CF 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

CF 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).