[Foundation-l] CAS Discourages Using SciFinder to Help Curate Wikipedia

Mon Mar 10 05:22:12 UTC 2008

--- phoebe ayers <phoebe.wiki at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sun, Mar 9, 2008 at 8:17 PM, phoebe ayers
> <phoebe.wiki at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Sat, Mar 8, 2008 at 8:13 AM, David Gerard
> <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> ....
> >  subscribe to SciFinder. There are nearly always
> specific provisions in
> >  the contract (not just for SciFinder, but for
> most databases and
> >  journals) that say who can get access to the data
> -- for instance,
> >  only the faculty, staff and students of a
> university. Obviously
> >  enough, the many glorious readers of Wikipedia
> are unlikely to fall
> >  into this faculty/staff/student classification.
> >
> >  Assuming this is true for most contracts they
> sign, then probably
> >  anyone systematically posting data from one of
> these systems is
> >  violating some provision of their contract. This
> doesn't have anything
> >  to do with copyright law per se, but it is a
> terms of use question.
> 
> Er, and I didn't actually look at the chemistry page
> to see what all
> folks were proposing to do. As Ec & David Goodman
> and others have
> said, CAS numbers are available from lots and lots
> of sources, so
> simply reprinting the things -- rather than trying
> to get a lot of
> them downloaded/validated through SciFinder --
> doesn't seem too bad.
> I'd be curious how things like the CRC handbook get
> them, actually. Do
> they have to license their use from CAS?
> 
> -- phoebe
> 

I don't see how the numbers themselves are copyrighted
as they are required info on MSDS sheets.  MSDS sheets
are authored by the individual manufacturers
themselves and they do not pay any licensing fees. 
That said just because the industry standard is to
behave like they are uncopyrighted is no guarantee.

Birgitte SB

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