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From: Frank Reed (no email)
Date: Thu Mar 30 2006 - 19:48:42 EST
Ken, you wrote:
"You are partly right about the copyright issue. Even though, as you say, no
one owns the position of Mars, the British claim copyright to whatever data
they collect."
That's ok, but they are not responsible for collecting more than a trivial
amount of data underlying the present Nautical Almanac, and there is
long-standing precedent for relinquishing copyright to that portion of the data that
the UK did collect. The whole content of the Nautical Almanac can be
re-generated from scratch in no time.
And:
"They even extended this thinking recently to tidal data in
British ports. Since they collected the data, they have stopped several
tidal prediction programs from being sold without paying a royalty for the
British part."
Yes, and that ruling also applies to international ports where the data has
been collected by British authorities. In this case, they have a point. I
certainly wish they would make it available for free, but of course, collecting
this tidal data was expensive and it is primarily relevant to commercial
users. This is a product, and there's no strong reason to give it up for free.
And:
"A case over international copyright of data might go either way."
But not ephemeris data. No way. There is no rational court in the world that
would award copyright over the positions of the stars and planets to any
authority in the UK. Indeed, the very fact that this information is presently
available, and has been available for decades, in numerous products and in
numerous online databases *without* contest by any authority claiming copyright
guarantees that there is no legal case for copyright of the data in the
Nautical Almanac.
And:
"However, the British also claim copyright over the page layout of the
almanac which is a creative issue. Most everyone agrees that that claim is proper."
It is a proper "claim", yes. Even that could be argued over since most of
the layout was published in the American Nautical Almanac *before* it was
adopted for the common Nautical Almanac. This is the sort of thing that could go
either way in court. But we don't have to argue it in court since the layout's
not terrificly important in any case. The specific layout of the Nautical
Almanac is hardly sacrosanct, and it would be easy to devise layouts that are
functionally equivalent or even considerably superior. There are many
navigation enthusiasts, for example, who might be happier if the daily pages were not
cluttered with tables of twilight, sunrise/set, and moonrise/set (wouldn't
that be a nice spot for some lunar distance tables...<g>). Of course, for some
navigators, even the tiniest change in the Sacred Almanac Layout adopted in
1958 would be an abomination against the Ephemeral Gods themselves and there
might be rioting the streets! But I think not. <g>
-FER
42.0N 87.7W, or 41.4N 72.1W.
www.HistoricalAtlas.com/lunars
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