Chris Bizer wrote:
> Hi Mike,
>
>
>> I'm happy to be working in the CC-BY-SA space, but I must say that
>> the CC-BY license of Freebase would be a good selling point for some
>> organizations.
>>
>
> Do you thing we are allowed to do this?
>
> Thanks a lot for your help.
>
> Chris
>
>
I think database copyright law is hairy. I think it's safe in all
countries for Dbpedia to have the same license as wikipedia (which will
be CC-BY-SA)
In the US, where I am, databases aren't copyrightable. My
understanding is the law is different in the EU: I know a lot of
dbpedia people live in the EU, so they are certainly affected.
My understanding is that Freebase uses Wikipedia data and WEX;
they've certainly extracted a list of topics from wikipedia. They're
based in the US so they can probably claim they're under the US
jurisidiction. I've got no idea what that means for international uses
of Freebase.
Although I personally benefit from the lassez-faire situation in the
US, I'm wondering if the stronger db copyright laws in the EU are more
reflective of current realities. If I were going to, say, compile a
list of US presidents and their birth dates, I could certainly use a
manual process to copy these out of the Encyclopedia Britannica. You
can't say a fact like
dbpedia:Abraham_Lincoln someschema:bornOn "February 12, 1809" .
belongs to anybody. On the other hand, now that automated processes
can extract facts from documents, it seems like the "sweat of the brow"
argument is getting weaker.
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