these numbers, then you're essentially required to have an opinionated framework and domain knowledge to maintain a consistent, canonical dataset.

bhickey 7y ago
Sweat of the brow does not establish copyright in the United States.