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Actually, I'm pretty sure a phone book is not, in the US, in general, copyrightable. I don't believe US law has any special protection for "collections of facts". The canonical introductory intellectual property class example, which happens to be about a phone book in fact, is Feist v. Rural Telephone Service. Which in fact even has it's own wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_v._Rural Jonathan Shawn Boyette wrote: > Individual facts or datum are not copyrightable, but "collections of > facts" -- particular expressions of data -- are. This is what makes > phone books, databases, and the like subject to copyright. > > P.S. N.B. IANAL > > On Wed, Sep 24, 2008 at 9:59 AM, Jonathan Rochkind <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > >> Interestingly, outside the US it's somewhat more possible to claim copyright >> on "factual data" than inside the US, Europe for instance has types of IP >> and copyright protection for databases that the US does not. >> >> But basically, the answer is that nobody knows for sure, not even the >> lawyers. >> >> Jonathan >> >> Bryan Baldus wrote: >> >>> On Tuesday, September 23, 2008 4:17 PM, Nate Vack wrote: >>> >>> >>>> Huh. They claim copyright of these records. I'd somehow thought: >>>> 1: The federal government can't hold copyrights >>>> >>>> >>> The page [1] states: >>> >>> "Copyright" >>> "Records in the MARC Distribution Services originating with the Library of >>> Congress are copyrighted by the Library of Congress for use outside the >>> United States. Subscribers are granted copyright permission to selectively >>> redistribute records outside the United States; contact LC prior to any >>> distribution." >>> >>> So, in the U.S., they are not copyrightable, but outside the U.S. some >>> copyright claim might be justified. >>> >>> >>> >>>> 2: As purely factual data, catalog records are conceptually >>>> uncopyrightable >>>> >>>> >>> For the most part, personally I would agree with this, at least for >>> individual records (though some parts of the record, like the 520 summaries, >>> might contain enough original creativity that could be considered >>> copyrightable). Others might believe otherwise, at least as it pertains to >>> the collection of the records as a whole--for example, OCLC's copyright >>> claims on their database of records. >>> >>> ########################## >>> >>> On the Fred 2.0 records, aside from their age, I wish they were available >>> in MARC 21 format rather than XML with NFC encoding. When I tried to use >>> MarcEdit to convert the files from XML to MARC 21 (January 2007), I ran into >>> issues with character encodings. The files also seemed to lack header lines >>> like: >>> <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> >>> <collection xmlns="http://www.loc.gov/MARC21/slim"> >>> >>> [1] <http://www.loc.gov/cds/mds.html#lcaf> >>> >>> Thank you for your assistance, >>> >>> Bryan Baldus >>> Cataloger >>> Quality Books Inc. >>> The Best of America's Independent Presses >>> 1-800-323-4241x402 >>> [log in to unmask] >>> >>> >>> >> -- >> Jonathan Rochkind >> Digital Services Software Engineer >> The Sheridan Libraries >> Johns Hopkins University >> 410.516.8886 rochkind (at) jhu.edu >> >> > > > > -- Jonathan Rochkind Digital Services Software Engineer The Sheridan Libraries Johns Hopkins University 410.516.8886 rochkind (at) jhu.edu