[Rd] R datasets ownership(copyright) and license

[Spencer Graves]

On 4/3/2012 2:00 PM, Hadley Wickham wrote:
>> 2. we considered all datasets factual data thus not copyrightable (in
>>    USA? around the globe?)
> This is definitely true in the US, but not true globally.  I have no
> idea under which jurisdiction a lawsuit would apply.


       I'd be careful with the word "definitely".  The major media 
conglomerates and their industry associations have successfully 
destroyed competition to their hegemony in many areas.  For example, 
they sued college students for close to $100 billion, because their 
improvements of search engines made it easier for people in a university 
intranet to find copyrighted music placed by others in their "public" 
folder.  They successfully sued lawyers who advised MP3 that they had 
reasonable grounds to believe what they did would be legal and Venture 
Capitalists who funded Napster.  In each case, they won not on the law 
but on the fact that they had larger budgets for lawyers.  See Lessig 
(2004) Free Culture [book available from Amazon and also for free under 
the Creative Commons license;  see Wikipedia, "Free Culture (book), 
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Culture_(book) 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Culture_%28book%29>"].


       Spencer Graves
>
> Hadley