Re: [CP-Legal] ZDNET: "Hackers settle Cyber Patrol suit"

[Mike Godwin <mnemonic@WELL.COM>]

Bill Stewart writes:

>If it's protected as a compilation copyright, then I'd think the
>order is much less important than the selection - you'd be
>infringing it regardless of what order it was in.  But if you
>put out a list of "Most Offensively Misclassified CP Censorship Targets",
>that sounds like fair use (unless you listed them all).

Here's where we part company: I don't believe that my own publication
of what CyberPatrol blocks is infringing, even if I include all the
sites they block, so long as I don't duplicate their precise
expression of their list.

If I don't reproduce their expression, then no infringement, even if
I do reproduce all their facts.

>Unnamed administration sources report* that Johnson, Bruce wrote:
>>I agree with Bob.  isn't Nixon's "enemies list" copyrightable?
>
>I'd call that a trade secret, until it got published.

Not impossibly you're making a "trade secret" joke here. But for
copyright purposes, protection kicks in when it's written down, not
when it's published.


--Mike

--
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
"I speak the password primeval .... I give the sign of democracy ...."
            --Walt Whitman
Mike Godwin can be reached by phone at 202-721-8432.
His book, CYBER RIGHTS, can be ordered at
        http://www.panix.com/~mnemonic .
----------------------------------------------------------------------------