I’m currently making my way through Canadian Copyright: A Citizen’s Guide by Sam Trosow and Laura Murray. I’ve been reading about non-rival consumption, moral rights, economic rights, and all sorts of other legalese goodness, at a level that even I can understand (I tried a practice LSAT for “fun” once – turned out it wasn’t very fun at all).
It’s great timing, then, to come across a lengthy post by Rob Styles about the legal issues involved with OCLC’s policy change. He hits the right points, mentions the right precedents, and reminds us that copyright law doesn’t apply to data, only expression (so OCLC mentioning the GFDL as a comparison to their license for bibliographic records is a red herring). So go read the post – it’s time well spent.
