[Foundation-l] GFDL Q&A update and question

[Ray Saintonge]

Chad wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 9, 2009 at 3:37 AM, Nikola Smolenski <smolensk at eunet.yu> wrote:
>   
>> Gerard Meijssen wrote:
>>     
>>> That is a bit simplistic. It takes a huge effort to create dumps. The dump
>>>       
>>> of the English language Wikipedia is even notoriously difficult to create.
>>>
>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweat_of_the_brow
>>>
>>> Huge effort is not copyrightable.
>>>       
> I haven't seen anyone trying to lay claim to a copyright
> on the dumps. I would venture to say that it's merely a
> transformative work, as it doesn't do anything but
> collect them in a machine-readable format. The various
> dumps are designed to organize the information, not
> change them in any way.
>   
While at first glance it might seem as though there was a compilation 
copyright in the dumps the fact that they are generated by a mechanical 
process would suggest that the lack the originality that is a 
fundamental requirement for copyrightability.

Ec