
Time zone database has new home after lawsuit - Garbage
http://www.ajc.com/business/time-zone-database-has-1202359.html
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scottdw2
IANAL, but....

In the US, per the copyright act, data can't be copyrighted. Some compilations
can be copyrighted, but the Supreme Court has said that the compilation can't
just be a collection of data. It needs to posses even a small modicum of
creativity in order to deserve protection. Your curated list of "awesome
places to eat in NY" can be copyrighted. The yellow pages cannot.

See <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_v._Rural> for details.

My guess is that a world timezone database does not meet this minimum level of
creativity.

The descriptions I've read about the lawsuit seem to indicate that the
plaintiffs complain that some individual records were copied from their
database, and that the database directly indicates that they did so. They
would only have a case if they lifted major portions of the database and
copied them enmasse, stealing their formatting, and the original was deemed to
be more like your "curated ny restaurant list" than it was like the yellow
pages.

Taking the information present in the records, and translating them to a
different database format is likely not an infringement, per the copyright
act. Even if it was though, the material in question likely isn't
copyrightable anyways.

~~~
rprasad
It's not the information that is copyrighted, it's the selection of what
countries fall into what regions (and what to call the regions), which
countries or cities to include, the order of the geographic regions, and even
the order in which the geographic regions and their corresponding timezones
are displayed. These are all choices that requires some amount of creativity
(in the sense that they are not merely purely functional choices).

 _Feist_ stands for the proposition that _any creative choice_ made in
presenting information is sufficient for a valid copyright as to the creative
choices made (thought the underlying factual information itself may not be
copyrighted).

If this were to go to court, the copyright owner would win. How could the
database be changed to get around the copyright at issue? Get rid of the
region assignments, broaden (or narrow) the selection of cities/states/etc.
included, or even simply flip the order in which geographic area and the
corresponding timezone are listed.

~~~
scottdw2
I'm not sure I follow that reasoning.

In Feist even copying made-up entries designed to detect copying was deemed to
not be an infringement.

The statement that "this area is assigned to this timezone" is not a creative
decision. It's an assertion of a fact. Even if it's a false fact made up by
the author, it's still an assertion of a fact.

That information is not subject to copyright.

Perhaps the particular expression of the information is.... but I'm not sure
how the tz database infringes on that.

Am I missing something?

~~~
tedunangst
_The statement that "this area is assigned to this timezone" is not a creative
decision. It's an assertion of a fact. Even if it's a false fact made up by
the author, it's still an assertion of a fact._

I think you are treading on thin ice with this reasoning. By the same token I
might argue that "Harry said this to Ron and Ron said that to Harry" is an
assertion of the fact that Harry and Ron had a conversation. What else is a
novel except a collection of false facts made up by the author?

~~~
scottdw2
If you write a non fiction book that says "world war I was the cause of world
war II" you are entitled to copyright protection for your expression. However,
you don't earn a monopoly on the notion that WWI cause WWII even if you were
the first to express that. Someone else can still write a book that conveys
that fact.

The "creative work" isn't the fact that country a is in time zone b. That's
just data. A description of the process and the reasoning used to reach that
conclusion, and an analysis of available facts is an expression. A map
visualizing the data is an expression. A formatted chart is an expression. The
connection between regions and timezones is just data. It's not protectable.

------
zmanji
Although I think ICANN isn't the greatest body to be over seeing the tz
database, I think it's a lot better than a single person. ICANN has the
resources to distribute the database, facilitate new releases and obviously
defend it from legal disputes.

------
fanf2
This article is rather misleading. The plan to move the TZ database to IANA is
over a year old - see [https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-lear-iana-
timezone-da...](https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-lear-iana-timezone-
database/history/) \- though the lawsuit has sped the process up a bit. The TZ
mailing list switched to IANA within a day of Olson shutting down the old
list, and Robert Elz has been acting as interim maintainer. There has been no
disruption to TZ database maintenance. IANA are not yet providing web or FTP
sites for distributing the database and code.

~~~
kijeda
<http://www.iana.org/time-zones>

It is linked off the IANA homepage.

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driverdan
To top it off the company who filed the lawsuit peddles astrology products,
something that's completely worthless and contributes nothing to society,
unlike the TZ DB which is a great contribution.

------
protomyth
I still don't understand why any country allows databases (simple collections
of facts) to be copyrighted.

~~~
theatrus2
It doesn't. But that doesn't stop lawsuits from being filed.

~~~
eli
Err, the US doesn't, but some countries explicitly do allow collections of
facts to be copyrighted.

------
derleth
At what point does a piece of technology become too essential to ever be
allowed to disappear, even if it's under a legal threat that would otherwise
kill it?

Or, looked at another way, even if the lawsuit succeeds and the tz database is
judged a copyright violation, do you actually expect _anyone_ to stop using
it?

~~~
0x12
That lawsuit is - as far as I can tell - dead in the water anyway because of
the number of years that the situation has been going on. If you let a thing
like that lapse for too long then you can't later on turn around and demand
reparation.

They'd have a very hard time arguing they weren't aware of it for so long that
a very large portion of the IT world became dependent on it without becoming
aware of it themselves. And all that is assuming that the claims hold water,
which remains to be seen.

It's an attempt at extortion from where I'm sitting, after all, the value of
the database is only determined by the parties that are using it, recreating
it from scratch requires some effort but nothing monumental.

The current timezones are not at risk anyway, it is just the historical data
we are talking about here.

~~~
derleth
Still, if you ignore the facts of this specific case, which I agree is
extremely weak, what do you think about my questions?

Also: This is a copyright case, not trademark. 'Use it or lose it' does not
apply to whether copyright violations have occurred; it can, at most, modify
the damages involved.

~~~
0x12
You're right about the 'use it or lose it', but the damages will likely be set
to '0', especially in those cases where the value of the original copyrighted
data is minimal (which I think in this case is fairly clear).

As for the question of appropriation, I don't think that that should ever
happen, it would basically mean that anything is up for grabs given the right
reasoning.

Governments have to jump through some pretty involved hoops in order to seize
your property (ok, in some countries the hoops are not that complicated and
abuse is rife), for corporations to do the same thing would be a bad
development.

Say next year we all decide that the windows source code is something we can't
live without any more so hand it over?

That's not a good development, even in those cases where you could make a
strong argument for it.

In this particular case, there isn't even a strong argument, all it will take
is a little bit of work if they should win their case and then they can keep
their database and use it to light the fire after printing it out. It will
have lost its value entirely after it gets re-created from original material.

