Yeah basically accurate so far as I know (disclaimer: for awhile I worked @ a publisher of reference works; we had rules-of-thumb explanations for what we could get away with but I'm not an expert).
The real story behind the story you might've heard would've been more like a page-layout type defense with the fact that the contents of each page (by #) were identical between two competing works; throw in the usual misreporting and there you go.
If you track it down please do share.
The CSV thing is really where it gets tricky: generally "trivial" obfuscations or rearrangements to get around existing laws don't fare well in court (and sadly even "trivial" isn't really well-defined), so if a CSV "counts" then rearranging the columns (or randomly sorting the rows, etc.) won't help you. But it's not obvious that a CSV doesn't count either.
Basically the model is supposed to be:
- you see a printed pages containing representations of facts
- you "learn" the facts (eg: "copied" them to your brain)
- you produce printed pages containing representations of facts
...and of course there may be incidental and/or unavoidable resemblances between the two representations but insofar as what you "copied" was just the facts you had fair game.
It's sort-of tacitly assumed that if you did make an exact copy it'd be pretty obvious and that if you went through the above process what you did would look different enough to be pretty obvious also (unless you deliberately cloned something the hard way, which is stupid enough to be rare).
With straight-digital "database" dumps (like the CSV) you have a situation in which if you went through the full process you'd create something that's pretty much indistinguishable from what you'd get if you just hit ctrl-d; this pretty much breaks the rules of thumb / intuition behind the rules around "facts".
YUP, and it's not quite why I guessed but the situation is pretty similar: non-copyrightable content (legal opinions), successful use of copyright claims over the arrangement.
Incidentally a good historical anecdote; in addition to many aspects in-and-around copyright I tend to think the thinking around public records laws is woefully antiquated (to our general detriment).
The real story behind the story you might've heard would've been more like a page-layout type defense with the fact that the contents of each page (by #) were identical between two competing works; throw in the usual misreporting and there you go.
If you track it down please do share.
The CSV thing is really where it gets tricky: generally "trivial" obfuscations or rearrangements to get around existing laws don't fare well in court (and sadly even "trivial" isn't really well-defined), so if a CSV "counts" then rearranging the columns (or randomly sorting the rows, etc.) won't help you. But it's not obvious that a CSV doesn't count either.
Basically the model is supposed to be:
- you see a printed pages containing representations of facts
- you "learn" the facts (eg: "copied" them to your brain)
- you produce printed pages containing representations of facts
...and of course there may be incidental and/or unavoidable resemblances between the two representations but insofar as what you "copied" was just the facts you had fair game.
It's sort-of tacitly assumed that if you did make an exact copy it'd be pretty obvious and that if you went through the above process what you did would look different enough to be pretty obvious also (unless you deliberately cloned something the hard way, which is stupid enough to be rare).
With straight-digital "database" dumps (like the CSV) you have a situation in which if you went through the full process you'd create something that's pretty much indistinguishable from what you'd get if you just hit ctrl-d; this pretty much breaks the rules of thumb / intuition behind the rules around "facts".