question for for Israel, was Re: unethical and illegal behavior on the part of some

[David Boyce]

 David, in US (and UK) copyright law, it is NOT illegal to write down the 
information in Pierce - not even if you write down *all* of it.

As has already been quite amply explained, in US (and UK) copyright law, 
there is no copyright in facts.  The publisher of Pierce does not own the 
information - the facts - in Pierce. The publisher has no copyright in US 
law respecting that information.

What he DOES own, is the typographical arrangement or tabulation he makes of 
that information.  It would therefore be illegal to reproduce that 
arrangement by any means, including photcopying or scanning.  It would *not* 
be illegal to type all the information out in your own style.

We might think that the law SHOULD give the publisher more rights than this. 
We might WANT it to. But, at the moment, it does not.

Best regards,

David.



"Actually, I didn't want to make this confrontational.  Copy means copy. 
Writing down the information, photocopying the information (which was the 
problem in this case), copying by whatever means you can think of.  Using 
the information is not illegal, that's why it's there.  Making any copy of 
copyrighted work is illegal.  There are "fair use" exceptions that are 
pretty explicit and there's a ton of information on the web about fair use.

dp"