WURFL Founders Fire Off DMCA Takedown Against Fork 169
An anonymous reader writes "ScientiaMobile, the company formed behind the open source library WURFL, an API used to do mobile device detection for web applications, has issued a DMCA takedown notice against the OpenDDR project on Github. ScientiaMobile claims that OpenDDR is 'ripping them off' by forking their database, which used to be licensed under a liberal license. Newer versions of the device database are licensed under restrictive licenses which do not allow any modification or redistribution."
Not being ripped off at all... (Score:5, Informative)
From http://openddr.org/takedown.html [openddr.org], the original file had terms of use as below
Seems clear to me - as long as OpenDDR are making public any changes.
"All the information listed here has been collected by many different people from many different
countries. You are allowed to use WURFL in any of your applications, free or commercial. The only thing required is to make public any
modification to this file, following the original spirit and idea of the creators of this project."
Summary (Score:5, Informative)
OpenDDR used the last snapshot of WURFL that had very liberal licensing. This snapshot dates from April last year. In July, the wording on the database file became a bit more restrictive, stating it was only for use with the WURFL API, but not in the terms of anything approaching a formal license. The subsequent version was the one that had the legalese restricting modification or redistribution. So the OpenDDR people were actually pretty careful about this.
The sad thing is that most of the WURFL data came from third party contributions. These were probably submitted with a belief that the data would remain available the same way it had always been. The the WURFL developer (essentially one guy) decided to commercialise it. The moral of this would appear to be:
person responsible (Score:5, Informative)
it looks like this person is responsible for the stupidity: https://twitter.com/#!/luca_passani [twitter.com]
i've advised openddr to contact the SFLC but this is twitter: can i recommend that people also advise openddr on twitter to contact the SFLC, as well as pressurise the moron who doesn't understand what the DMCA is for.
Re:Benefit of the doubt (Score:5, Informative)
Ex post facto is not quite what you're looking for here. They're not passing laws. I think the relevant legal issue is promissary estoppel [wikipedia.org].
Feist v. Rural; Nester's v. Hagstrom (Score:5, Informative)
you can't copyright a database (at least in the US).
Citation needed.
Feist Publications, Inc., v. Rural Telephone Service Co., 499 U.S. 340 (1991). Is this citation in the correct format?
an individual map (and the intentional flaws introduced by the cartographer)
Flaws like so-called "trap streets"? Nester's Map & Guide Corp. v. Hagstrom Map Co., 796 F.Supp. 729, E.D.N.Y., 1992. "To treat 'false' facts interspersed among actual facts and represented as actual facts as fiction would mean that no one could ever reproduce or copy actual facts without risk of reproducing a false fact and thereby violating a copyright. [...] If such were the law, information could never be reproduced or widely disseminated." (Id. at 733)
the ability to copyright your interpretation of the facts, your method of storing them, your dataset, is fairly unlimited.
To what extent does this copyright in the method of storing them survive automated conversion to another method?
Re:Again (Score:4, Informative)
I present this to ICE or FTC or whoever is supposed to be enforcing this thing.
That's part of the fun of SOPA too -- while the government does have to get involved with enforced takedowns, the bill also removes any liability for voluntary takedowns by ISPs. So if Warner Cable decides to censor any website hosting information on how to rip DVDs, they cannot be held liable despite the fact that they operate a communications service with the benefit of government granted easements (like cable rights of way) and, in many markets, government granted monopolies.