Re: [Treebase-devel] Treebase data license?

[Hilmar L. <hl...@ne...>]

Carl - 

Bill's analysis is about the legal standing someone could have who asserted copyright on their TreeBASE deposition. I'll note that TreeBASE is an international repository. While I would concur with Bill's conclusions (and the implication that TreeBASE records are in the public domain) for people governed by US copyright laws, such laws are quite different internationally. The matter of fact is that TreeBASE is, as far as I understand, not asking depositors to release the data under certain terms, or to expressly waive copyright, and so even for US depositors simply assuming public domain is a tricky proposition, I would say.

	-hilmar

On Apr 25, 2012, at 2:16 AM, William Piel wrote:

> 
> On Apr 24, 2012, at 9:17 PM, Carl Boettiger wrote:
> 
>> Hi list,
>> 
>> I'm curious what license, if any, covers the treebase data? Dryad is very clear about all their data being public domain / CC0, but it's not obvious to me from the treebase website.  
>> 
>> Thanks
>> 
>> Carl
> 
> Our "story" so far is that in the spectrum of Art vs. Ideas, TreeBASE stores ideas. Even if the original published tree was an "artwork" with respect to the journal, in TreeBASE the nodes and edges are decomposed into tables, and when re-serialized you can't be sure that it will look like the original artwork. So in that sense we are storing the concepts or ideas, not the art -- and therefore while some of these objects may be patented, we don't think they should be copyrightable. Hence copyright simply does not apply to the data, only to the codebase. 
> 
> While citations and abstracts are often considered art (and we also store those), I think our redistribution of them is considered "fair use". 
> 
> bp
> 
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Live Security Virtual Conference
> Exclusive live event will cover all the ways today's security and 
> threat landscape has changed and how IT managers can respond. Discussions 
> will include endpoint security, mobile security and the latest in malware 
> threats. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfrnl04242012/114/50122263/_______________________________________________
> Treebase-devel mailing list
> Tre...@li...
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/treebase-devel

-- 
===========================================================
: Hilmar Lapp  -:- Durham, NC -:- informatics.nescent.org :
===========================================================