[Air-l] ethics - aol data

[Maciej Kos]

> Any application of this collection 
> for commercial purposes is  STRICTLY PROHIBITED.

A part from my academic position I also work for a Internet Marketing/SEO
company. I don't see how such a statement could stop anybody from using this
data. If you don't use it and your competitors do, you may even eventually go
broke. It is a do-or-die situation.

I myself have not used the data for commercial purposes but there are tones of
people doing it.

Just my two cents.

M.


> 
> On Aug 29, 2006, at 3:55 PM, burkx006 at umn.edu wrote:
> 
> > On Aug 29 2006, Jeremy Hunsinger wrote:
> >
> >>> Property is a word that has to be used very carefully -- I'm not
> >>> sure that
> >>> the data can be called their property in any formal sense. It
> >>> cannot (with
> >>> a couple of caveats) be the subject matter of patent or copyright.
> >>
> >> The collection a whole or in part as held as a whole in a database
> >> could be copyrighted i thought.   Wasn't that a law that passed a few
> >> years ago that we all protested, but it was pretty much passed
> >> anyway?   I may be mistaken here, but I seem to recall that passing.
> >
> > Copyright does not cover facts. It could cover the original  
> > selection and
> > arrangement of facts, but an access log or similar compilation  
> > probably
> > does not qualify as original in selection and arrangement -- it likely
> > includes all the access data, in a format dictated by the technical
> > architecture.
> >
> > The EU member states and some other countries have a separate form of
> > intellectual property covering databases in which there has been a
> > substantial commercial investment. Recent decisions suggest that  
> > computer
> > logs wouldn't qualify for that, either.
> >
> >> here are what i thought they could do more or less:  Control the
> >> data, Benefit or license access to the data, transfer or sell the
> >> data, exclude others from the data.  those are all traditional
> >> property rights... i think...
> >
> > They can do some of these things, but because of their property  
> > rights in
> > their hardware/software -- not in the data. See the "horse is out  
> > of the
> > barn" comment below.
> >
> >> yes, i was not thinking trade secrecy, that would be an interesting
> >> argument, but, I'm not sure it what would be a secret there, unless
> >> it is the whole of the collection of data, because google like aol
> >> has given access to parts of their data before.
> >
> > For trade secrecy, the information must "not be generally known" to
> > competitors.
> >
> >>> For example, I don't think that AOL has any
> >>> ability to control use of the data they accidentally released.
> >>
> >> it wasn't an accidental release, was it.  I thought it was released
> >> under license to researchers and then people re-released it.
> >
> > My understanding was that the re-release was unintentional (on  
> > AOL's part,
> > anyway). In any event, intentional or not, once it's out of the  
> > barn, they
> > have no ability -- which is to say no property right -- to prevent  
> > its use
> > by whomever happens upon it.
> >
> >>> I am speaking at IASTED Law/Tech on a version such claims in the
> >>> context of
> >>> "fantasy sports" data representations:
> >>> http://www.iasted.org/conferences/keynote-545.html
> >>
> >> there was just another lawsuit on that and baseball wasn't there?
> >> that is a bit different I think because arguably all of the data that
> >> you need to play fantasy sports can be found in your daily
> >> newspaper.
> >
> > In each case, the question is the extent to which data about an  
> > individual
> > maps onto the persona of the individual.
> >
> > -- 
> > Dan L. Burk
> > Oppenheimer, Wolff & Donnelly Professor
> > University of Minnesota Law School
> > 229 19th Avenue South
> > Minneapolis, MN  55455
> > **********************************
> > voice: 612-626-8726
> > fax: 612-625-2011
> >
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