[toomuchtodo]

> So scraping the data, and rearranging the underlying facts into your own arrangement/organization is almost always not copyright infringement.

I'm not so sure. It would definitely be illegal in the US for me to cherry pick data out of Google Maps and add it to OpenStreetMap (and OSM has policies addressing exactly this).

[iolothebard]

Yet companies like LexisNexis get most their data they resell this way.

[toomuchtodo]

Are they scraping copyrighted data? Or public records? Big difference.

[iheartmemcache]

No one in the US can hold copyrights to the pure 'facts', especially if one demonstrates they invested enough energy to 'creatively reinterpret' it. Scraping hasn't quite seen a Supreme Court ruling yet (@grellas correct me, please), but I'm sure one could make a reasonable argument that the energy invested in re-collating the data is sufficient enough to pass any barrier. See Feist Publications, Inc., v. Rural Telephone Service Co, 1991. and O'Connors opinion.

[iolothebard]

Facts aren't copyrightable.

They scrape everything in the world they can get their hands on.

[toomuchtodo]

Collections of facts are: https://www.unc.edu/courses/2006spring/law/357c/001/projects...

[ap22213]

What part of the law does this fall under? Do people get arrested for this? (i.e. criminal) What's the worst that can happen?

[toomuchtodo]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_infringement

http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html#501

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/chapter-5

https://www.lib.purdue.edu/uco/CopyrightBasics/penalties.htm...

[pimlottc]

That's begging the question of whether Google's data on public streets is actually protected by copyright under U.S. law.

[toomuchtodo]

https://www.google.com/permissions/geoguidelines.html