*Copyright claims are dogma in North America, but tend to dwindle the more you travel away from, say, New York. There are even places where people consider that time zones, like the metric system, is an intellectual construct at the disposal of all humanity.* * * *IANA would be one solution, and probably would make sense from the point of view of ICANN, which is seeking to have the upcoming contract/function. * * * *But there is also a worldwide treaty organization, the GIPM (acronym in French),* *http://www.bipm.org/fr/practical_info/time_server.html * *As it is entrusted with the task of conserving the most accurate measurements, surely it could be requested to provide a list of time zones, with the kind of technical and scientific support that copyright money-makers and their fans may not have.* * * *Regards,* *Jean-Jacques.* * * On 12 October 2011 03:04, Alan Greenberg <alan.greenberg@mcgill.ca> wrote:

I know nothing about this particular issue, but I do recall that compilations of sports scores and other sports statistics have long been deemed to be copyrighted by various sports associations and their publishers, so there certainly is precedent to copyrighting compilations of facts.

Alan

At 11/10/2011 02:19 PM, Evan Leibovitch wrote:

...

Hello everyone,

I call your attention to this post on The Economist <http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2011/10/copyright-and-time-zones regarding the database of timezones used by the world's computers. Apparently a US company has issued a takedown order based on a copyright claim.

Further in the article there is mention that IANA was considered a possible custodian of the database, hence the relevance here. The article also suggests that the takedown notice might be invalid since timezones are facts and not expression -- but that this won't be tested in court.

Is there anyone here that understands the issue better than I? Is this something in which At-Large can -- or should -- play a role?

More info can be found -- including detauls of efforts to recreate the database -- are found in this blog post< http://blog.joda.org/2011/10/today-time-zone-database-was-closed.html> .

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