On the other hand, if you license the same book, for example, by downloading the text online under a click-wrap license, and if the publisher includes a restriction in the license, you can be prohibited from transferring the text to others. Because database publishers do not want this transfer to occur, they license the database to you instead of selling a copy to you. That's the legal story. The practical reason for licensing digital information is that regardless of the vendor's rights against the world, vendors want specific rights against you if you decide to share the software, digital book or database with your thousand closest friends over the Internet. In other words, while the dead tree booksellers are secure in the knowledge that most of us are too cheap and lazy to invest the time and money required to copy their books onto more dead trees, digital publishers are keenly aware that their rights can be defiled with the click of a mouse.
Publishers find little help there.
But more recently the answer proposed in the international community is a new form of protection for databases that while not copyright is akin to copyright. This begins to get closer to protecting sweat of the brow. The EU Directive went into effect Jan. 1, 1998. Countries that do not adopt similar protection measures may expect shabby treatment in Europe for their works distributed there. Too bad the treaty was withdrawn after being presented.