Legal Question on Copyright and Publishing

I can give more specific details via PM, but for legal reasons I'm going to be very hypothetical for the moment.

Government Entity ABC outsources stream gauge levels (or some other government information, could be crime stats, maps, etc) to a Private Company that publishes the information online.

Private Company says, under Terms of Use on their website, no information may be copied or reproduced for any commercial application.

Private citizen wants to publish the information for a commercial purpose. The Government Entity points the private citizen to the website of the outsourced Private Company.

Private Citizen reprints the information in violation of the Terms of Use.

Legal opinions? Any Cause of Action?

Thanks...

The data can't be copyrighted.

The format can.

So you have to obtain the original data directly from the government (or copy just the data, absent any formatting info --very hard to do, as even the type font is part of the format) and reformat it somehow.

Basically the same principle that Brand X telephone books get the phone numbers from AT&T.

Same reason recipes can't be copyrighted, but the format in which they are presented can.

Thank you 2506, that's exactly what I thought. It's been a while since my communication law class at UGA, the internet was in it's infancy and we had very little case law on it.

The Terms of Use says that the site cannot be used for any commercial enterprise. Assuming all the data was collected and then completely reformatted, not just copy/paste...

The Private Company's only right would be to block my IP for violating their terms of use, but they wouldn't have a case in court against me.

Sound right?

Fletch_W said:

Thank you 2506, that's exactly what I thought. It's been a while since my communication law class at UGA, the internet was in it's infancy and we had very little case law on it.

The Terms of Use says that the site cannot be used for any commercial enterprise. Assuming all the data was collected and then completely reformatted, not just copy/paste...

The Private Company's only right would be to block my IP for violating their terms of use, but they wouldn't have a case in court against me.

Sound right?

Click to expand...

In a very broad sense, would be correct. That would have to assume that they did no compilation or manipulation of the raw data. In other words, if they took the raw data and sorted it -- that ordering would be copyrighted, even if they used some standard software to do it.

So without access to the original data, IMO it would be very difficult to determine what if any manipulation of that data had occurred. That fact may or may not be self-evident from the site.

Also consider for example, if they published average flow rates, but the raw data was really a series of readings every so often, the average would be copyrighted, even though clearly you could replicate that information without infringing the copyright.

Twists like that make me reluctant to make a blanket statement.

2506, are you in the legal profession? I will PM you details (pro bono?) if you are.

Fletch_W said:

2506, are you in the legal profession? I will PM you details (pro bono?) if you are.

Click to expand...

Please PM it to him post haste!!