[tz] AP Article: Time zone database has new home after lawsuit

Jonathan Leffler jonathan.leffler at gmail.com
Mon Oct 17 00:48:05 UTC 2011


The URL I got was:

http://my.earthlink.net/article/tec?guid=20111016/ec375dde-65b5-4564-abce-48ed9d9ba258


Time zone database has new home after lawsuit

 ANICK JESDANUN
>From Associated Press
October 16, 2011 7:35 PM EDT

NEW YORK (AP) — The organization in charge of the Internet's address system
is taking over a database widely used by computers and websites to keep
track of time zones around the world.

The transition to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers,
or ICANN, comes a week after the database was abruptly removed from a U.S.
government server because of a federal lawsuit claiming copyright
infringement.

[...]

ICANN accelerated those discussions and took over management Friday after
the database was removed from NIH's server on Oct. 6, following a lawsuit
over historical data used.

Astrology software company Astrolabe Inc. argues that Olson and another
volunteer at University of California, Los Angeles should have paid
royalties for including data from its software. The defendants have insisted
that the data are in the public domain and not subject to copyright. Their
employers were not named as defendants.

The federal lawsuit, filed Sept. 30 in Boston, does not affect current time
zone information, which comes from tips sent by volunteers through an email
list.

However, ICANN is keeping the historical information in the database.

"We are aware of the lawsuit," Davies said. "We believe it's important to
continue the operation of the database. We'll deal with any legal matters as
they arise."

___

Time zone database: http://www.iana.org/time-zones



-- 
Jonathan Leffler <jonathan.leffler at gmail.com>  #include <disclaimer.h>
Guardian of DBD::Informix - v2011.0612 - http://dbi.perl.org
"Blessed are we who can laugh at ourselves, for we shall never cease to be
amused."
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