Damian Yerrick added:
True, but why mention this here? There is an infinite number of other things that the treaty didn't require either, why single out this particular one? If its a common misconception, I'd note it as such; otherwise I'd delete this. -- SJK
I added that because Congress passed the Sonny Bono Act and the DMCA one day apart, both by unaccountable voice vote, so it may appear that both acts implemented the same treaty.
"deemed necessary in the modern information era." by whom? "ensures" "provides"
the arrangement and selection of material in databases is protected in its fifth.
I'm pretty sure the U.S. mentions nothing about this at all in the copyright law. There is no specific mention of it at all, not even in DMCA. Tcaudilllg (talk) 10:24, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
http://www.copyright.gov/docs/regstat092303.html "In the Copyright Act of 1976, Congress included in the definition of “compilation” the first express statutory link between compilations and original works of authorship “...that are selected, coordinated, or arranged in such a way that the resulting work as a whole constitutes a work of authorship.” (8) Cases under the 1976 Act were divided about the continuing viability of the sweat of the brow doctrine. Some circuits continued to apply it, (9) while other circuits rejected it, requiring a showing of sufficient creativity in order to entitle a compilation to copyright protection. (10) The Supreme Court resolved the split in the circuits in Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Tel. Serv. Co. (11) In that case, the Supreme Court held that the white pages of a telephone directory (containing an alphabetical listing of all residents with telephone service in a defined geographic area) was insufficiently creative to merit copyright protection. The Court held that the requirement of creativity was not merely statutory, but rooted in the Copyright Clause itself. (12) Thus, the sweat of the brow doctrine was laid to rest.
What remains is a thin layer of copyright protection for qualifying databases. In order to qualify, they must exhibit some modicum of creativity in the selection, arrangement, or coordination of the data. The protection is thin in that only the creative elements (selection, arrangement, or coordination of data) are protected by copyright. Explanatory materials such as introductions or footnotes to databases may also be copyrightable. But in no case is the data itself (as distinguished from its selection, coordination or arrangement) copyrightable. The absence of uniform protection for noncreative databases is what has given rise to the calls for this legislation."
And, that legislation is still in committee. Tcaudilllg (talk) 13:05, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
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