Copyright and Time Zones

The Economist: FOR years millions of the world's computers co-ordinated time-zone differences by pointing to a not-for-profit database run by an American university professor and a government researcher. But on October 6th (at exactly 15:16:02 GMT) it was shut down, following a lawsuit claiming that the database infringed copyright. The "tz database" was used by computers running Unix, Linux, Java, Oracle, as well as some web services, to determine the correct time for a given location. It not only established current time-zone differences but historical ones, too. (Such as when Britain adopted "double summer time" during the second world war so factory lines would run longer.) Keeping the database up to date meant between 20 and 100 modifications per year, estimates Stephen Colebourne, a Java developer in London, in a blog post. The data would be published as a set of files about 15 times a year.