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On 3/30/06 6:48 PM, "Frank Reed"  wrote:

> Ken, you wrote:
> "You are partly right about  the copyright issue.  Even though, as you say, no
> one owns the position  of Mars, the British claim copyright to whatever data
> they  collect."
>
> That's ok, but they are not responsible for collecting more  than a trivial
> amount of data underlying the present Nautical Almanac, and there  is
> long-standing precedent for relinquishing copyright to that portion of the
> data that
> the UK did collect. The whole content of the Nautical Almanac can be
> re-generated from scratch in no time.
>
> And:
> "They even extended this  thinking recently to tidal data in
> British ports.  Since they collected  the data, they have stopped several
> tidal prediction programs from being sold  without paying a royalty for the
> British part."
>
> Yes, and that ruling  also applies to international ports where the data has
> been collected by British  authorities. In this case, they have a point. I
> certainly wish they would make  it available for free, but of course,
> collecting
> this tidal data was expensive  and it is primarily relevant to commercial
> users. This is a product, and there's  no strong reason to give it up for
> free.
>
> And:
> "A case over  international copyright of data might go either way."
>
> But not ephemeris  data. No way. There is no rational court in the world that
> would award copyright  over the positions of the stars and planets to any
> authority in the UK. Indeed,  the very fact that this information is presently
> available, and has been  available for decades, in numerous products and in
> numerous online databases  *without* contest by any authority claiming
> copyright
> guarantees that there is  no legal case for copyright of the data in the
> Nautical  Almanac.
>
> And:
> "However, the British also claim copyright over the page  layout of the
> almanac which is a creative issue. Most everyone agrees that that  claim is
> proper."
>
> It is a proper "claim", yes. Even that could be argued  over since most of
> the layout was published in the American Nautical Almanac  *before* it was
> adopted for the common Nautical Almanac. This is the sort of  thing that could
> go
> either way in court. But we don't have to argue it in court  since the
> layout's
> not terrificly important in any case. The specific layout of  the Nautical
> Almanac is hardly sacrosanct, and it would be easy to devise  layouts that are
> functionally equivalent or even considerably superior. There  are many
> navigation enthusiasts, for example, who might be happier if the daily  pages
> were not
> cluttered with tables of twilight, sunrise/set, and moonrise/set  (wouldn't
> that be a nice spot for some lunar distance tables...). Of  course, for
> some
> navigators, even the tiniest change in the Sacred Almanac  Layout adopted in
> 1958 would be an abomination against the Ephemeral Gods  themselves and there
> might be rioting the streets! But I think not.  
>
> -FER
> 42.0N 87.7W, or 41.4N  72.1W.
> www.HistoricalAtlas.com/lunars
>
Frank,

Great comments, and some that I will earmark in case some sort of litigation
looms in the future as far as the data is concerned. The layout, however, is
a self perpetuating situation.  All of the navigation textbooks show a
sample page of the almanac, and discuss how to read it.  If one had a
different almanac page, such as Reeds' used to be, it would be hard to
follow the textbook.

Ken

   

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