copyright and check lists

[christian thompson]

Sorry, Ron, but ...

The copyright symbol under US and International law is NO LONGER
required. The copyright by default belongs to the creator. So, BEWARE at
all times for things created at least in the last 75 years.

Also, note that US and International law differ significantly in the
area of "checklists" and "fair use." While US Congress is trying to
change our laws to match International law, at the moment "checklist"
probably would be compared to telephone directories and not covered by
copyright law unless in digital format.

Under the old (current, but not digital millenium copyright act)
checklists would be considered as merely compilations, like telephone
directories, and, hence, without creative content, and therefore outside
of copyright law in the US, so in this aspect Ron is correct.

But today there are a host of problems in copyright area created mainly
by the Academic for-profit publishers, movie and music industries, etc.
trying to protect their profits from the freedom to share which the
Internet provides along with digital formats. I am not sure what you are
thinking, but be very careful if your project involves recently created
materials and can be viewed as of commerical nature, etc.

BUT there is a more important concern for scientists. And that is
respect for the work of our predecessors. So, one always needs to
include attribution to those prior checklists / works that one uses in
making their new checklists. For an Academic person, the charges of
Plagiarism can be much more serious that violation of copyright.

Cheers

F. Christian Thompson
Systematic Entomology Lab., USDA
c/o Smithsonian Institution
MRC-0169 NHB
PO Box 37012
Washington, DC 20013-7012
(202) 382-1800 voice
(202) 786-9422 FAX
cthompso at sel.barc.usda.gov e-mail
www.diptera.org  web site

>>> Ron Gatrelle <gatrelle at TILS-TTR.ORG> 05/11/05 02:38AM >>>
Subject: Re: copyright and check lists

The first, and simplest, thing to do is see if the published document
has
any © stipulations on it.  If so, they are to be followed.  If not,
have
fun.

The recent *checklist* for North American butterflies by Opler and
Warren
is © 2002.  People who put a lot of work into these are not apt to
look
favorably on what looks like plagiarization of their years of work.
BUT,
others can come up with the exact same lists independently, so who is
to
say if something was "taken" from a copyrighted list.  These are,
after
all, just compilations of what already exists in the literature.  The
annotations and notes would be the "original" data in such lists and
thus
what would most in need to be copyrighted.

Ron Gatrelle