The US Copyright Office offers creative workers a powerful labor protective.

  • FlowVoid@midwest.social
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    1 year ago

    Over 30 years ago, someone tried to claim copyright on a phone book. Their phone book had required manually collecting and verifying data from various sources, and the author of the phone book believed all that effort should be rewarded with a copyright on their product.

    The Supreme Court rejected that argument. They established that copyright is not a general reward for the “sweat of the brow”. It is only meant to protect human creative expression. A phone book is not creative expression, and neither is any other handpicked database.