7 ms·

Time zone database has new home after lawsuit

72 points by Garbage 15y ago

zmanji 15y ago
Although I think ICANN isn't the greatest body to be over seeing the tz database, I think it's a lot better than a single person. ICANN has the resources to distribute the database, facilitate new releases and obviously defend it from legal disputes.
derleth 15y ago
At what point does a piece of technology become too essential to ever be allowed to disappear, even if it's under a legal threat that would otherwise kill it? Or, looked at another way, even if the lawsuit succeeds and the tz database is judged a copyright violation, do you actually expect anyone to stop using it?
- 0x12 15y ago
  That lawsuit is - as far as I can tell - dead in the water anyway because of the number of years that the situation has been going on. If you let a thing like that lapse for too long then you can't later on turn around and demand reparation. They'd have a very hard time arguing they weren't aware of it for so long that a very large portion of the IT world became dependent on it without becoming aware of it themselves. And all that is assuming that the claims hold water, which remains to be seen. It's an attempt at extortion from where I'm sitting, after all, the value of the database is only determined by the parties that are using it, recreating it from scratch requires some effort but nothing monumental. The current timezones are not at risk anyway, it is just the historical data we are talking about here.
  - derleth 15y ago
    Still, if you ignore the facts of this specific case, which I agree is extremely weak, what do you think about my questions? Also: This is a copyright case, not trademark. 'Use it or lose it' does not apply to whether copyright violations have occurred; it can, at most, modify the damages involved.
    - 0x12 15y ago
      You're right about the 'use it or lose it', but the damages will likely be set to '0', especially in those cases where the value of the original copyrighted data is minimal (which I think in this case is fairly clear). As for the question of appropriation, I don't think that that should ever happen, it would basically mean that anything is up for grabs given the right reasoning. Governments have to jump through some pretty involved hoops in order to seize your property (ok, in some countries the hoops are not that complicated and abuse is rife), for corporations to do the same thing would be a bad development. Say next year we all decide that the windows source code is something we can't live without any more so hand it over? That's not a good development, even in those cases where you could make a strong argument for it. In this particular case, there isn't even a strong argument, all it will take is a little bit of work if they should win their case and then they can keep their database and use it to light the fire after printing it out. It will have lost its value entirely after it gets re-created from original material.
- ars 15y ago
  > At what point does a piece of technology become too essential to ever be allowed to disappear, even if it's under a legal threat that would otherwise kill it? I think if it was that essential it would be recreated, or a work around found. However the (US) military does in fact do something like that: They say we need to implement your patent. So they just start using it and pay the owner. The owner of the patent has no say in the matter and can not refuse.
protomyth 15y ago
I still don't understand why any country allows databases (simple collections of facts) to be copyrighted.
- theatrus2 15y ago
  It doesn't. But that doesn't stop lawsuits from being filed.
  - eli 15y ago
    Err, the US doesn't, but some countries explicitly do allow collections of facts to be copyrighted.
- RexRollman 15y ago
  It is essentially a SLAPP lawsuit.
  - Aga 15y ago
    In case anyone else was wondering about the term SLAPP, from Wikipedia: "A strategic lawsuit against public participation (SLAPP) is a lawsuit that is intended to censor, intimidate, and silence critics by burdening them with the cost of a legal defense until they abandon their criticism or opposition." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_lawsuit_against_public_participation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_lawsuit_against_publi...
- rprasad 15y ago
  The facts are not copyrighted; the organization and choice of items is what is copyrighted (i.e., choosing to have entries for some major cities like Los Angeles or Rio de Janeiro, but not for others, like Detroit or Perth.)
scottdw2 15y ago
IANAL, but.... In the US, per the copyright act, data can't be copyrighted. Some compilations can be copyrighted, but the Supreme Court has said that the compilation can't just be a collection of data. It needs to posses even a small modicum of creativity in order to deserve protection. Your curated list of "awesome places to eat in NY" can be copyrighted. The yellow pages cannot. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_v._Rural http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_v._Rural for details. My guess is that a world timezone database does not meet this minimum level of creativity. The descriptions I've read about the lawsuit seem to indicate that the plaintiffs complain that some individual records were copied from their database, and that the database directly indicates that they did so. They would only have a case if they lifted major portions of the database and copied them enmasse, stealing their formatting, and the original was deemed to be more like your "curated ny restaurant list" than it was like the yellow pages. Taking the information present in the records, and translating them to a different database format is likely not an infringement, per the copyright act. Even if it was though, the material in question likely isn't copyrightable anyways.
- rprasad 15y ago
  It's not the information that is copyrighted, it's the selection of what countries fall into what regions (and what to call the regions), which countries or cities to include, the order of the geographic regions, and even the order in which the geographic regions and their corresponding timezones are displayed. These are all choices that requires some amount of creativity (in the sense that they are not merely purely functional choices). Feist stands for the proposition that any creative choice made in presenting information is sufficient for a valid copyright as to the creative choices made (thought the underlying factual information itself may not be copyrighted). If this were to go to court, the copyright owner would win. How could the database be changed to get around the copyright at issue? Get rid of the region assignments, broaden (or narrow) the selection of cities/states/etc. included, or even simply flip the order in which geographic area and the corresponding timezone are listed.
  - 0x12 15y ago
    > If this were to go to court, the copyright owner would win. That depends on when they became aware of it, if they've been aware of it for a long time but didn't sue then that will considerably weaken their case. They won't lose their copyright but they may lose their ability to get any damages.
fanf2 15y ago
This article is rather misleading. The plan to move the TZ database to IANA is over a year old - see https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-lear-iana-timezone-database/history/ https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-lear-iana-timezone-da... - though the lawsuit has sped the process up a bit. The TZ mailing list switched to IANA within a day of Olson shutting down the old list, and Robert Elz has been acting as interim maintainer. There has been no disruption to TZ database maintenance. IANA are not yet providing web or FTP sites for distributing the database and code.
- kijeda 15y ago
  http://www.iana.org/time-zones http://www.iana.org/time-zones It is linked off the IANA homepage.
driverdan 15y ago
To top it off the company who filed the lawsuit peddles astrology products, something that's completely worthless and contributes nothing to society, unlike the TZ DB which is a great contribution.

72 points by Garbage 15y ago

Although I think ICANN isn't the greatest body to be over seeing the tz database, I think it's a lot better than a single person. ICANN has the resources to distribute the database, facilitate new releases and obviously defend it from legal disputes.

derleth 15y ago

At what point does a piece of technology become too essential to ever be allowed to disappear, even if it's under a legal threat that would otherwise kill it? Or, looked at another way, even if the lawsuit succeeds and the tz database is judged a copyright violation, do you actually expect anyone to stop using it?

0x12 15y ago
That lawsuit is - as far as I can tell - dead in the water anyway because of the number of years that the situation has been going on. If you let a thing like that lapse for too long then you can't later on turn around and demand reparation. They'd have a very hard time arguing they weren't aware of it for so long that a very large portion of the IT world became dependent on it without becoming aware of it themselves. And all that is assuming that the claims hold water, which remains to be seen. It's an attempt at extortion from where I'm sitting, after all, the value of the database is only determined by the parties that are using it, recreating it from scratch requires some effort but nothing monumental. The current timezones are not at risk anyway, it is just the historical data we are talking about here.
- derleth 15y ago
  Still, if you ignore the facts of this specific case, which I agree is extremely weak, what do you think about my questions? Also: This is a copyright case, not trademark. 'Use it or lose it' does not apply to whether copyright violations have occurred; it can, at most, modify the damages involved.
  - 0x12 15y ago
    You're right about the 'use it or lose it', but the damages will likely be set to '0', especially in those cases where the value of the original copyrighted data is minimal (which I think in this case is fairly clear). As for the question of appropriation, I don't think that that should ever happen, it would basically mean that anything is up for grabs given the right reasoning. Governments have to jump through some pretty involved hoops in order to seize your property (ok, in some countries the hoops are not that complicated and abuse is rife), for corporations to do the same thing would be a bad development. Say next year we all decide that the windows source code is something we can't live without any more so hand it over? That's not a good development, even in those cases where you could make a strong argument for it. In this particular case, there isn't even a strong argument, all it will take is a little bit of work if they should win their case and then they can keep their database and use it to light the fire after printing it out. It will have lost its value entirely after it gets re-created from original material.
ars 15y ago
> At what point does a piece of technology become too essential to ever be allowed to disappear, even if it's under a legal threat that would otherwise kill it? I think if it was that essential it would be recreated, or a work around found. However the (US) military does in fact do something like that: They say we need to implement your patent. So they just start using it and pay the owner. The owner of the patent has no say in the matter and can not refuse.

protomyth 15y ago

I still don't understand why any country allows databases (simple collections of facts) to be copyrighted.

theatrus2 15y ago
It doesn't. But that doesn't stop lawsuits from being filed.
- eli 15y ago
  Err, the US doesn't, but some countries explicitly do allow collections of facts to be copyrighted.
RexRollman 15y ago
It is essentially a SLAPP lawsuit.
- Aga 15y ago
  In case anyone else was wondering about the term SLAPP, from Wikipedia: "A strategic lawsuit against public participation (SLAPP) is a lawsuit that is intended to censor, intimidate, and silence critics by burdening them with the cost of a legal defense until they abandon their criticism or opposition." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_lawsuit_against_public_participation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_lawsuit_against_publi...
rprasad 15y ago
The facts are not copyrighted; the organization and choice of items is what is copyrighted (i.e., choosing to have entries for some major cities like Los Angeles or Rio de Janeiro, but not for others, like Detroit or Perth.)

scottdw2 15y ago

IANAL, but.... In the US, per the copyright act, data can't be copyrighted. Some compilations can be copyrighted, but the Supreme Court has said that the compilation can't just be a collection of data. It needs to posses even a small modicum of creativity in order to deserve protection. Your curated list of "awesome places to eat in NY" can be copyrighted. The yellow pages cannot. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_v._Rural http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_v._Rural for details. My guess is that a world timezone database does not meet this minimum level of creativity. The descriptions I've read about the lawsuit seem to indicate that the plaintiffs complain that some individual records were copied from their database, and that the database directly indicates that they did so. They would only have a case if they lifted major portions of the database and copied them enmasse, stealing their formatting, and the original was deemed to be more like your "curated ny restaurant list" than it was like the yellow pages. Taking the information present in the records, and translating them to a different database format is likely not an infringement, per the copyright act. Even if it was though, the material in question likely isn't copyrightable anyways.

rprasad 15y ago
It's not the information that is copyrighted, it's the selection of what countries fall into what regions (and what to call the regions), which countries or cities to include, the order of the geographic regions, and even the order in which the geographic regions and their corresponding timezones are displayed. These are all choices that requires some amount of creativity (in the sense that they are not merely purely functional choices). Feist stands for the proposition that any creative choice made in presenting information is sufficient for a valid copyright as to the creative choices made (thought the underlying factual information itself may not be copyrighted). If this were to go to court, the copyright owner would win. How could the database be changed to get around the copyright at issue? Get rid of the region assignments, broaden (or narrow) the selection of cities/states/etc. included, or even simply flip the order in which geographic area and the corresponding timezone are listed.
- 0x12 15y ago
  > If this were to go to court, the copyright owner would win. That depends on when they became aware of it, if they've been aware of it for a long time but didn't sue then that will considerably weaken their case. They won't lose their copyright but they may lose their ability to get any damages.

fanf2 15y ago

This article is rather misleading. The plan to move the TZ database to IANA is over a year old - see https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-lear-iana-timezone-database/history/ https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-lear-iana-timezone-da... - though the lawsuit has sped the process up a bit. The TZ mailing list switched to IANA within a day of Olson shutting down the old list, and Robert Elz has been acting as interim maintainer. There has been no disruption to TZ database maintenance. IANA are not yet providing web or FTP sites for distributing the database and code.

kijeda 15y ago
http://www.iana.org/time-zones http://www.iana.org/time-zones It is linked off the IANA homepage.

driverdan 15y ago

To top it off the company who filed the lawsuit peddles astrology products, something that's completely worthless and contributes nothing to society, unlike the TZ DB which is a great contribution.