Proposed U.S. Database Copyright Legislation: Protecting Sources or Aggregators?
Reuters reports via CNET News that a draft bill circulating in the U.S. Congress would protect publicly available factual information such as courtroom decisions and professional directories that are not currently protected under copyright law from wholesale copying and aggregation by other sources. The legislation has the support of the Software and Information Industry Association, amongst others, as well as major publishers such as Reuters, whose representative was quoted in the article. Small wonder: this legislation will provide little benefit to the free sources themselves, and a fair amount of protection to major aggregators who would like to hem in the spread of redistributed public content beyond their own collections. Clearly content created for personal or institutional gain merits unique protection, but hemming in public domain content diminishes both its availability and the creativity that people may apply to it to benefit both the public and institutions that can benefit from the widest possible range of value-add services provided for that content.