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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Am 12.03.13 18:06, schrieb David
Prosser:<br>
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<blockquote
cite="mid:D798504A-C9DD-43CD-9523-6E65FBDA3CCA@rluk.ac.uk"
type="cite">
<pre wrap="">(An additional complication is, of course, that we are really talking about data here rather than papers, and so perhaps a database license would be even more appropriate.)</pre>
</blockquote>
<br>
Indeed, facts are not copyrightable - at least in Germany ;-)) - and
thus a CC-License (except perhaps CC0) or any other license <u>based
on copyright</u> (or German Urheberrecht) would be mostly
pointless. (For a comparison of the situation in some jurisdictions,
see <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.knowledge-exchange.info/Default.aspx?ID=461">http://www.knowledge-exchange.info/Default.aspx?ID=461</a>; there
seems be be a "risk" that <i>some</i> data might be copyrightable
under UK or Danish law.)<br>
<br>
A database right in EU jurisdictions (not in the US, as I understood
from spurious sources) comes into play only if some entity has had
"significant" investments in the database as such, not counting cost
of acquiring the data in the database. This is clearly not the case
here.<br>
<br>
As far as I understood, a simple table of numbers is not
protect-able (in most cases) as soon as it is out "in the wild". So
no need for a license, if you intend to make it freely (libre)
available. (In contrast to text or photos, which are protected, even
if there is no (C) mark on it.)<br>
<br>
As to Heather's argument in her blog, that "
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html;
charset=ISO-8859-1">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">On the
Internet, the way to note that a web page is <i
style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">not</i> available for text
and data mining is to use the norobots.txt
in the web page’s metadata.</span>": That is true, but not
necessarily accepted by lawyers. Proof: German publishers of
newspaper lobby - quite successfully, so far - that Google shall pay
for displaying snippets - and still implicitly expect to be
displayed in Google search. "Ironically", they do use robot.txt, but
not to drive Google or any other big search engine away. (AFAIK
there is no "norobots.txt". Also, robots.txt is a file at the root
"/" of a <u>site</u>, not "in the metadata" of a <u>page</u>), <br>
<br>
My overall point is that one cannot assume that what seems
appropriate or sensible will be seen as legal or unproblematic by
lawyers. And nobody can justify building an infrastructure or even a
common practise on shaky ground. So a simple, unambigous and
(hopefully) internationally identical legal environment is
indispensable for research and information infrastructures. One of
the outstanding features of CC is that it is providing such an
environment for text - except for the NC clause, which is wide open
for doubt about its meaning.<br>
<br>
best,<br>
<br>
Hans<br>
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