One of the most important pages in the print volumes of the Library of
Congress Subject Headings (LCSH), is the title page verso, which
includes publication and copyright details. The folks at LC very
clearly understand US copyright law, since on that page you can see
that they claim that the LCSH is copyright LC _outside of the United
States of America_.

The same probably holds true for the copyright claim on the name
authority files. You folks in the United States can do what you will
with impunity, but us unwashed masses beyond your shores are likely to
get in trouble. Probably the next time we attempt to cross the border.

- David

On Tue, Sep 23, 2008 at 5:21 PM, Jason Griffey <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> As I mentioned, they are available from Ibiblio on the link above. The
> copyright claim is...well...specious at best. But no one really wants
> to be the one to go to court and prove it. They've been publicly
> available for more than a year now on the Fred 2.0 site, and they
> haven't been sued, to my knowledge.
>
> Jason
>
>
> On Tue, Sep 23, 2008 at 5:17 PM, Nate Vack <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>> On Tue, Sep 23, 2008 at 3:49 PM, Bryan Baldus
>> <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>>> One way (as you likely know) (official, expensive) is via The Library of Congress Cataloging Distribution Service:
>>
>> Huh. They claim copyright of these records. I'd somehow thought:
>>
>> 1: The federal government can't hold copyrights
>>
>> 2: As purely factual data, catalog records are conceptually uncopyrightable
>>
>> Anyone who knows more about this than I do know if they're *really*
>> copyrighted, or if it's more of a "we're gonna try and say they're
>> copyrighted and hope no one ignores us"?
>>
>> Curious,
>> -Nate
>>
>