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Abstract: Laws restricting the use of data compilations raise complex and contentious social policy issues. Some claim that without additional legal protection against appropriation, would-be compilers will lack incentive to undertake the time consuming and expensive task of assembling socially useful factual compilations. Others argue, in contrast, that these compilations will continue to be produced in the absence of additional legal protection, and that any significant further restriction on the free use of such data will give database producers a dangerous, and unnecessary, monopoly over information. In addition, some of those who oppose database protection insist that such regulation is not only bad policy, but a violation of the First Amendment. I do not know enough about either intellectual property or economics to have an informed view as to the general social policy implications of database protection. I will therefore focus exclusively on the First Amendment issues raised by various proposals to protect factual compilations from unauthorized use or copying.
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