[WikiEN-l] [Foundation-l] CAS Discourages Using SciFinder to Help Curate Wikipedia

[phoebe ayers]

On Mon, Mar 10, 2008 at 5:17 AM, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 10/03/2008, phoebe ayers <phoebe.wiki at gmail.com> wrote:
>  > On Sun, Mar 9, 2008 at 8:17 PM, phoebe ayers <phoebe.wiki at gmail.com> wrote:
>  >  > On Sat, Mar 8, 2008 at 8:13 AM, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>  >
>  > ....
>  >
>  > >  subscribe to SciFinder. There are nearly always specific provisions in
>  >  >  the contract (not just for SciFinder, but for most databases and
>  >  >  journals) that say who can get access to the data -- for instance,
>  >  >  only the faculty, staff and students of a university. Obviously
>  >  >  enough, the many glorious readers of Wikipedia are unlikely to fall
>  >  >  into this faculty/staff/student classification.
>  >  >
>  >  >  Assuming this is true for most contracts they sign, then probably
>  >  >  anyone systematically posting data from one of these systems is
>  >  >  violating some provision of their contract. This doesn't have anything
>  >  >  to do with copyright law per se, but it is a terms of use question.
>  >
>  >
>  > Er, and I didn't actually look at the chemistry page to see what all
>  >  folks were proposing to do. As Ec & David Goodman and others have
>  >  said, CAS numbers are available from lots and lots of sources, so
>  >  simply reprinting the things -- rather than trying to get a lot of
>  >  them downloaded/validated through SciFinder -- doesn't seem too bad.
>  >  I'd be curious how things like the CRC handbook get them, actually. Do
>  >  they have to license their use from CAS?
>  >
>  >  -- phoebe
>
>  CAS numbers are available in independent, reliable, and usable
>  resources other than SciFinder. Since the problem is with using
>  SciFinder, and not the numbers themselves, this shouldn't affect our
>  inclusion of CAS numbers in Wikipedia articles.
>
>  The following books are available, e.g.:
>  *Chemical Abstracts Service Source Index 1996: 3 (1996 ed, Vol 3)
>  *The ring index : a list of ring systems used in organic chemistry : a
>  product of the Chemical Abstracts Service / by Austin M. Patterson,
>  Leonard T. Capell, Donald F. Walker
>
>  There also seems to be a free look-up independent of ACS
>  (http://webbook.nist.gov/chemistry/cas-ser.html). That said, this page
>  is footed with "CAS registry numbers are copyrighted by the American
>  Chemical Society. Redistribution rights for CAS registry numbers are
>  reserved by the American Chemical Society. "CAS registry" is a
>  registered trademark of the American Chemical society.".
>
>  The situation is confusing. If accessing these numbers using SciFinder
>  is the problem (due to user agreements), there are alternative
>  solutions. If claims that the numbers are copyrighted are legitimate,
>  it may be a bigger problem. Aside from the issues of database and
>  collative copyright, how copyrightable is an identifier of the form
>  74-82-8?
>
>  --
>
> Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)

Just so we're all clear: SciFinder is based directly off of the old
CAS print indexes. It's just an electronic way of getting at the same
data. And the highly complex indexing scheme behind the numbers is
almost certainly copyrightable. I think someone looking at the
intellectual property issues would probably consider the numbers in
context.

-- phoebe