unethical and illegal behavior on the part of some

[Israel Stein]

At 02:01 AM 2/29/2008, Gregor wrote:

>I don´t know the US law, but in Germany that´s 
>definetly illegal. A few years ago a company 
>decided to sell the local phonebooks on CD. 
>Therefore they paid people in India and China to 
>type it from the printed books. The printed 
>books were sold by another company. That ended 
>in a court decision that this is illegal. I 
>think the copyright law is similiar all over the 
>world, so I think it should be illegal in the USA, too.
>
>Gregor

Yes.

It seems that US law at this point is out of 
whack with the norms and standards accepted 
worldwide through international copyright 
treaties. Until a fairly recent US Supreme Court 
decision, most US courts ruled as above, where 
copyright protection was extended to the fruits 
of extensive research. The Supreme Court, in its 
great wisdom, struck those decisions down. At 
this point a bill has been pending in Congress 
for several years to make US law conform to 
international standards, but to date it has not been acted on.

So, while such protection may be (and I stress 
"may be" because none of us here are lawyers) 
unenforceable in US courts, it is essentially due 
to a very narrow legal interpretation by one US 
court that is not accepted worldwide. So at the 
very least, the practice of disseminating the 
material publicly, and publishing it through 
electronic media on a widely accessible e-mail 
list  (which constitute a permanent record 
accessible to a wide public - and not a single 
communication to a single person, which is 
perfectly fine) is unethical by international standards.

And I suspect that US law will sooner or later be 
adjusted to conform with International standards. 
It seems that databases generated in Europe have 
general copyright protection on the underlying 
facts, and those generated in the US do not. That 
puts US databases at a competitive disadvantage 
on the international market - and sooner or later 
there will be sufficient pressure from the information industry to fix that.

All of this puts the PTG and Andy Rudoff in an 
awkward position, since the Pierce Atlas is an 
important industry resource, and the PTG is not 
interested in interfering with his ability to 
generate income from his business. And by 
maintaining this mailing list which allows 
practicing piano technicians to avoid the 
purchase of the directory by asking others to 
extract facts from this directory and publicly 
publish them as a permanent record (which is what 
posting on this list amounts to) they make the 
PTG and Mr. Rudoff accessories to this ethically questionable behavior.

Mr. Rudoff - who owns the server on which this 
list lives and kindly makes it available for our 
use - has asked that this behavior cease. 
Regardless of any legal technicalities, this is 
the only consideration that is relevant here. So 
I suggest that any further questions regarding 
piano dates be referred to the Pierce Piano Atlas 
or some other resource - and not answered on this 
list. And I would not blame Mr. Rudoff if he 
unsubscribes persons who ignore his request.

Israel Stein
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