Copyright of Facts

[Alex Nicolaou]

InfoNuovo at cs.com wrote:

> Here are two references that may be useful to you:
> http://www.genealogy.com/genealogy/14_cpyrt.html.

This was new to me, thanks.
 
> http://www.templetons.com/brad/copyright.html.

This I have already read, but I reread it.

> Something I find easy to forget in these discussions is the principle that
> copyright of a work doesn't apply to the uncopyrightable material that
> occurs in that work.   That is, an uncopyrightable fact can't be made
> copyrightable by virtue of being conveyed in a copyrighted work.

The real area of confusion is whether a measured quantity should be
considered a fact. The method and (in)accuracy of the measurement
process could, potentially, be regarded a creative effort.

If I take a photograph, I am clearly permitted to copyright it - it is
"art", and its composition reflects how I chose to record the facts (the
real objects in the photograph). It is difficult or impossible for
someone else to take the same photograph in the same conditions, so if
someone else claims to have taken an identical picture it would be easy
to win my case in court. 

If I take a series of measurements, I affect how accurate they are by my
methodology, choice of units, etc. This is not considered to be "art",
but the fact remains that few could reproduce my measurements exactly
without consciously attempting to do so. Given enough measurements, the
probability of reproducing my results is near zero.

> For me, the question would be whether there is anything in this area of
> basic copyright application that requires special attention in open-source
> licensing or is this just basic stuff of copyright generally?  Say more
> about your concern.

The question was brought to the fore by the existance of GPL'ed map
data. Bruce implied that these GPL'ed data are only weakly protected by
copyright law since they represent facts. If this is so, then we should
not GPL databases of measurements, since the license "protects" a work
that can be freely copied anyway.

On another thread we are discussing what it means to "link" GPL'ed and
non-GPL'ed work together; the way that thread is going could imply that
since the map data are under GPL, any program which relies on this
dataset for proper operation would need to be GPL'ed ... for example a
game whose world was constructed based on the map data and would not
work with another dataset.

> PS: I was told long ago that mapmakers once put intentional errors into
> their maps specifically as a way to detect plagiarism.

This makes my point exactly. Errors in the map data, whether intentional
or not, allow one to distinguish between a derived work of my collection
of measurements versus a re-measuring of the data that are in my
collection. If measurements are facts, then it doesn't matter: copyright
law doesn't permit facts to be copyrighted. If I take your map and print
a trivial transformation of it, such as a mirror image, the error would
show up and allow you to prove that it wasn't my original work.
Similarly, if I recompile the map data into a new database format, the
fact that I have reproduced all the errors of the original data suggest
that I have violated the map data copyright. All this assumes, of
course, that measurements are not facts and that they can be copyrighted
- but the correcteness of that assumption is unclear.

> PPS: I would quibble with your example.  As far as I know, under copyright
> there is no quantitative limitation on the use of facts from works of
> authorship.

Your quibble is perfectly valid if measurements == facts. 

alex