The Database and Collections of Information Misappropriation Act, H.R. 3261, was a proposed bill in the United States House of Representatives during the 108th United States Congress. It would have altered copyright law to permit assertion of copyright ownership over factual data.
Proponents argued that the bill was based on the 1996 EU Database Directive, and was designed to encourage database creators by ensuring their revenue advantage. Opponents, who included Google and Verizon argued that it would restrict access to and use of facts.
In March 2004, the House Energy and Commerce Committee unfavorably reported H.R. 3261. The committee approved a competing, less comprehensive bill, the Consumer Access to Information Act H.R. 3872, which dealt only with "time sensitive" information, and would have instructed the Federal Trade Commission to take action against unfair trade practices.
Famous quotes containing the words collections, information and/or act:
“Most of those who make collections of verse or epigram are like men eating cherries or oysters: they choose out the best at first, and end by eating all.”
—Sébastien-Roch Nicolas De Chamfort (1741–1794)
“I believe it has been said that one copy of The Times contains more useful information than the whole of the historical works of Thucydides.”
—Richard Cobden (1804–1865)
“It was the most ungrateful and unjust act ever perpetrated by a republic upon a class of citizens who had worked and sacrificed and suffered as did the women of this nation in the struggle of the Civil War only to be rewarded at its close by such unspeakable degradation as to be reduced to the plane of subjects to enfranchised slaves.”
—Anna Howard Shaw (1847–1919)