On Mon, Sep 22, 2014 at 5:52 AM, Thomas Douillard <
thomas.douillard(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Running an
automated process to access someone's computer in a way that
they clearly
don't allow is not a good idea.
European database laws are also really on the fact that a protected
database copy is a copy, whatever the copy process is. Does not matter if
an automated process took place or if a crowd take facts one by one, once
there is a significant portion of the datas copied (whatever that means)
there is a juridical risk.
Yeah, its not clear to me how you could ever produce an ISBN database with
any reasonable level of assurance that it's legit under those rules. With
copyright you find multiple sources and put things in your own words. You
cite your sources, and anyone can check that your sources provide the
*information* which you have restated in your own words. While it's always
possible that you plagiarized one source while citing another, these things
can be discovered, and when two sources use the exact same words, copying
is evident. With sui generis database laws, there's no way to really know
if your multiple sources all are based on the same common source, and
there's no way to "put things in your own words" to ensure that it
doesn't
matter. Moreover, the fact that one source has the exact same true factual
information as another doesn't prove that one copied from another.
Aren't any of these databses copied, at least indirectly, from the database
created by International ISBN Agency?
In any case, my point was that blatant violation of a TOS is more than just
violation of "a private contract". It's at least potentially something much
more serious. And on that, it matters quite a bit whether it's one person
running an automated process or a group of people accessing the information
bit by bit. The former got a brilliant young Wikimedian prosecuted. The
latter hasn't.
--
By the way, I just read
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikilegal/Database_Rights and it's not
clear to me exactly what the Wikimedia policy is with regard to sui generis
database rights. The closest I see is "In the absence of a license, copying
all or a substantial part of a protected database should be avoided." But
what happens when thousands of people, working independently even, each
copy an insubstantial portion of a protected database, and it adds up? I
guess from a practical standpoint it'll be impossible to prove that this is
what happened (unless there's a protected database which *created* the
information in the first place, a la the one created by the International
ISBN Agency). But then what we're really saying is not that you shouldn't
violate European database law, but that you should do it in a way such that
it can't be proven.
As I said above, I don't know how these laws can possibly be adhered to
with any reasonable level of assurance. Maybe you or someone else on here
has a suggestion?