In a message dated 3/8/2008 7:58:30 P.M. Pacific Standard Time, Brian.Mingus@colorado.edu writes:
One can also argue the opposite case; that collection of facts are copyrightable, that Wikipedia, a project whose goal is to give every person >>
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If you read the language in the Supreme Court case cited you will see that they clearly state that a collection of facts by itself is not copyrightable. You must have some degree of creativity that advances an art.
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You can argue that until you are blue in the face. They've got a law firm and large budget, we've got a laywer who is already very busy. The American Chemical Society has stated the following terms for the use of CAS Registry Numbers:
http://www.cas.org/legal/infopolicy.html
A User or Organization may include, without a license and without paying a
fee, up to 10,000 CAS Registry Numbers or CASRNs in a catalog, website, or other product for which there is no charge. *The following attribution should be referenced or appear with the use of each CASRN: CAS Registry Number(R) is a Registered Trademark of the American Chemical Society*. CAS recommends the verification of the CASRNs through CAS Client ServicesSM.
A User who makes a legal copy of CAS information must make a reasonable
effort to prevent the theft or inadvertent illicit dissemination of CAS intellectual property by displaying the following ACS Copyright Notice conspicuously at least once on each packet of information distributed by the User: Copyright Year by the American Chemical Society. All Rights Reserved. (Use the year of publication in the case of printed and microform services; in the case of information derived from an online service, use either the year provided by the online service or the current year.) For usage exceeding or outside these restrictions, please refer to Section V. Special Permission http://www.cas.org/legal/infopolicy.html#special.
Furthermore:
IV. Unauthorized Use of CAS Information
All of the following uses are prohibited without prior written permission from CAS:
- A User may not disseminate, distribute, copy, or store any
portion of the CA Lexicon, without the prior written consent of CAS. The CA Lexicon is the copyrighted intellectual property of the American Chemical Society and is provided to assist in searching Databases on STN. 2. A User may not copy or otherwise record all or portions of a printed issue or Database with the purpose of, or the effect of, avoiding subscription fees or use charges for that publication or Database, except as provided in these Policies. This includes the creation of centralized or networked Databases or directories of CAS information. 3. CAS Records or Metadata may not be used in Data Mining with non-CAS or non-STN tools unless the User or Information Professional has downloaded the records via STN AnaVist. For uses of CAS Information outside of this procedure the User or Information Professional must contact CAS. 4. A User may not use automated programs for systematic retrieval of CAS content to create or compile, directly or indirectly a collection, compilation, database or directory. An example of automated retrieval is a script written to extract and download CAS data in batches. 5. A User may not redistribute any part of CAS Records or any CAS Data Elements outside the Organization via the Internet or other means except as specified in these Policies. 6. A government agency which receives legally required CAS information from a User may not share, exchange, or redistribute this information to another Organization, including another government agency.
I suggest that we remove all CAS Registry Numbers from Wikipedia. They are
not Free. The ACS has been generous, *so far,* to politely say as much to us.
On Sat, Mar 8, 2008 at 10:46 PM, WJhonson@aol.com wrote:
In a message dated 3/8/2008 7:58:30 P.M. Pacific Standard Time, Brian.Mingus@colorado.edu writes:
One can also argue the opposite case; that collection of facts are copyrightable, that Wikipedia, a project whose goal is to give every person >>
On Mar 9, 2008, at 1:04 AM, Brian wrote:
I suggest that we remove all CAS Registry Numbers from Wikipedia. They are
not Free. The ACS has been generous, *so far,* to politely say as much to us.
While I think that the stampy-feet nuclear option is not workable, I'm unconvinced this makes sense either. The enforceability of their copyright claim seems dubious, and I suspect that they're hard pressed, as a non-profit scholarly resource, to bitch about a non- profit scholarly resource quoting and referencing them. We should not fold and not reference an industry standard that is in wide and public use (i.e. used in patent applications) because of an overstepping copyright claim, which this certainly seems like it could be. (Does someone with actual lawyer-fu want to play here so that the armchair ones can stop?)
I think there's several things that need to happen for this to be productive.
1) We need to have somebody on our side assess the actual sanity of the copyright claim and of our use of the CAS information.
2) We need to actually talk to ACS/CAS and figure out what they want. There's likely a common sense compromise, like including the CAS numbers but not creating [[List of chemical compounds by CAS number]] or something that all sides would agree to.
3) Once we know our legal ground and have tried good, sane negotiation we can look at whether it is in our best interests (remembering that our best interests include "promoting the spread of knowledge and information" and thus that we may want to pull CAS numbers just to be nice if it really does endanger their ability to provide the service) to accomodate them, say "Oh just try it" to their lawyers, or what.
#3 is the most emotionally satisfying step, but 1 and 2 are kind of crucial prerequisites.
-Phil
Snowspinner wrote:
There's likely a common sense compromise, like including the CAS numbers but not creating [[List of chemical compounds by CAS number]] or something that all sides would agree to.
Phil's got this exactly right. The objection of theirs that started this thread was *not* that we are using CAS numbers, but rather that some editors over at Wikiproject Chemistry were maybe using the proprietary SciFinder tool as part of a verification project.
No one's asking us to remove any CAS numbers.
I wrote:
Snowspinner wrote:
There's likely a common sense compromise, like including the CAS numbers but not creating [[List of chemical compounds by CAS number]]
Phil's got this exactly right.
By which I meant, I was pretty sure CAS would object to such a list. So imagine my surprise when I came across [[List of CAS numbers by chemical compound]] this morning...
On 09/03/2008, Steve Summit scs@eskimo.com wrote:
I wrote:
Snowspinner wrote:
There's likely a common sense compromise, like including the CAS numbers but not creating [[List of chemical compounds by CAS number]]
Phil's got this exactly right.
By which I meant, I was pretty sure CAS would object to such a list. So imagine my surprise when I came across [[List of CAS numbers by chemical compound]] this morning...
Blog search for CAS wikipedia makes it pretty clear that certain groups who don't like the current system are trying to use wikipedia as a method to change it. Within our current chemical coverage CAS numbers are not that vital. We only tend to cover the more common chemicals with the result that names are enough to identify them with few problems. Non vital does not however mean they should not be included.
Philip Sandifer wrote:
On Mar 9, 2008, at 1:04 AM, Brian wrote:
I suggest that we remove all CAS Registry Numbers from Wikipedia. They are
not Free. The ACS has been generous, *so far,* to politely say as much to us.
While I think that the stampy-feet nuclear option is not workable, I'm unconvinced this makes sense either. The enforceability of their copyright claim seems dubious, and I suspect that they're hard pressed, as a non-profit scholarly resource, to bitch about a non- profit scholarly resource quoting and referencing them. We should not fold and not reference an industry standard that is in wide and public use (i.e. used in patent applications) because of an overstepping copyright claim, which this certainly seems like it could be.
I think that they are not alone in facing challenges to their pseudo-proprietary rights.
Ec
Brian wrote:
You can argue that until you are blue in the face. They've got a law firm and large budget, we've got a laywer who is already very busy.
That argument is sheer cowardice. It does the WMF little good to cave in at the tiniest suggestion of intimidation.
The American Chemical Society has stated the following terms for the use of CAS Registry Numbers:
http://www.cas.org/legal/infopolicy.html
A User or Organization may include, without a license and without paying a
fee, up to 10,000 CAS Registry Numbers or CASRNs in a catalog, website, or other product for which there is no charge. *The following attribution should be referenced or appear with the use of each CASRN: CAS Registry Number(R) is a Registered Trademark of the American Chemical Society*. CAS recommends the verification of the CASRNs through CAS Client ServicesSM.
There you go, as someone has said we are only up to 2200. Putting that notice on every page where we give the number for a single chemical would be absurd when the notice is longer than the number, but the CASRN heading would normally link to a page that explains this number. There we can make note of their claim, and that it is not universally recognized.
A User who makes a legal copy of CAS information must make a reasonable
effort to prevent the theft or inadvertent illicit dissemination of CAS intellectual property by displaying the following ACS Copyright Notice conspicuously at least once on each packet of information distributed by the User: Copyright Year by the American Chemical Society. All Rights Reserved. (Use the year of publication in the case of printed and microform services; in the case of information derived from an online service, use either the year provided by the online service or the current year.) For usage exceeding or outside these restrictions, please refer to Section V. Special Permission http://www.cas.org/legal/infopolicy.html#special.
What do they mean by "legal copy of CAS information"? Nobody is talking about showing the entire 35,000,000 numbers ... yet. If individual numbers are copyrighted (a premise which I would dispute) the copyright year would be the year in which that number was assigned, and could be as early as 1965 when the registry began. Annual reprints do not acquire a refreshed copyright year.
Furthermore:
IV. Unauthorized Use of CAS Information
All of the following uses are prohibited without prior written permission from CAS:
- A User may not disseminate, distribute, copy, or store any
portion of the CA Lexicon, without the prior written consent of CAS. The CA Lexicon is the copyrighted intellectual property of the American Chemical Society and is provided to assist in searching Databases on STN.
If we aren't getting the information from their Lexicon, but accumulating the information from a wide variety of sources, like the "CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics" or the labels on jars of chemicals, we aren't copying their lexicon. By gathering it that way we are gathering the information, not its form of expression.
- A User may not copy or otherwise record all or portions of a
printed issue or Database with the purpose of, or the effect of, avoiding subscription fees or use charges for that publication or Database, except as provided in these Policies. This includes the creation of centralized or networked Databases or directories of CAS information.
What information are they talking about besides the name and number? How we organize independently acquired information is none of their concern. An independently developed algorithm that coincidently gives the same result as their database would not be a breach of copyright.
- CAS Records or Metadata may not be used in Data Mining with
non-CAS or non-STN tools unless the User or Information Professional has downloaded the records via STN AnaVist. For uses of CAS Information outside of this procedure the User or Information Professional must contact CAS.
Thi shouldn't apply if we haven't received our information directly from them.
- A User may not use automated programs for systematic retrieval of
CAS content to create or compile, directly or indirectly a collection, compilation, database or directory. An example of automated retrieval is a script written to extract and download CAS data in batches.
Perhaps under contract law, but we have no contract with them.
- A User may not redistribute any part of CAS Records or any CAS
Data Elements outside the Organization via the Internet or other means except as specified in these Policies.
"Data elements" are clearly information rather than expression.
- A government agency which receives legally required CAS
information from a User may not share, exchange, or redistribute this information to another Organization, including another government agency.
We aren't a government agency.
I suggest that we remove all CAS Registry Numbers from Wikipedia. They are
not Free. The ACS has been generous, *so far,* to politely say as much to us.
This is a panicked overreaction. Letting us do what we already had the right to do is not exactly a characteristic of generosity.
Ec