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So in essence another "is scraping a cyberattack" suit, along with asking for damages because their hard work is now available for free. The interesting thing

So in essence another "is scraping a cyberattack" suit, along with asking for damages because their hard work is now available for free. The interesting thing here is imho that WorldCat is that WorldCat is a bibliographic database, mostly listing the collections of OCLC members, along with other information about these works. Obviously this information takes work to collect and organize, and that's what the membership fees are for. But for financial harm to come to OCLC (beyond the costs of being scraped) it seems to me that libraries would have to decide that they don't want to pay membership fees and instead use the scraped, less up-to-date version of the catalog? How likely is that to actually happen at any scale?

fsckboy 3y ago
between "scraping is cyberattack" and "damages" is "Lists, Directories, and Databases" generally do not fall "Under Copyright Law" from https://www.justia.com/intellectual-property/copyright/lists-directories-and-databases/ https://www.justia.com/intellectual-property/copyright/lists... A work must have at least a minimal amount of creativity to get copyright protection. This can pose a barrier to copyrighting compilations of facts, such as lists, directories, and databases. The information in them is not original, but they still may receive protection if the people who compiled them used some creativity in the process of selecting or arranging the information. This does not mean that the selection process must be unprecedented or bizarre, but it should not be so mechanical that it required no thought. For example, a telephone directory likely will not receive copyright protection because listing the names in alphabetical order does not show enough creativity. (The Supreme Court reviewed this situation in the main case discussing copyrights for lists and directories.) ... Many lists are similar to the telephone directory example considered by the Supreme Court. These include mailing lists, membership and subscriber lists, street addresses, and directories that list the contact information for certain groups of people, such as college alumni. In most cases, copyright will not be appropriate for these lists because they are arranged in an obvious manner. They are typically arranged alphabetically or numerically, and the people compiling the list do not choose which items to include. Moreover, a mailing list of people who made political contributions that was organized by zip code was found to lie outside the boundaries of copyright protection. ... Factory and store inventories do not receive copyright protection. They are meant to be comprehensive, so no choice is involved in compiling their content. Also, they are generally arranged in alphabetical or numerical order. Businesses may be able to protect their inventories as trade secrets instead. This lawsuit is for tortious interference with prospective business relationships "Plaintiff OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc (“OCLC”) brought suit against Defendants Clarivate, Plc; Clarivate Analytics (US) LLC; ProQuest, LLC; and Ex Libris (USA), Inc. Alleging that Defendants are tortiously interfering and conspiring to tortiously interfere with its contractual relationships and tortiously interfering and conspiring to tortiously interfere with its prospective business relationships. This matter is before the Court on Plaintiff’s motion for temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction, Doc. 4." from https://librarytechnology.org/docs/27467.pdf https://librarytechnology.org/docs/27467.pdf
- victorbjorklund 3y ago
  Worth noting is that in EU databases can have special IP protections in themselves
- wongarsu 3y ago
  A part of their damage claim is based on the costs incurred by this so-called cyberattack. "These hacking attacks [scraping mostly JSON] materially affected OCLC’s production systems and servers, requiring around-the-clock efforts from November 2022 to March 2023 to attempt to limit service outages and maintain the production systems’ performance for customers. To respond to these ongoing attacks, OCLC spent over 1.4 million dollars on its systems’ infrastructure and devoted nearly 10,000 employee hours to the same." Also "During this time, customers threatened and likely did cancel their products and services with OCLC due to these disruptions." Those are probably the most valid angles to push here. Mostly the invested time and money since they are actually quantifiable, as opposed to the people who maybe probably definitely canceled their service because of the disruption.
  - abracadaniel 3y ago
    They allege 2.2T downloaded. Over that time frame of 5 months, I calculate about 1.5Mbit download rate. The 10k hours over the timespan they specify is over 10 employees working 40 hours a week. None of their claims make any sense.
    - Brian_K_White 3y ago
      Right? In the end it cost, what, a couple dollars in bandwidth?, a couple hundred? A couple thousand? Fine I'll make you whole out of my pocket change. Meanwhile how much did you waste on that laywer?
3abiton 3y ago
Agreed, but scraping can cause DDDoS and goes against ToS. But it's obvious here why they're making such claims, they're trying to crackdown on free knowledge sharing.
greenie_beans 3y ago
yep. there are some attempts where libraries try to use different data sources but worldcat is the monopoly. the relationship between libraries and worldcat has sometimes been an adversarial relationship. the information is sourced from the libraries yet worldcat holds them hostage to their data with membership fees.
jrochkind1 3y ago
It's also unclear to what extent bibliographic records are copyrightable, as "facts" are not copyrightable. (At least in the US). It's not clear they _aren't_, at least some elements, but it's also not clear they are. OR, if they WERE copyrightable, that the copyright would belong to OCLC rather than the thousands of libraries which contributed them (generally without compensation). It is noteable that OCLC does not really mention copyright or any copyright grounds in the lawsuit. It really does seem to be a case of "we think we can make violating ToS a violation of this Ohio law against hacking." As a librarian-software-engineer myself, it is sad to me how the rich ecosystem of cooperatively owned library consortia of the 20th century, which operated non-profit in interest aligned with those of their member-owners... has been largely consolidated into enormous ostensibly "non-profit" coroporations which act as if the might as well be for-profits, trying to maximize revenue from their "member" customers, and regardless of any larger mission or values their library members purportedly have.

fsckboy 3y ago

between "scraping is cyberattack" and "damages" is "Lists, Directories, and Databases" generally do not fall "Under Copyright Law" from https://www.justia.com/intellectual-property/copyright/lists-directories-and-databases/ https://www.justia.com/intellectual-property/copyright/lists... A work must have at least a minimal amount of creativity to get copyright protection. This can pose a barrier to copyrighting compilations of facts, such as lists, directories, and databases. The information in them is not original, but they still may receive protection if the people who compiled them used some creativity in the process of selecting or arranging the information. This does not mean that the selection process must be unprecedented or bizarre, but it should not be so mechanical that it required no thought. For example, a telephone directory likely will not receive copyright protection because listing the names in alphabetical order does not show enough creativity. (The Supreme Court reviewed this situation in the main case discussing copyrights for lists and directories.) ... Many lists are similar to the telephone directory example considered by the Supreme Court. These include mailing lists, membership and subscriber lists, street addresses, and directories that list the contact information for certain groups of people, such as college alumni. In most cases, copyright will not be appropriate for these lists because they are arranged in an obvious manner. They are typically arranged alphabetically or numerically, and the people compiling the list do not choose which items to include. Moreover, a mailing list of people who made political contributions that was organized by zip code was found to lie outside the boundaries of copyright protection. ... Factory and store inventories do not receive copyright protection. They are meant to be comprehensive, so no choice is involved in compiling their content. Also, they are generally arranged in alphabetical or numerical order. Businesses may be able to protect their inventories as trade secrets instead. This lawsuit is for tortious interference with prospective business relationships "Plaintiff OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc (“OCLC”) brought suit against Defendants Clarivate, Plc; Clarivate Analytics (US) LLC; ProQuest, LLC; and Ex Libris (USA), Inc. Alleging that Defendants are tortiously interfering and conspiring to tortiously interfere with its contractual relationships and tortiously interfering and conspiring to tortiously interfere with its prospective business relationships. This matter is before the Court on Plaintiff’s motion for temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction, Doc. 4." from https://librarytechnology.org/docs/27467.pdf https://librarytechnology.org/docs/27467.pdf

victorbjorklund 3y ago
Worth noting is that in EU databases can have special IP protections in themselves
wongarsu 3y ago
A part of their damage claim is based on the costs incurred by this so-called cyberattack. "These hacking attacks [scraping mostly JSON] materially affected OCLC’s production systems and servers, requiring around-the-clock efforts from November 2022 to March 2023 to attempt to limit service outages and maintain the production systems’ performance for customers. To respond to these ongoing attacks, OCLC spent over 1.4 million dollars on its systems’ infrastructure and devoted nearly 10,000 employee hours to the same." Also "During this time, customers threatened and likely did cancel their products and services with OCLC due to these disruptions." Those are probably the most valid angles to push here. Mostly the invested time and money since they are actually quantifiable, as opposed to the people who maybe probably definitely canceled their service because of the disruption.
- abracadaniel 3y ago
  They allege 2.2T downloaded. Over that time frame of 5 months, I calculate about 1.5Mbit download rate. The 10k hours over the timespan they specify is over 10 employees working 40 hours a week. None of their claims make any sense.
  - Brian_K_White 3y ago
    Right? In the end it cost, what, a couple dollars in bandwidth?, a couple hundred? A couple thousand? Fine I'll make you whole out of my pocket change. Meanwhile how much did you waste on that laywer?

3abiton 3y ago

Agreed, but scraping can cause DDDoS and goes against ToS. But it's obvious here why they're making such claims, they're trying to crackdown on free knowledge sharing.

greenie_beans 3y ago

yep. there are some attempts where libraries try to use different data sources but worldcat is the monopoly. the relationship between libraries and worldcat has sometimes been an adversarial relationship. the information is sourced from the libraries yet worldcat holds them hostage to their data with membership fees.

jrochkind1 3y ago

It's also unclear to what extent bibliographic records are copyrightable, as "facts" are not copyrightable. (At least in the US). It's not clear they _aren't_, at least some elements, but it's also not clear they are. OR, if they WERE copyrightable, that the copyright would belong to OCLC rather than the thousands of libraries which contributed them (generally without compensation). It is noteable that OCLC does not really mention copyright or any copyright grounds in the lawsuit. It really does seem to be a case of "we think we can make violating ToS a violation of this Ohio law against hacking." As a librarian-software-engineer myself, it is sad to me how the rich ecosystem of cooperatively owned library consortia of the 20th century, which operated non-profit in interest aligned with those of their member-owners... has been largely consolidated into enormous ostensibly "non-profit" coroporations which act as if the might as well be for-profits, trying to maximize revenue from their "member" customers, and regardless of any larger mission or values their library members purportedly have.