20081211

OCLC trying to use its EULA to hold freely given catolog data hostage.

I see this as a real problem.

OCLC shouldn't own or license public documents.

Provide a service, but a not a service with a horrible EULA.

"As one AUTOCAT poster wrote:
"I find it hard to believe OCLC would attempt to assert an intellectual property right over things such as LC cataloging, which by statute is in the public domain."

Unfortunately, this conception confuses two areas of law. By crafting the Policy as a license, which is perpetual, retroactive and viral, OCLC can effect a sort of ownership--US citizens still own it, but the don't have a right to get it (except, if the qualify, with an OCLC license around it).

Thus, OCLC transforms an expensive service--access to a repository of data that, even OCLC employees admit, would fit on an iPod, with room for 5,000 songs!--into effective ownership. This state of affairs obtains even when all the cataloging and editing was done by other Federal agencies and employees. It is only broken when the library in question itself did the original cataloging. As we shall see, that doesn't help much."

http://ping.fm/7cznz

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