OT pinching and re-using data of the net

We get things like that here in Milton Keynes. It's all part of
someone's Grand Plan.

 

Gulliver's Land?

Ali

 

Heh. Someone recently used a railway bridge there to remove his head.

 

(The Older Gentleman) wrote in

I see you've become a charicature of yourself while I've been away.

Are you still writing about vegetables or becoming one?

 

What, someone had nicked the bridge and transported it to Belgium?

 

Not, as I understand it, where copyright is concerned.

I think it's a question of knowing the law rather than understanding
anything.

 

Not long after I started work in MK, I had a meeting over-run and
was in danger of being late to the next one. Kents Hill was under
construction at that time, and I reckoned the best way would be to cut
across the middle of the then largely empty grid square,
lickety-split. The roads were in, but house building had yet to start
- no street lighting, no road signs, no advertised speed limits.

Running on dead reckoning with the A4-sized, full colour A to Z of MK
on the steering wheel of the MKI Golf GTi, I was making very good
progress, thanks very much, flying along a brand new surface heading
for the horizon at the top of a hill.

The rev counter went off the clock as I was checking the map at about
the ton. I swear I could hear a faint Colonel Bogey from a cheap air
horn orchestra as the Golf took off over a crest - and crash-landed in
long grass. Then it all went very quiet - a silence only disturbed by
the ticking of the hot exhaust, rustling of the map and the popping of
question marks through the car roof.

Lowered suspension and wide wheels don't really help when you need to
get the car back up the foot-high step, where the tarmac just fucking
stops at the top of the hill.

Everything was completely normal, right up to the point where the
tarmac just plain ceased to be, like it had been sliced away.
Fortunately the contractor who had laid the tarmac on the other end
had left a ramped edge, so I could ease up it - after bumping across a
field of long grass for about a mile and being by then only ten
minutes late.

On returning to the office, I made mention of my short cut, along a
road marked, named and apparently solid in the full colour, A4 sized
A to Z of the New City in the country, in the state of Milton Keynes.
"Oh yes", said my boss - "That road isn't finished yet. There's no
link from North to South in Kents Hill yet, they're going to do
something on the skyline they have yet to decide - so they haven't
finished the road. That's why nobody drives through there ..."

 

No doubt. That's why some clever american came up with copyleft.

 

<g> Not going to Scarborough for the Gold Cup this year - they've
upped the prices for their 60th anniversary.

 

shame. Meet for beer instead?

 

The Old Git is pontificating about stuff he thinks he knows about. database
right is different to copyright.

http://www.intellectual-
property.gov.uk/resources/other_ip_rights/database_right.htm

 

Err .. whatever ....

NURSE !

 

Copying databases can still be a no-no. There are ways of "converting"
entires (companies, names and addresses, etc) to your own database -
usually a simple reply to an email or letter will qualify.

But wholesale copying is out.

Companies like Compass and others make a lot of money selling databases.
My own company regards its databases as the mother lode and has
'tracers' in them too. So did my last company, and we came down heavy on
someone who copied them while I was there.

It's a no-no. Tallbloke may think otherwise. As I said, let him copy a
Compass database and see how far he gets.

 

Thank you. Succinct and accurate. Even Tallbloke should understand it.

 

<G>

True, true.

 

Except, with particular reference to the info held by Companies House,
those of us that own companies have to pay an annual fee to submit our
information.


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Yes it does you cretin. By your own definition, Companies House hasn't
paid to collect the information. And it makes it available as public
domain information.

And you and TOG can't see the difference between this and copying a
technical article by a private individual.

I never talked about the wholesale copying of an individual database.
Rather collating my own database through garnering publicly available
information from a variety of sources on the web.

..

 

Name your roundabout! We're booked up until mid August but could fancy
a trip out thereafter - either Helmsley/Scarborough or west somewhere.

 

Oh, FOR ****'S SAKE!

You don't have to pay for the data in order to have rights to it. A lot
of databases are put together by doing things like (for instance)
getting people to put their details on a form, a card, a web page etc.
That's free.

Secondly, whoever mentioned "technical articles"? I didn't, as a
perusal of this thread will show, so don't start putting words into my
mouth. It doesn't help your argument and makes you look a prick.

People who put together databases have rights to them. That's fact, and
if you don't believe it, try copying one and using it, like I
suggested, and see what happens. And if you don't like it - tough shit.
Become an MP and change the law.

Now - garnering info from other sources - that's a very grey area. A
couple of addresses here, a couple there - next to impossible to prove
that you've harvested the data from other people's sources. Unless
you're unlucky enough to bump into a tracer.

Earlier I mentioned the run-in my previous employers had with database
theft. One of our editors was given the heave-ho, and he quietly took
one of our names & addresses DBs with him, and published his own
directory using it.

We jumped on him, and of course he claimed that he'd amassed all the
data himself from mailshots, phone calls, etc etc.

We then asked, if that was so, then why had he reproduced all the phone
numbers as 0181, 0171 for London (etc etc etc) when nine months
previously they'd changed to 0207, 0208 and so forth.

Oops. Caught bang to rights.

He had about as much knoledge and intelligence on this subject as you
do.

 

You'd fall foul of the Computer Misuse Act. The publisher is making
available their database for you to look at so you have permission to
do this. If you ran a bot over the database and copied the data you'd
be misusing their system.

http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts1990/Ukpga_19900018_en_2.htm#mdiv1