[KLUG Advocacy] Something Amusing...

[Burkeat at aol.com]

While Adam sent a June 13 e-mail about the American Chemical Society  (ACS)
taking umbrage over the National Institutes of Health Web site, PubChem, I  
didn't
read the well-written _www.infotoday.com_ (http://www.infotoday.com)  article 
on the subject  until this evening.
 
As Adam noted, the issue raised is one of whether the government may  create
and maintain a public database of knowledge and information, composed  of
"public domain", not copyrightable, no longer copyrightable knowledge and  in-
formation, when a private company wants to reserve to itself the right to a  
com-
mercial form of database on the same subject--which it can/may make  available
to its customers for a fee.
 
The article contains the example of the National Weather Service's weather  
re-
ports, warnings and advisories, freely available to the public, news media  
and
the business world. I recall a private weather forecasting information  
service
which used the government's information and provided it to its fee-paying  
cus-
tomers and trying to prevent the government from making it available to  the
public except through the private service.
 
"The moon belongs to everyone, the best things in life are free..."  However, 
if
you want to go to the moon, there's NASA and the slight matter of  cost.
 
 
Burke H. Webb
 
_BHW/bps/07/09/2005 at 10:28pmEDT_ (mailto:BHW/bps/07/09/2005 at 10:28pmEDT) 
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