[NetBehaviour] Australian Judge Rules Facts Cannot Be Copyrighted.
marc garrett
marc.garrett at furtherfield.org
Mon Feb 15 10:31:20 CET 2010
Australian Judge Rules Facts Cannot Be Copyrighted.
"Last week, an Australian Judge ruled that copyright laws do not apply
to collections of facts, regardless of the amount of effort that was
spent collecting them. In this case, the case surrounded the
reproduction of entries from the White and Yellow Pages, but the ruling
referred to a previous case involving IceTV, which republishes TV
guides. Does this mean that other databases of facts, such as financial
data, are also legally able to be copied and redistributed?" Slashdot.org.
Telstra loses as copyright blowback continues.
Yet another Australian copyright decision, this one handed down on 10
February, has gone against the pro-copyright owner trend of recent decades.
Telstra and Sensis have lost in the Federal Court of Australia before
Justice Michelle Gordon in seeking to protect claimed copyright in White
Pages and Yellow Pages.
The defendants were Phone Directories Company Pty Ltd, its directors and
others. The company has been competing against Telstra/Sensis since the
mid-1990s. Cleverly, at least initially the business of Phone
Directories Company Pty Ltd produced directories for regional areas,
places where Telstra was not active or not greatly active.
http://tinyurl.com/yhzrlzv
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