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Comment by ModernMech | Hacker News Reader

> I'm wondering about an importer for the Frink ones... but https://frinklang.org/frinkdata/units.txt doesn't seem to have a license?)

This is just a list of facts, no? You can't really copyright such a thing.

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Don't know if this holds water... E.g. a cartographic map: just a "diagram" of facts?

Why not ask if there is a license for this file?

Edit: And as I see in this thread there is gnu-units (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Units) probably there is something with a license.

The expression of facts is copyrightable, not the facts though. So importing it is water tight.

A map is not copyrightable. It is just a diagram of facts. Mapmakers protect themselves by inserting fake data which they can then use to claim copyright.

It looks like it's the other way around:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_street#Legal_issues

>In Alexandria Drafting Co. v. Andrew H. Amsterdam dba Franklin Maps, the court ruled that "fictitious names may not be copyrighted" and "the existence, or non-existence, of a road is a non-copyrightable fact".

Maps are copyrightable (I think?), but the trap streets themselves aren't. They're only there to detect when someone is copying the map.

Heh, I actually learned about trap streets when talking to a cartographer who made the muni map of SF you find at all the bus stops (much like this one: http://www.mobilemaplets.com/thumbnails/261_thumbnail-1024.j...). He told me he added a small alleyway in the map named after his family that doesn't actually exist, and they catch people violating their copyright all the time with it.

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