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APPENDIX B 97 and new laws are being considered to legislate new rights and limitations on those rights in the digital environment.2 Among the most significant new legislation enacted or being considered is database protection. DATABASE PROTECTION Databases produced by âsweat of the browâ (i.e., created with money, effort, or labor but without creativity) are not protected by copyright. In Europe databases are protected by a new form of intellectual property protection through the European Union (EU) Database Directive (see Box 2.1 and 2.2). The EU Database Directive provides 15 years of protection for the contents of the database (including facts) and each significant update. Use of substantial parts of a database and value-added uses of any kind are prohibited without permission and/or payment to the database owner. European countries are permitted to designate exceptions for science and education, but these exceptions are much more limited than the fair use exceptions in copyright law and they are not required. For example, France does not permit any fair use exceptions in its database law. Other countries, including the United States, are currently considering similar database protections. CONTRACT Most data agreements between users and data collectors (e.g., with the European Space Agency for use of ERS data3) are contracts. A contract is a two- party agreement, the terms of which are specified by the individuals involved. Because contracts can be written to circumvent fair 2For example, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act provides new rights and limitations related to the use of copyrighted works on the Internet or other digital environments. The act prohibits circumvention of technological measures to control access, even if it is done for legitimate reasons, and thus potentially reduces public access to information. See NRC, 2000, The Digital Dilemma: Intellectual Property in the Information Age. National Academy Press, Washington, D.C., 340 pp. 3Once a researcher's proposal to use ERS data is approved, the researcher signs a formal agreement naming every individual who would be permitted access to the data (see Example 5.5).
APPENDIX B 98 use, they are potentially a very powerful form of intellectual property protection. For example, contracts can be written to prevent multiple uses of the same data, sharing data with colleagues, or publishing the data on which the analysis was based. They can also be written to slow or prevent data from public-private partnerships from entering the public domain (e.g., Example 5.14). On the other hand, contract law has some limitations, including (1) a high administrative burden of negotiating terms with each user and provider of data, particularly for datasets compiled from several sources, and (2) they cannot fully prevent unauthorized downstream uses of the data because they are only binding on the parties to the agreement.
