copyright fair-use online-piracy
Frequency lists derived from copyrighted works
<p>If someone were to publish word frequency lists derived from copyrighted films or books on their website would this constitute fair use, or be a breach of copyright?</p>
<p>The word frequency lists would simply consist of a list of individual, unique words found in the film/book and how many times each word occurs, ordered in terms of frequency.</p>

<p>The frequency of words appearing in a given work is a fact. It is not protected by any copyright on the work. Nor would it be protected by any copyright on an article, essay or other publication reporting such a frequency list. Facts, including this one, are not protected by copyright at all (See <a href="https://copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#102" rel="nofollow noreferrer">17 USC 102(b)</a> for US law on this. Other countries have similar laws). This is no more protected than a statement such as:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>J Random Author published a book last moth entitled <em>Adventures of Authors</em>.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Facts <strong>about</strong> a work are in no way protected by the copyright on the work.
The requirement of originality in a work for copyright to apply in US law was strongly stated in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_Publications,_Inc.,_v._Rural_Telephone_Service_Co." rel="nofollow noreferrer"><em>Feist Publications, Inc., v. Rural Telephone Service Co.</em>, 499 U.S. 340 (1991)</a> (the <em>Feist</em> decision). However the rule that facts are never protected by copyright goes back at least to the 1909 US copyright act, and I think to the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Anne" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Statute of Anne (1710)</a>, the first somewhat modern copyright statute.</p>
