forwarded item on database treaty

[Karin Geiselhart]

This may be of interest:
>
>Interested organizations/companies are invited to sign onto the
>following letter, which addresses concerns that have been raised
>regarding a proposed new Treaty concerning access to electronic
>databases.  The Treaty is expected to be discussed at the diplomatic
>conference in Geneva this December on behalf of the World Intellectual
>Property Organization.  The proposed Treaty grants a new property
>right to database owners, which does not incorporate a public "fair
>use" doctrine, or other traditional copyright conventions.
>
>Recent analyses of the Treaty by Jamie Love of the Consumer Project on
>Technology indicates that the Treaty will create a new property right
>in facts and other data now in the public domain.  It would, for
>example, significantly change the way sports statistics are controlled
>and disseminated, and also impact the way that stock prices, weather
>data, train schedules, data from AIDS research and other facts are
>used and controlled. 
>
>Jamie writes:
>
>    The treaty seeks, for the first time, to permit firms to "own"
>    facts they gather, and to restrict and control the redissemination
>    of those facts.  The new property right would lie outside (and on
>    top) of the copyright laws, and create an entirely new and
>    untested form of regulation that would radically change the
>    public's current rights to use and disseminate facts and
>    statistics.  American University Law Professor Peter Jaszi
>    recently said the treaty represents "the end of the public
>    domain."  
>
>Copies of the proposed treaty, a federal register notice 
>asking for public comment, and independent commentary can be 
>found at: http://www.public-domain.org/database/database.html
>
>Details and analyses on the Treaty can be found on the Web at:
>http://www.public-domain.org, and CPT's "primer" on the treay and
>analysis of the impact on sports statistics is available at:
>http://www.essential.org/cpt/ip/wipo-sports.html
>
>Copyright experts J.H. Reichman and Pamela Samuelson say  it is the
>"least balanced and most potentially anti-competitive intellectual
>property rights ever created."
>[http://ksgwww.harvard.edu/iip/reisamda.html]
>
>Organizations that wish to sign onto this letter should contact Susan
>Evoy at CPSR, evoy@cpsr.org.  Comments on the Treaty are due by Nov.
>22, so signatures are requested as soon as possible.
>
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>Commissioner Bruce Lehman
>Patent and Trademark Office
>U.S. Department of Commerce
>
>
>Dear Commisioner Lehman:
>
>We, the undersigned organizations, are writing to express our concern
>over the "Draft Treaty in Respect to Databases" to be discussed at the
>diplomatic conference in Geneva this December on behalf of the World
>Intellectual Property Organization (the "Treaty").  The proposed
>Treaty grants a new sui generis property right, which does not
>incorporate a public "fair use" doctrine, or other traditional
>copyright conventions.
>
>If enacted as proposed,  the Treaty will do violence to the
>long-established practice in the academic and scientific communities
>of sharing information for educational and research purposes and will
>commercialize certain information that is and has always been freely
>available.
>
>Section 1.03 of the proposed Treaty claims that current technology
>allows databases to be reproduced at "practically no cost."  This is
>not true.  An online database is a complex system with much underlying
>structure that the user never sees.  Accessing or copying large
>portions of the database at minimal or no cost is simply not feasible.
>But, the proposed Treaty would make the use of databases by the public
>or scientific and research communities even more prohibitive by
>permitting database owners or vendors to arbitrarily determine what
>portion of a database can be extracted, used, or reused.
>
>Section 1.04 of the proposed Treaty argues that the originality
>requirement of U.S. Copyright law does not provide sufficient
>protection for database producers.  This statement is curious in light
>of a long U.S. legal tradition protecting free speech and authorship
>on the grounds that facts cannot be copyrighted or otherwise removed
>from the public domain.  By creating a new property right for facts,
>the Treaty will impose regulations on the use of facts -- an idea that
>flies in the face of American history and values.  The twin dangers
>are that we will now have to pay to buy collections of "facts" in the
>public domain, which we did not have to pay for before and that
>monopolies will be sanctioned and created by the Treaty. In other
>words, the Treaty strikes down "fair use" and extends sui generis
>protections to public and private collections.
>
>Section 1.04 becomes increasingly incomprehensible in light of the
>Section 10.05 proposal that "Contracting Parties may design the exact
>field of application of the provisions envisaged in this Article
>taking into consideration the need to avoid legislation that would
>impede lawful practices and the lawful use of subject matter that is
>in the public domain."  In order to implement the spirit of Section
>10.05, Section 1.04 and its progeny must be discarded.
>
>Consider the numerous categories of public information for which only
>one practical and/or cost effective information source exists.  The
>practical result of the Treaty will be to create commercial monopolies
>on these public information sources.  Examples include telephone
>directory information, weather data, "official" sports statistics,
>government data administered under private contracts (such as the
>Official Airline Guide data) and other similar public information.
>
>It is shocking that the United States Government is seriously
>considering supporting a proposal that will operate to maximize
>profits to a small number of database vendors at the expense of the
>public at large without first undertaking a careful domestic review of
>these concerns.  We urge you to examine this issue through
>Congressional hearings and other meaningful public discussion.
>
>Sincerely,
>Marcy J. Gordon, Esq.
>66 Pearl Street #307
>New York, NY 10004-2443660	(212)514-9514   mgordon@pipeline.com
>
>On behalf of the Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility
>
>Endorsed by NetAction:
>Audrie Krause
>Executive Director
>NetAction
>601 Van Ness Avenue, No. 631
>San Francisco, CA 94102         (415) 775-8674  akrause@igc.org
>
>
Karin Geiselhart
u833885@student.canberra.edu.au
University of Canberra