Path: utzoo!censor!geac!torsqnt!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!looking!brad From: brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton) Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk Subject: Re: The difference between private investigators and databases Message-ID: <1991Jan03.011235.5478@looking.on.ca> Date: 3 Jan 91 01:12:35 GMT References: <14470@hoptoad.uucp> <50222@cornell.UUCP> Organization: Looking Glass Software Ltd. Lines: 24 Saying your personal information is copyrighted is, I suspect, clearly a legal facade to everybody here. You can think of strange reasonings, but the fact is that "Joe Schnutz lives at 123 main st. and plays hockey on Sunday" is not a creative work, and not the sort of thing that we want to see copyrighted or copyrightable. Call a spade a spade. What you mean is that you wish it to be confidential information. Realize, however, what this means. If somebody finds out confidential information without breaking confidence, it is no longer confidential information. And the constitution of the USA says that congress can't prohibit the publication of true, non-confidential information. (Some judges have ruled the congress can prohibit 'obscene' information discovered national secrets, but I disagree.) It is amazing how computers drive even those of us here to immediately start suggesting throwing away a 200 year old freedom. It has not suddenly become dangerous. People have thought that the right to publish has gotten more dangerous every year since Gutenburg. -- Brad Templeton, ClariNet Communications Corp. -- Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473