Richard Grevers wrote:
What is the situation when you want to include information which is essentially in the public domain (e.g. a historical list of the Governors- General of NZ) but where all the convenient sources have their own copyright notices? Are they in effect copyrighting the information (which I would consider to be in the public domain) or just their presentation of it?
I basically agree with what Erik and Brion have said. An original presentation would be copyrightable, but the usual chronological or alphabetical lists can hardly be considered original, nor could something like putting a GG's dates to the left of the name instead of to the right. It is customary and much easier to make a blanket copyright statement about a site, which means that it's copyright to whatever extent it's copyrightable. The user might as well be the one to try figuring out what is and isn't copyright. Sometimes the only thing that is copyrightable is the general appearance of the site, which you probably don't want to use anyway.
Eclecticology