Some of you may recall my post “Blog Lists – Content Theft and Copyright Infringement.” In that post I spoke of how Lorelle VanFossen recently had her list copied and I cited an informative article by Lorelle entitled “I love your list! I’m going to copy it,” which takes a look at bloggers copying lists from other bloggers.

One blogger has pointed out that I did not check my facts and they state that lists are not copyright protected. They refer to copyright.gov pointing out the section of the website that reads:

“What Is Not Protected by Copyright? … Works consisting entirely of information that is common property and containing no original authorship (for example: standard calendars, height and weight charts, tape measures and rulers, and lists or tables taken from public documents or other common sources).”

Lorelle VanFossen had this to say about that:

“Lists within articles are not covered by this because they are 1) Not ingredients, 2) not a table of contents or list of contents, and 3) not from public documents. The lists are from articles which are covered by their own copyright policy. Copyrighted documents are not “public,” according to lawyers I’ve discussed this with in the past.

The lists discussed here refer to government documents that say X numbers of people murdered across X states – that kind of thing. Those are public documents.

The key part is “consisting entirely of information that is common property and containing no original authorship”.

My content is copyrighted, I’m the original author, and my content is not common property.”

I think that pretty much sums things up. A  set of links arranged into a compilation, is protected by copyright.

Any thoughts?

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