Re: Oh please oh please oh pleeeease

Csaba Gabor wrote:
You seem to be getting confused about what I want. I don't want the
kind of "good information" that you are talking about. What I do want
is to be able to form an informed opinion. That's what people all over
the world do. They don't pay a copyright lawyer hundreds of dollars
for an opionion on whether they may make a photocopy or not. What they
do is to discuss it with others, read about it, and form an opinion on
their own, whether or not it complies with actual law. It's not just
about copyright law, it's about all issues.


They do if they want accurate information. Anything else can get you in serious legal trouble.

Furthermore, here's a not oft mentioned statistic: in 50% of court
cases with a decision, one side is not doing as well as they expected
(as in, they lose). That is to say, the information from those lawyers
was not "good information" since it did not sustain their case. Legal
advice may or may not be correct. You say that it is the job of your
lawyers to protect your assets. You might want to review your contract
and ask them to do some more educating of you because that's not their
job. If your assets become lost in a court case, you figure your
lawyers are on the hook? Not hardly. The job of your lawyers is to
advise you as to how they think YOU could best protect your assets, and
to help effect whatever you decide. That's very different from them
protecting your assets.


I doubt that. I suspect much more than 50% don't get their way. Civil cases are not generally "all or nothing".


And no, my attorneys are not on the hook if I lose a court case. But they ARE on the hook if they give me bad legal advice. They have a legal obligation to give me good advice. It doesn't mean I'll win every case. But it does mean they give me good, informed legal advice - something you won't find on the Internet.

Lawyers have an important purpose. They (are supposed to) have a large
knowledge of case history, and they know how to navigate the system,
which forms to fill out and how, can usually advise on different
options. They do not take the place of one's brain - the individual
should be as well educated as possible on a topic to gain the greatest
advantage from their lawyer.


If that's all you think lawyers do, I'm sorry for you. It is their job to THINK - in legal terms. Not only provide information on previous cases, but help interpret the law and precedents as they apply to YOUR circumstances. This is their LEGAL OBLIGATION.

Maybe, instead of me going to a lawyer (a ridiculous notion in a
discussion), you should argue more cogently, and back up your "No it
isn't" with convincing citations. Otherwise, you look pretty silly.
And maybe you are getting "good information", but it's sure not
filtering through to this thread. Consider this - suppose I actually
did go to a lawyer and reported back, "Hey I did ask a copyright
lawyer, and he supported my contention." Will you all of a sudden say,
"Oh, OK, you must be right." Hardly. Proof by authority went out the
door in high school.


Not at all ridiculous. Trying to get legal information from the Internet is ridiculous, however.

I really don't care if you think I "look silly" or not. It's not my job to educate you on legal issues. And quite frankly, I really don't give a damn if you get your arse in a trouble because you took cues from what you found on the Internet. You deserve it.

You tell me I'm not getting it right. But you don't back this up with
a shred of convincing argument. "He said, she said" when there is no
evidence of a deep understanding isn't worth diddly. For example, you
said I misinterpreted the library info. I provided a relevant link.
You said it doesn't apply and ask me instead to believe something that
an alleged expert told you some time ago. Argument by ignoring what
the other person says also went out the door a long time ago.


I did. I told you to get good advice - from a copyright attorney. You just refuse to follow it. But then fools don't take good advice.

A year ago I got a letter from a bank's law firm, a specialist in IP
(intellectual property). They wanted to take away from me a domain
name I had registered in good faith. They told me that I was in
serious violation of a couple of laws. Now if you reasearch this area,
you'll find that the law strongly favours the plaintiff in these types
of cases. I did my research - internet reasearch, no less - and wrote
back. This time I got back a letter from a senior partner in the firm
affirming that I was in violation of the law (not even suggesting that
I might be, but saying outright that I was). I sent back another
letter and haven't heard from them since. Nor have I changed what I'm
doing with my domain. Now, do you figure that the bank got their
money's worth from that law firm specializing in IP? I'm guessing they
actually paid for that "good information" and got a "sorry" for it.
But because my situation had some novel elements in it, I subsequently
went to the EFF and got pointed to a law firm which did back me up on
it. In doing so, I found that the research I had done was pretty well
spot on. Oh yea, and the lawyer I presented my case to gave me plenty
of "good information."


Not knowing the details, I couldn't say. Nor do I care. If I got one of these from a bank, I would turn it over to my copyright attorney's firm (although my copyright attorney doesn't handle trademark law, others in his firm do).


The point is to say that the internet is actually a very useful source
of research. While I don't advocate that it be used in place of a
lawyer, it is certainly reasonable to do reasearch via the internet
(should I even need to point this out in 2006?) in forming opinions and
in preparing to present one's case to a lawyer.


But you are advocating its use in the place of an attorney.

I'm just thinking that maybe when people are attempting to learn PHP,
we should just tell them, "Go to a PHP professional." Clearly, that
person will do better than a dabbler who is asking for help. Yea,
people really shouldn't practise programming if they haven't been
properly trained. They will do all sorts of horrible things and ignore
industry standards and maybe even use eval.


Learning PHP is much different than interpreting the law. If you can't see the difference, you're an even bigger fool than I previously thought.

The one thing we seem to agree on is that the OP does have some dicey
IP concerns and it would behoove him to gain some clarity on those
issues.

Csaba


And learn not to top post. This newsgroup uses bottom posting or merged posting (like I did here) as it's standard.

Oh, and "My dad is bigger than your dad" arguments are passe, too.

Jerry Stuckle wrote:

Csaba Gabor wrote:

Jerry Stuckle wrote:


Csaba Gabor wrote:


Jerry Stuckle wrote:


Kenneth Downs wrote:


Jerry Stuckle wrote:


Additionally, do you have permission from EBay to use their information
in this way? All of it is copyrighted, and using it without their
permission can get you and the developer in a lot of trouble. Of

Hmmm, I would wonder about the distinction between their HTML pages and the
data points.

Copying an entire page and displaying it as part of your business would
definitely be a violation. Oh, except for google does that, um, they do it
actually with the entire internet. There have been a few high-profile
cases of people objecting, but by-and-large it seems to go forward.

Ras is talking about gathering data points that they have made public. I
would bet (of course IANAL) that he is ok until he starts thinking about
going public. Then he will have to acknowledge the source of the data and
obtain some kind of understanding.


But EBay is also a data collection - and that collection is copyrighted,
also. You can't make use of the collection without their approval, even
if you do just excerpt data and use the data in another way.


Copyright applies only to presentation (of data, et. al.) and not to
data itself. There was a case way back when where Ma Bell sued some
upstart for trying to make their own yellow pages and the argument was
that the information was copyrighted. I seem to recollect that the
decision went against Ma Bell (AT&T) because they could only claim
copyright on their particular presentation. If the data was presented
another way (for example, reordered by first name) then there was no
protection.


That's where you're wrong. The data itself can also be copyrighted, as
when it is part of a collection. I suggest you check your sources
again. There have been many claims won because the data itself was used
without permission.


Evidently, I was right (except that it was white pages). It was a 1991
Supreme Court decision (Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone
Service) that is alluded to here:
http://www.eff.org/IP/WIPO/?f=cpt_wipo_treaty-primer.txt
That page is basically documenting a reaction to the decision wherein
WIPO is trying to get the US to sign exactly the kind of treaty
extending to database protections that you suggest is in place.

Could you cite a link or two about claims being won because data itself
was being used without permission, where there was no user agreement
not to use the data? That would be very informative.


As I've said before. If you want good information, get it from a
copyright attorney. That's where I get mine. Not internet links.

And don't try to interpret what you read on the internet yourself. You
are not getting it right.

At the same time, I seem to remember that the case above has been
superceded or its precedent has been mollified by subsequent cases, but
I don't remember how.

I'd suggest you get a copyright attorney to give you the real facts,
instead of maybe remembering something which may or may not be correct.

When/if I encounter a situation where I need one.
In this thread, we're discussing our own understandings as non lawyers.
And citing information to the extent possible, right?

To that end, here is a 'recent' summary (upshot: copyright law does not
protect data in databases) by the EFF about the state of affairs in
2004:
http://www.eff.org/IP/WIPO/20040607_database_protection.pdf
which link I found at:
http://www.eff.org/IP/WIPO/?f=archive.html
Actually, two years is a long time on this front. More recent info
would be welcome.


Again - get a copyright attorney's advice. What you get on the internet
does not qualify as legal advice and may or may not be correct.
Additionally, you may misinterpret what it said (like you did the
library info).

Another case of data vs. presentation is the data points of the
boundaries between countries, states, counties, etc. A map is
copyrighted because it is a presentation of the underlying data points.
However, are those data points public domain? If you look at the
agreement that you have to sign with the various map companies on the
internet, they all say that you agree not to republish the underlying
data points in any form. Thus, it is not a question of copyright, it
truly is a question of user agreement.

Yes, the data points are public domain. And yes, it is a matter of
copyright. If not, they would have no grounds to stand on to require
such an agreement. Someone could easily sue to them to provide the
information.

This is actually a fascinating area, but its own separate thread.

No, it's not. I will not continue it here. It has nothing to do with
PHP. And if you want legal advice, see an attorney.


I'd be at least somewhat worried in the original poster's place. I
don't see an issue of his copying pages (by the way, when I say
copying, I am thinking that what the OP is doing is extracting the
relevant data from the given pages and saving only that - why waste
extra bytes? - and plus you need extracted data to be able to work with
it) - to this point, it's all research. When he starts thinking about
publishing the data (I presume he's not republishing the pages. If he
does, he does have copyright issues) in a for sale book, then I think
it's important to do very careful legal research.

And even for personal use it is liable to be a copyright violation. I
would NOT want eBay's attorneys gaffer me.


The Weather Channel is another data collection. The current temperature
is public data - available for free from the National Weather Service.
You cannot, for instance, collect hourly temperature readings a city or
cities from TWC's site, because the site is copyrighted. The fact it is
public and freely available from the NWS website doesn't matter - the
collection on TWC's site is copyrighted.

Interesting case. The US government's National Weather Service (NOAA)
at http://www.nws.noaa.gov/disclaimer.php does say that their data is
free (see the third bullet point).

Exactly. It is free from the NWS, because it is a government agency.
As a result, the data is, by definition, public domain.



However, I don't see where The Weather Channel's data is protected
after reading over section 3B of
http://www.weather.com/common/home/legal.html
In my read of the penultimate sentence, it is saying that you can't do
anything with anything from their site unless it is allowed by law. So
the question comes back, what is allowed by law as far as data
collection/dissemination goes?


Check with a copyright attorney. The collection itself, even though of
public data, can and is copyrighted.



This has been upheld many times in courts around the country.


Would you substantiate this claim?

Csaba


My information comes from one of the larger copyright attorney firms (I
am in the Washington, DC area, after all) in the country. I trust their
information much more than anything you say or I see quoted on the
internet. After all - they're job is to protect my assets. And I pay
them well for it.

I will not continue this conversation. My comment was to give fair
warning to the original poster that what he is doing could get him in a
lot of trouble. It was not to argue law with you or anyone else.

You want legal advice? Don't get it from the internet. See your
attorney. I will not quote internet sites for legal advice. And I will
not continue this discussion.




--
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Jerry Stuckle
JDS Computer Training Corp.
jstucklex@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
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