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)
“The information links are like nerves that pervade and help to animate the human organism. The sensors and monitors are analogous to the human senses that put us in touch with the world. Data bases correspond to memory; the information processors perform the function of human reasoning and comprehension. Once the postmodern infrastructure is reasonably integrated, it will greatly exceed human intelligence in reach, acuity, capacity, and precision.”
—Albert Borgman, U.S. educator, author. Crossing the Postmodern Divide, ch. 4, University of Chicago Press (1992)
“Predictions of the future are never anything but projections of present automatic processes and procedures, that is, of occurrences that are likely to come to pass if men do not act and if nothing unexpected happens; every action, for better or worse, and every accident necessarily destroys the whole pattern in whose frame the prediction moves and where it finds its evidence.”
—Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)