CONGRESS REVISITS DATABASE BILL

Abstract

The Collections of Information Antipiracy Act, H.R. 2652—the almost unstoppable bill to prevent database piracy that went barreling through Congress last year only to be dropped from major copyright legislation at the last possible minute—is likely to be resurrected early in the 106th Congress. And the big question for scientists is whether the new bill will contain the protections for research data that were hammered out at the end of the 105th Congress, or whether database publishers will continue their push for more restrictive language. Databases that contain an element of creativity in their selection or arrangement are already protected by international copyright law. At issue in last year's bill was the protection of all databases, including noncopyrightable databases. Noncopyrightable databases are those that lack an element of creativity, even though they may require a substantial financial investment to produce. Databases of global temperature readings or telescope observations, genetic sequence...