Newspaper Articles Not Copyrightable In Slovakia 86
Yenya writes "In Slovakia, newspaper articles can be freely aggregated and archived, and are not worth copyright protection. The district court in Bratislava, Slovakia, stated in the case between news publishing house Ecopress and a news monitoring company Storin, that while the news articles manifests traces of creativity, it is not enough to be considered worth protecting the authors rights (English translation)."
Because, they are not worth (Score:3, Insightful)
Most likely, they are not worth protection, because they are generally crap. Journalism is a dying art. All you get is poorly translated blurbs from AP/AFP/Reuters. With population of 5 millions is not worth attention of foreign reporters and the only case where I've seen local reporters to get to the bottom of the issue are some consumer-protection cases. Never in science, politics or corruption, etc. But who cares. Most people just want tabloid, so they get that.
I get better news coverage here, than from newspaper articles.
I live in Slovakia (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:In Slovakia.... (Score:4, Insightful)
You sure? These comments are original works of me, my opinion, my creation.
You have to see the difference between information and creation. That Hydrogen is the lightest element in the periodic table is not copyrightable. It's information. Even if I create an elaborate statement that culminates in its essence in this and little else, there's no chance that I'll retain copyright of it. Because the main part of what I created is still just the information that hydrogen is the element with the least mass.
A fantasy story about various atoms coming together and having a party, while playing puns on their weight and some of their properties (and look how fat uranium looks, any more yellow cake and she's gonna blow!) is a different matter. That IS copyrightable.
Re:In Slovakia... (Score:5, Insightful)
We could cut the copyright on newspaper articles (Score:5, Insightful)
... down to 5 or 10 days after publication, and it wouldn't kill the incentives of journalists to research and write the articles, or of newspapers to publish them. Nearly all of their monetary value is realized in the first 48 hours after publication.
Cutting the copyright short would also make it easier for newspapers to make their archives of old articles available. In America some newspapers get cockblocked by journalists suing to collect royalties again on years-old articles just because the article is republished in a different medium.
Re:Manipulative wording (Score:3, Insightful)
That's closer, but monopolizing the news is not a right. It's a privilege which may (or may not) be granted by the government.