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> Yale also told Harry and Peter that the CourseTable website infringed upon the school’s copyrighted course data. It appears to be true; CourseTable hosted Yal
by jahewson 13y ago
> Yale also told Harry and Peter that the CourseTable website infringed upon the school’s copyrighted course data. It appears to be true; CourseTable hosted Yale’s course descriptions and student evaluations, or, if not the exact evaluations, they at least hosted derivations of them.
It doesn't appear to be true at all! I'd argue very strongly that these are not creative works, and have zero commercial value, I don't believe they are eligale for copyright protection in the first place. This kind of muddled thinking that anything anyone writes down is magically covered by copyright needs to be resisted.
- Bahamut 13y agoZero commercial value is a highly dubious claim. If the website happened to be refined to be so popular that students wouldn't want to go without it and they would be able to charge for the service, then commercial value would naturally be present.
- jahewson 13y agoBy zero commercial value I mean that the current market price for this information is $0 because it is being given away for free. So it meets one of the key criteria of fair use. However, I probably shouldn't mention fair use at all, because I don't believe that these course descriptions are eligible for copyright protection, therefore any reuse does not need to be justified as fair use.