You can have a copyright on a compilation of works that are themselves not copyrightable. For instance, a recipe is not copyrightable, but a collection of recipes is, even without additional commentary.
You can google "compilation copyright", or see http://www.pddoc.com/copyright/compilation.htm for example (second hit). Note that it gives you much more limited protection than a traditional copyright, in that you only have a copyright on the collection, it does not give you a copyright over the parts. However, it sounds like the potential infringement in question is for the entire collection.
Whether or not Fluther could claim a compilation copyright would probably be a matter for lawyers to work out in court, by which I mean, it's an awfully close call. The courts have interpreted the word "creative" fairly liberally, but I could see a court saying that simply passing through the posts of other people with no editorial oversight and collecting them together does not itself meet a standard for creativity. Who knows, though? The list of things courts have judged to not meet the creativity criterion is quite short.
That might be Fluther's best claim. But it hardly seems Fluther is adding much originality (via "selection, coordination, or arrangement") in the raw log of questions. (Perhaps, in the editing and rating of answers -- but Mahalo isn't taking the answers.)
And Fluther's very complaint against Mahalo -- the removal of Fluther's full context -- suggests Mahalo isn't infringing the aspects showing originality at all.
Comments
You can have a copyright on a compilation of works that are themselves not copyrightable. For instance, a recipe is not copyrightable, but a collection of recipes is, even without additional commentary.
You can google "compilation copyright", or see http://www.pddoc.com/copyright/compilation.htm for example (second hit). Note that it gives you much more limited protection than a traditional copyright, in that you only have a copyright on the collection, it does not give you a copyright over the parts. However, it sounds like the potential infringement in question is for the entire collection.
Whether or not Fluther could claim a compilation copyright would probably be a matter for lawyers to work out in court, by which I mean, it's an awfully close call. The courts have interpreted the word "creative" fairly liberally, but I could see a court saying that simply passing through the posts of other people with no editorial oversight and collecting them together does not itself meet a standard for creativity. Who knows, though? The list of things courts have judged to not meet the creativity criterion is quite short.
That might be Fluther's best claim. But it hardly seems Fluther is adding much originality (via "selection, coordination, or arrangement") in the raw log of questions. (Perhaps, in the editing and rating of answers -- but Mahalo isn't taking the answers.)
And Fluther's very complaint against Mahalo -- the removal of Fluther's full context -- suggests Mahalo isn't infringing the aspects showing originality at all.