4 ms·
I don't think that something being a fact makes it exempt from copyright. Map data is copyrighted, and often has minor inaccuracies in order to indicate copyrig
by MrMatt 17y ago
I don't think that something being a fact makes it exempt from copyright. Map data is copyrighted, and often has minor inaccuracies in order to indicate copyright infringement.
- frig 17y agoCF my longer post. Basically in the USA at least (EU has "database directive") the situation is that "facts" aren't themselves copyrightable but the intuitions / guidelines non-experts (like me) have to go from are very much pre-internet and pre-computers. In the map case: if I make a map of the coast of Florida by: - looking at maps A, B, and C - drawing my own map based on what I learned ...then the publishers of A (B or C) can't come sue me for violating their copyright over the shape of the coast of Florida; they have copyright over their specific depiction of that shape but not the shape itself. Once you move into all-digital datasets a lot of the grounding assumptions are no longer there (perfect reproduction is easy; the data is more abstract and may only really be representable in one way).