[talk-au] repurcussions of IceTV decision

[David Murn]

On Thu, 2010-02-11 at 00:20 +1100, Alex (Maxious) Sadleir wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 9, 2010 at 11:48 AM, John Smith <deltafoxtrot256 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 9 February 2010 10:37, David Murn <davey at incanberra.com.au> wrote:

> > Except copyright law in Australia since the IceTV ruling is unlikely
> > to cover simple databases of fact.
> 
> Just to reinforce this point, a case concluded today asserted that
> Telstra/Sensis no longer have copyright for the Yellow and White Pages
> Databases specifically in light of IceTV. There had been a previous
> case involving those datasets concerning a company called Desktop
> Marketing Systems (no prizes for guessing why they would like to rip
> off phone books) that had subsisted for several years with the view
> that copying the whole phonebook (even when presented in a different
> form) was copyright infringement.

Based on this same argument, could someone grab the OSM data files,
change a couple of tag names and legally be able to sell it as their own
product with their own (now seemingly useless) copyright on it?  After
all, every single piece of OSM is technically a matter of fact, not
creative ability or anything else.

Just curious what floodgates this decision could open, both good and
bad.