I think you may have missed that the court supported Google's use of a very
small portion of Java API under the fair use clause of copyright law. So the
parallel situation with DDC is that you can use a few lines from DDC under fair
use, but you can't use large portions.
Steve McDonald
[email protected]
-----Original Message-----
From: Code for Libraries <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Jakob Voß
Sent: Wednesday, April 14, 2021 3:07 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: [CODE4LIB] DDC is like an API specification so it can be used freely
Hi,
A colleauge of mine just pointed me to a detail of the court decision in the
case Google vs. Oracle. The Suppreme Court of the United States ruled that
reimplementation of Java API is no copyright violation but allowed at least
under fair use:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_LLC_v._Oracle_America,_Inc.
The opinion of the Court contains a remarkable section on page 6:
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/20pdf/18-956_d18f.pdf
"The second, less obvious, function is to reflect the way in which Java’s
creators have divided the potential world of different tasks into an actual
world, i.e., precisely which set of potentially millions of different tasks we
want to have our Java-based computer systems perform and how we want those
tasks arranged and grouped. In this sense, the declaring code performs an
organizational function. It determines the structure of the task library that
Java’s creators have decided to build. To understand this organizational
system, think of the Dewey Decimal System that categorizes books into an
accessible system or a travel guide that arranges a city’s attractions into
different categories"
Following this argument the Dewey Decimal System can be used as free as the
Java API. I think that we (library developers) already assumed for
specification of data formats, ontologies and data models but it also applies
to other kinds of knowledge organization systems (classification schemes,
thesauri, gazetteers...) including DDC. By the way if you know systems not
covered in BARTOC.org yet, please let the editors know so we will add them!
I doubt that we can share the raw MARC data of DDC with all of its details, but
the class hierarchy, notations and headings (without limitation of depth!) can
be used freely as far as I understand the court. Or am I missing something?
Cheers
Jakob
--
Jakob Voß <[email protected]>
Verbundzentrale des GBV (VZG) / Common Library Network Platz der Goettinger
Sieben 1, 37073 Göttingen, Germany
+49 (0)551 39-31031, http://www.gbv.de/
