taneous access to the database. Similarly, a firm’s license to a labor law database may only need to be accessed by a handful of lawyers at any one time.
Downloading
When you download a piece of information, a copy is being made. Copying the results of a database search onto a hard drive or saving a PDF copy of an article are good examples. Copyright principles, including fair use, apply, so you will want to answer the following questions: Is the work being used for private study, scholarship, or research? Is the use for a commercial or a non-profit educational purpose? Is the use transformative? Is the information factual or creative? How much is being downloaded? Will the copying significantly affect the market for the original work? And, of course, what does the license say?
We sense you are not satisfied, so here are some guidelines. The more transformative your use, the more likely it is to be fair. Downloading a work and then copying and distributing it without any changes would be frowned upon. Even worse would be selling the copies for profit. On the other hand, if you download some works and then recompile them, deleting material that is not relevant to the end user, reorganizing the material for easier use, and adding your own original comments, then that use would be more favored.
Downloading works that are freely available online or available through licensed databases and keeping copies until your need for them has ended is better than keeping copies permanently. If the work comes with a license that prohibits even temporary retention of copies, you may be stuck, so don’t agree to such terms.
Database Protection (Redux)
We know that some information—facts and works of the U.S. government, for example—are not protected by copyright. However, databases of federal governmental works and other works in the public domain, such as facts, might receive protection as compilations.
