[Taxacom] ZooBank reality check: scanning and copyright

[Frank Krell]

I am quite sure that most taxonomic description contain more creativity than a telephone directory.
My comments might be somewhat counterproductive since I am interested myself in getting descriptions out of the copyright (for ZooBank - the real registry, not the present pre-version). However, there is no doubt that taxonomy is more than data (although the data aspect gets increasingly stressed all the time). Us taxonomists do science, and every description is full of hypotheses of homology and other theory, the combination of which is a creative and intellectually demanding process. It is not just a compilation of facts. "The upper thing on the front of the beetle is green" might be factual knowledge. "The clypeus [or labroclypeus? - or is it the frons and the clypeus is reduced?] of the beetle is green" is certainly more than factual knowledge. What a pity, but I can't be political here.

Frank

Dr Frank-T. Krell
Head, Coleoptera Division
Editor, Systematic Entomology
Commissioner, International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature
Department of Entomology
The Natural History Museum
Cromwell Road
London SW7 5BD, U.K.
Tel. +44 (0) 20 7942 5886
Fax +44 (0) 20 7942 5229
f.krell at nhm.ac.uk
http://www.nhm.ac.uk//research-curation/staff-directory/entomology/cv-3566.html
http://myprofile.cos.com/ftkrell




-----Original Message-----
From:	taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu on behalf of Stephen C. Carlson
Sent:	Thu 07/09/2006 23:32
To:	Barry Roth; 'TAXACOM'
Cc:	
Subject:	Re: [Taxacom] ZooBank reality check: scanning and copyright

At 03:15 PM 9/7/2006 -0700, Barry Roth wrote:
>The example is sometimes given that the fact of someone's phone number being 
>###-###-#### is not copyrightable, but the telephone directory is.

This example had been valid in some jurisdictions before 1991, but
the Supreme Court eventually ruled that a telephone directory lacked
a sufficient amount of creativity to be copyrightable in Feist
Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Co., 499 U.S. 340 (1991).

Stephen Carlson, J.D. 
-- 
Stephen C. Carlson                             mailto:scarlson at mindspring.com
Weblog:                                   http://www.hypotyposeis.org/weblog/
Author of: The Gospel Hoax, http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1932792481


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