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
>



-- 
Shawn Boyette
<[log in to unmask]>