From: kragen@pobox.com
Date: Tue Jan 23 2001 - 22:41:44 PST
"Stephen D. Williams" <sdw@lig.net> writes:
> Lexis-Nexis was indexing tons of things from multiple 'databases' for
> years. I worked there from 1991-1994. Of course we, as developers,
> were unable to drag them into the Internet world. They could have been
> THE search engine: In 1991 they were indexing 3+ terabytes of data nightly.
An interesting scenario.
Lexis-Nexis's work is not useful for prior art invalidating
AltaVista's patents, though, as (a) they weren't spidering anything
and (b) they didn't publish.
They're also on the side of the demons with regard to sui generis
database rights, although maybe with the DMCA, those aren't such a big
deal any more --- copyright as enforced in the ways Gilmore describes
could be almost as bad.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Jan 24 2001 - 04:55:36 PST