Hello, I was wondering if anyone out there knew whether or not the following would be copyright violation: I need to take a large set of numbers (from a copyrighted source), and convert all those numbers to another format (double to integer, and a little math involved). Is it a violation to extract numbers from another set of numbers, which becomes completely different from the original set, and use it for a commercial product? Input appreciated. Thanks!
It depends on what the numbers are. What do the numbers you want to use represent (answers, temperature measurements for a city, sports scores, a random list of numbers...)?
Hi bluegrass, The numbers are time frame information (open, high, low, close) from various brokers. My conversion would be the following: Broker data: 1.0000,1.0000,1.0000,1.0000 1.0001,1.0002,0.9999,1.0001 ... Converted: 1,2,-1,1 Keeps track of the number of ticks moved from one row to the next. Thanks
What you're talking about is generally a derivative work, and can get you into trouble. But in this particular instance ... they've already been reported as news from a number of different sources. I think that would be a lot more difficult to win a lawsuit, compared to, well, publishing a bunch of MP3 files and changing their bit rate. I'm not a lawyer. But as a non-stupid person I don't think you'd be in any realistic trouble.
In this case it is not a derivative work because the original information is not subject to copyright.
But for future reference when looking into this kind of stuff ... it's a good thing to know the concepts and what they're called.