On Tuesday 22 June 2004 2:41 am, Joseph A. Nagy, Jr. wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 22, 2004 at 03:30:19AM +0200, Damjan wrote the following:
> > > However you cannot:
> > >
> > > - directly use the virus databases
> >
> > How come?
> > As far as I know, copyright law doesn't protect databases.
>
> You haven't been keeping up. Congress is pushing really hard (if they
> haven't already passed it) for a law that would indeed copyright databases
> with protections far exceeding those of normal copyrights (e.g. no fair use
> clause).
In the UK there is separate protection (called "Database Rights") for owners
of databases, irrespective of whether they hold copyright in the information
contained within the database itself.
People have been successfully sued in court for infringement of others'
database rights, for taking information (which was publicly accessible from
elsewhere) and reproducing it in a useful / searchable / indexed format,
because they took it from a source which put the time & effort into
organising / indexing the data (which is where the database rights come in).
So, the virus definitions could quite easily be covered under two protective
mechanisms - simple copyright for the information itself (each signature, for
example, and the names ClamAV uses for the viruses), and database rights for
the organisation and structure of it.
Regards,
Antony.
--
Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can't
lose.
- William H Gates III
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please don't CC me.
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