Open Geodata in Europe - Inspire directive

[Andy Waddington]

On Monday 2006-05-15 11:46, David Gibson wrote:

> I think you could successfully argue that your list required "research"
> to create it, and that some considerable time and intellectual effort
> had been expended in collecting the data, checking it and so on. That
> amounts to an IPR, if you want my opinion. :-)

I think a lot of the data to which we would like free access, by that
argument, should be covered by copyright belonging to a datalogger, and
that the researcher that took the data from the equipment and wrote it
down is in breach of copyright :-)

Now, of course, even if a datalogger had some legal existence as an
independent entity, it would still be employed by the researcher, or
could be said to have been commissioned by the researcher to gather
the data, so the copyright does belong to the researcher and not to
the datalogger.

What now if someone else hacks into the datalogger and copies the
information before the researcher ? At that point, the data surely
will not be covered by copyright ? Isn't copyright a result of
"publication" - even if that means making the data available within
a closed community ?

Andy