Am 12.03.13 18:06, schrieb David Prosser:
(An additional complication is, of course, that we are really talking about data here rather than papers, and so perhaps a database license would be even more appropriate.)
Indeed, facts are not copyrightable - at least in Germany ;-)) - and thus a CC-License (except perhaps CC0) or any other license _based on copyright_ (or German Urheberrecht) would be mostly pointless. (For a comparison of the situation in some jurisdictions, see http://www.knowledge-exchange.info/Default.aspx?ID=461; there seems be be a "risk" that /some/ data might be copyrightable under UK or Danish law.)
A database right in EU jurisdictions (not in the US, as I understood from spurious sources) comes into play only if some entity has had "significant" investments in the database as such, not counting cost of acquiring the data in the database. This is clearly not the case here.
As far as I understood, a simple table of numbers is not protect-able (in most cases) as soon as it is out "in the wild". So no need for a license, if you intend to make it freely (libre) available. (In contrast to text or photos, which are protected, even if there is no (C) mark on it.)
As to Heather's argument in her blog, that " On the Internet, the way to note that a web page is /not/ available for text and data mining is to use the norobots.txt in the web page's metadata.": That is true, but not necessarily accepted by lawyers. Proof: German publishers of newspaper lobby - quite successfully, so far - that Google shall pay for displaying snippets - and still implicitly expect to be displayed in Google search. "Ironically", they do use robot.txt, but not to drive Google or any other big search engine away. (AFAIK there is no "norobots.txt". Also, robots.txt is a file at the root "/" of a _site_, not "in the metadata" of a _page_),
My overall point is that one cannot assume that what seems appropriate or sensible will be seen as legal or unproblematic by lawyers. And nobody can justify building an infrastructure or even a common practise on shaky ground. So a simple, unambigous and (hopefully) internationally identical legal environment is indispensable for research and information infrastructures. One of the outstanding features of CC is that it is providing such an environment for text - except for the NC clause, which is wide open for doubt about its meaning.
best, Hans
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