[mythtv-users] weather.com Terms of Use

[Eric Sharkey]

On Mon, Jun 28, 2010 at 8:08 AM, Raymond Wagner <raymond at wagnerrp.com> wrote:
> On 6/28/2010 07:26, Robin Gilks wrote:
>>
>> Seeing the maps etc from weather.com being dropped from trunk and
>> 0.23-fixes makes me wonder how people are reading the Terms of Use.
>>
>> The current interpretation seems to be that nobody is allowed to write a
>> web browser because it would cause the data from weather.com to be
>> downloaded and displayed - just like MythWeather does in fact.
>>
>> What am I missing here - the data is NOT being republished, distributed,
>> or anything else apart for my own eyes. All the pages (in fact even the
>> images from the maps) have attributes on them so what is the problem?
>>
>
> Straight from the ticket related to the closing
>
> "You may not modify, publish, transmit, display, participate in the transfer
> or sale, create derivative works, or in any way exploit, any of the content,
> in whole or in part."
>
> MythWeather considers itself a derivative work.

That's quite a stretch.  MythWeather is derivative of the content
format, not the content, and the terms of use are specifically about
the content, not the format.  You might argue that MythWeather is a
program which can create a derivative work, but copyright law does not
permit the copyright holder to prevent the creation of derivative
works.  (It does permit preventing the distribution/public display of
such works.)

I agree with Robin.  This interpretation is overly conservative.

Eric