EFF Wins Protection for Time Zone Database | Hacker News Reader

EFF Wins Protection for Time Zone Database

eff.org

457 pointstaylorbuley36 comments

Seems like now would be a good time to:

https://supporters.eff.org/join, https://supporters.eff.org/donate or https://supporters.eff.org/shop

I pledged my $100 after the SOPA saga. Still waiting on my hat, though...

True.

But to be honest, the apology and climb down were pretty decent too. All too often these things are dragged out and fought tooth and nail, to nobody's benefit but the lawyers.

Which is to say, the astrology people seem to be pretty decent folks about it, not SCO-type bipedal hagfish in 3-piece suits, or Rightshaven-style copyright sharks with a business model based on IP lawsuits.

If I knew anyone who were into astrology-type things, I think I might order them something from Astrolabe, as a small reward for the good behavior in dropping the suit.

Ignoring for a moment the question of whether IP is valid as a concept: if they were misinformed that they had a case, and that their IP had been widely misappropriated without compensation, they probably thought they were in the right. And I'm not sure I can fault them for doing so, given the advice they were likely given.

Whoever gave them the bad legal advice might have led them to believe they were on to a legal jackpot. It doesn't seem to be a big, money-spinning operation, so the case might have offered the possibility of a more comfortable old age for these people.

A little extra business from appreciative tech types would help lessen the sting.

> Which is to say, the astrology people seem to be pretty decent folks about it, not SCO-type bipedal hagfish in 3-piece suits, or Rightshaven-style copyright sharks with a business model based on IP lawsuits. > If I knew anyone who were into astrology-type things, I think I might order them something from Astrolabe, as a small reward for the good behavior in dropping the suit.

Regardless of stepping down, it was an obviously frivolous suit in the first place. Backing down from BS threats isn't something that should be commended, not ever making them in the first place should be. Who would ever think that time zones are copyrightable and have the cojones to sue over it? An absurd and a waste of everyone's time.

Update: I just read the complaint and their attorney uses her Gmail address for official business. What a joke. Go figure that an astrology company has a fly by night attorney filing obviously BS lawsuits.

Better than AOL.....

Eh? They shouldn't have done it in the first place…

They're a bunch of aging hippies, they probably didn't know any better. Hell, they don't know any better than to believe in astrology.

Many techies are steeped in IP rights issues, these people likely are not.

But my main point is that lots of long, drawn-out, expensive legal battles are started by someone who "shouldn't have done it in the first place". Society would be a lot better off if people would back down quickly and gracefully, as these people did.

Why is there no penalty? Lawyers wasted a lot of billable hours over a suit filed over a copyright claim on facts. If there's no penalty for such frivolous claims, we'll keep having to fight the same fight, wasting money along the way.

That's a good question. The article seems to indicate that there was almost a penalty.

FTA:

> In January, EFF advised Astrolabe that Olson and Eggert would move for sanctions if Astrolabe did not withdraw its complaint. Today's dismissal followed.

In other words, the complaint was dropped only after penalties were threatened.

Thinking about this issue, I see your point, but I'm not sure how far in that direction we should go. In particular, we don't want to create a mechanism that can easily be used to punish whistle-blowers (for example), simply by finding someone willing to declare their complaint to be frivolous.

frivolous is one thing, fraudulent is another. they filed a copyright claim on information that not only do they not own, information that it is not possible to own. this sort of behaviour should be punished.

If anyone should be punished, it's the lawyers who enabled them to persist in this course of action.

Perhaps basic facts can't be copyrighted, but sometimes collections of facts are given some protection. The telephone directory is a classic example.

Given the sincerity of the apology, I think it was a honest mistake and a welcome example of the legal system working the way it should.

At least after EFF is on the case. We should go donate to them. Right now.

You have your example backward. Feist v. Rural held that telephone books are not subject to copyright. Just because something was laborious to compile does not make it copyrightable.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_v._Rural

Yes, good point.

In the US.

In Europe, the law differs. Specifically, 'sweat of the brow', rejected by Feist in the US, is a factor in Europe: http://www.bitlaw.com/copyright/database.html#directive

Well, many formats of telephone book are copyrightable, particularly the "yellow pages" portions, where selection and arrangement into categories are applied, meeting the "de minimis thought needed to withstand the originality requirement".

http://www.copyright.gov/reports/dbase.html

Many other collections of pure fact will meet those criteria as well.

The telephone directory is not a classic example, but there is some controversy over the copyright claims on regional building codes and WestLaw's legally-citable database of court cases.

This would be a good time to start a site that publishes the lawyer's that come up with such cases. That would at the least shame some of them from taking up such cases in future.

One can make a honest mistake about the facts and the law. If every time that somebody is mistaken were to be severely punished, suing a large well lawyered entity would be completely impossible, since in the event of loss one will be surely ruined financially by the mandatory punishment. If however one can see that the suit is frivolous or malicious and it was known and explained to them and they still chose to proceed, then the punishment may be due. But in this case it still can be argued that they honestly thought the law was on their side, even if they were wrong.

This is most certainly not the case here. Read this: https://www.eff.org/sites/default/files/filenode/rule11motio...

Astrolabe deliberately filed a complaint but did not serve the defendants. In a sense, they create a huge legal uncertainty which just by itself caused significant damage. This was a clear abuse of an enforcement loophole in the litigation-heavy American justice system.

The mere threat or FUD of full legal action is being used to eliminate competition. If there were ever a case for sanctions, this would definitely be it.

IANAL - Rule 11 - against frivolous lawsuits, ignorance is no defence. Further, UCLA counsel had already replied to them in reponse to a DMCA takedown notice prior to the main complaint explaining the facts, well before they filed their complaint.... so they can't claim ignorance either.

It's done with, good - as it should be. No need for a witch hunt - but the lawyers who were pushing the issue forward probably should be sanctioned, this was very obviously frivolous and going nowhere.... and they had a professional duty to know that. There's no muddy water here... it's very clear cut.

I love the apology because it sounds exactly like the apology of a man (or organization) who has had it explained to him exactly what a very very bad position his activities have put him in. Really like seeing a complete apology unlike the "We apologize if we caused any discomfort..." ambivalent BS we see all the time.

I've seen those referred to as "Notpologies": http://skepticlawyer.com.au/2012/02/23/the-notpology/

Also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-apology_apology

Obviously the lawsuit was a non-starter, any company that realized this would retract the complaint, but I was impressed by the apology. It seems like in every suit I hear about where the company was wrong, they lose the case but still try to say they did nothing wrong and refuse to apologize. I was impressed this company did.

Dr. Eggert is a lecturer at UCLA, and a fantastic one at that (not to mention a huge contributor to various GNU projects). This quarter I have the pleasure of taking his Operating Systems class, and last year I got to take Programming Languages taught by him. I'm really happy about this outcome because people like him should never have to have their brilliance tempered by patent trolls.

Long time lurker here. Finally made an account to back up my man Professor Eggert! What an awesome guy and a great teacher. His classes are insanely hard: you cried, you contemplated suicide, then homicide, then you LEARNED... A TON. I wish he would record his lectures and put them up for the world to see.

Also I'm glad to see my membership fees being put to good use. Also, "hello world."

Excellently put! I've spent so many nights holed up in the library, staring at a dozen lines of some esoteric programming language and cursing UCLA Engineering, but it all turned out to be incredibly valuable and I wouldn't trade it for anything.

So that actually raises a question in my mind, does that make all database that don't include something new created by someone (I'm thinking book database, research databases) as non copyrightable?

I'm thinking of phone books as an example.

I think it depends. I'm pretty sure phone books and street directories are copyrightable. You can get copyright on collections of facts, this is how a phone book is copyrightable.

Actually, you can't copyright all of a phone book. In Feist Publications v. Rural Telephone Service Co. (499 U.S. 340), the Supreme Court said that the "white-pages" part of a phone book had so little application of creativity that it was not copyrightable.

Does this mean that TZ database is back at elsie.nih.gov?

No. The database was already in the process of being transitioned to IANA prior to the lawsuit. The lawsuit just accelerated the transition. It is now at http://www.iana.org/time-zones

What's the deal with these "covenants not to sue", lately, and how are they different from actual licenses?

My guess is that such covenants would not be binding on third parties who buy the underlying copyright/patent rights, but I don't really know.

Hopefully this is true these days: http://dearrichblog.blogspot.com/2012/02/can-we-republish-sp...

I'm really glad this has been resolved. Now I just wish there was an easier way to use the database. Have you ever had to code something with timezone awareness..? It's kinda nuts.

I've had to do that in Java and found the API perfectly usable, more so with Joda Time. That may be different for your platform. But what's really nuts is the domain itself, like most where history and politics are involved.

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