Re: JPL Planetary Ephemeris DE405
On 03/20/2018 08:16 PM, Ole Streicher wrote:
>>> Positions and movement parameters of celestial bodies, presented in
>> their natural form (to keep the use of JPL-DE data as example) are bare
>>
>> The creativity here is:
>> * Which bodies are included;
>> * How frequently are the co-ordinates listed - hourly, daily, weekly,
>> monthly, annually, etc.;
>> * What unit of measurement is used for those co-ordinates;
>> * What is the starting point of the listings;
>> * What is the ending point of the listing;
>
> This is all not artificially selected.
One hundred percent of it, is an artificial selection.
If you go back to the Feist ruling, had the original list been just odd
phone numbers, or just rural box numbers,the decision would have gone
the other way, because that would have met the "creativity" requirement.
It was only because everything was gulped down, that the decision went
the way it did.
For an ephemeris, the seven points needed to calculate the position of a
body, are facts.
Anything more than that involves an element of creativity.
Going back to my first point: "Which bodies are included", astrologers
have a choice of roughly 1,000 planets which orbit the sun, to choose
from. This is in addition to roughly 1,000,000 asteroids, Kepler
Objects, comets, and other assorted things that either explicitly or
implicitly orbit the sun, or give the appearance of so doing.
Creativity choice # 1: Which objects to include. That you have never
heard of the planet Vulcan, not to be confused with either the planet
Vulkan nor with the planet Vulcanus, both of which have different,
dissimilar orbits around the Sol, the star that the planet Earth orbits,
and none of which are to be confused with either planetoids, asteroids,
Kepler Objects, or minor planets with similar names, does not mean that
the exclusion is not a creative choice.
> Astrolabe dismissed the lawsuit, so no court decision was made. In which
> way does this imply that Astrolabe could claim copyright?
a) Had the EFF not taken the defendant's case pro bona, Astrolabe would
probably have won their lawsuit;
b) With a specific license attached to the content, one can be fairly
confident that one won't be sued for a copyright violation, if one
adheres to the license. Without a license attached to the content, the
only safe assumption is that the content is ARR, and one needs to both
pay royalties, and obtain _written_ permission to use the content. That
automatically make the content in question non-free, and against the
Debian Social Contract.
> I don't say it is "public domain". I state that is is not copyrighted.
> That is not the same.
Technically, you are correct. "Public Domain" and "not copyrighted" are
two different things. Do you really want to go down the road of "it is
not copyrighted", whilst excluding it from the realm of "Public Domain"?
If so, then you have demonstrated precisely why the content in
question can not be included in either Debian Free, or in Debian Non-Free.
I am not a lawyer. This is not legal advice.
jonathon
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