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> > Now I'm no lawyer (my internal clients are), but my understanding of
> > copyright is that you cannot use the information in any form (even to build
> > a database) without permission.
>
> There is no need of any permission. As long as it is for personal or
> non-commercial use.
That's not entirely true. You're less likely to get *caught* if it's for
personal use only, but it's still not always legal. For example, I
remember a large company that was successfully sued by a professional
journal because they had one subscription to the journal which was
routed to different scientists, who would make photocopies of articles
they wanted to keep. It was for personal use (they weren't selling or
even giving the copies to people who didn't have a subscription) but it
was still a copyright violation.
I think the fact that this database will be used by others in the
organization, not just by the person who created it, puts it in a very
bad position in terms of copyright. And I'd expect a bunch of lawyers to
know better ;-) (just kidding... I know they all specialize in different
areas). Get an expert's opinion before you do this.
Tracy
==============================================
Tracy Boyington tracy_boyington -at- okvotech -dot- org
Oklahoma Department of Vocational and Technical Education
Stillwater, OK, USA http://www.okvotech.org/cimc/home.htm
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