From: Joseph Esposito <[log in to unmask]> Date: Wed, 13 Jun 2012 23:38:44 -0400 People interested in this topic may wish to see the article by Matthew Sag on "nonexpressive" rights, that is, rights for machine reading that is not protected by copyright: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1257086 I see this paper cited all the time. My non-legal understanding is that copyright only protects things that humans can read. Things that machines can read are exempted. The implication of this (if I understand Sag properly) is that data-mining does not require the permission of copyright holders. When I first heard this argument, I imagined a situation where someone grabbed someone else by the throat and strangled him. The actor was tried for murder. But in a subsequent case, someone programmed a computer to fire a gun, which in turn killed someone. the machine got off scot-free. These are dark times for the creative class. Joe Esposito