[open-bibliography] (Final?) discussion of the openbiblio principles

Sun Jan 9 16:44:41 UTC 2011

* [2011-01-09 05:03:36 -0800] Karen Coyle <kcoyle at kcoyle.net> écrit:

] Second, in the US, a selection of facts (e.g. a topical bibliography,  
] a reading list for a university course) MAY be copyrightable as a  
] whole, even if the facts themselves are not.

Reductio ad absurdum: it is a fact that the first, second and third
words of Finnegan's Wake are riverrun, past and Eve
respectively. These three facts are presumably not copyrightable. If
you enumerate all the words in this way you have a collection of facts
that is the work itself, which definitely is copyrightable. 

It is unreasonable to create an index of words used in a (particular
edition of) a work. Book ciphers work this way and are not new. So the
example is not actually so far-fetched. I could even imagine a
cataloguing system that organised books based on aggregate statistics
of an index like this - it would be a catalogue according to how
suitable a book is in itself for use with book ciphers. So then could
the words and their positions be considered bibliographic data?

Where the line is drawn is fuzzy and it is drawn in different places
in different jurisdictions. I agree with Adrian that we aren't likely
to find a practical basis for drawing the line between core and
secondary bibliographic data very sharply. It's a matter of
interpretation. 

Cheers,
-w

-- 
William Waites                <mailto:ww at styx.org>
http://eris.okfn.org/ww/         <sip:ww at styx.org>
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