Student Projects:Database Protection:Introduction
Contents
intro of intro (collaborative -- everyone pitch in)
In recent years, a good deal of concern has arisen regarding the right of entities that own databases to control how those databases are used. Many believe that databases require more protection that is given by existing copyright law. Without additional protection, assert proponents of database protection, companies are discouraged from investing in the creation of databases because the fruits of their efforts could be stolen by any number of parties. Several countries have recently adopted or considered legislation designed to protect the rights of database owners.
Database owners and their competitors, however, are not the only parties concerned with this kind of legislation. Groups that are not direct competitors of the database owners, rely on access to data from many different sources. Additional protection may make their tasks more difficult or even impossible.
David's stuff here
(Damon's stuff)
In 1996 the European Union enacted a major Directive to bolster the rights of database owners. Not only does the Directive explicitly extend copyright protection to databases, but it also creates a new type of sui generis right for database owners. The Directive has drawn a great deal of criticism from groups who fear its unintended effects on scientists, libraries, and other groups. We examine the track record of the Directive in EU courts, and the first official efforts to evaluate the Directive's effects, and provide some hope for groups concerned about the Directive's direct or indirect effects on their ability to make use of data.
(Don's stuff)
Next we aim to explore the clinical researchers’ views on statutory database protection in the form of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Acts’ Privacy Rule, HIPAA. Our goal is to reconcile the researchers’ generally negative views on the subject with the costs and benefits of HIPAA implementation as he perceives them.
Elijah's and Charistel's stuff here
summary of intro (collaborative -- everyone pitch in)
These types of database protection are in their infancy, and so there are a great variety of approaches to the problem, all of them largely untried and therefore, in a sense, equally valid. We make a comparison between these different approaches, evaluate their effects to date, and show that all such approaches carry inherent impediments to scientific research.
