Re: How Were Those Tables Computed?

w.taylor@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote: 
Even more remarkable than the existence of such tables,
was the fact that they could be COPYRIGHTED !!

Well, you can put a copyright notice on the tables, and mention that you've included some copyright traps in the hope of scaring people away, but that doesn't mean you actually have an enforceable copyright. There's a US Supreme Court case, Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Tel. Serv. Co. (1991), where the defendant copied the plaintiff's telephone white pages, and the plaintiff was able to prove this (using copyright traps, I think), but the Court ruled in favor of the defendant, saying that the white pages failed to meet the minimum standard of creativity to be eligible for copyright. Admittedly this was a reversal of the lower courts' decisions, but on the other hand the ruling was 9-0, suggesting that they, at least, thought the law was quite clear on this point.

So I think that the publishers of those tables had no legal leg to stand on when they claimed copyright on the numbers. But of course they did it anyway; what did they have to lose?

-- Ben
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