RE: This sentence is uncopyrightable (period).

"Short phrases" are not copyrightable--litigations are few, but the copyright office regs spell this out pretty well. Groups of sentences (a paragraph) in most cases will be, but they will be protected only from the most slavish copying, and will have a hard time getting over the idea/expression dichotomy. This same doctrine precludes copyright protection in, for example, the theory of relativity. In other words, the function of a particular algorithm is not protected, and if there's only a limited number of ways to express that function, then the copyright law does not apply to those expressions. (Patent's a different story).

The other portions of your questions really are interesting in a logician's sort of way, but cannot be answered in a vacuum. Even assuming that anyone would bother to register a sentence, your concerns over infringement glosses over the legal requirements of proof of access and copying, which you as plaintiff must carry. It would be pretty hard (in fact, nearly impossible) for you to show (a) that defendant had access to your email; and (b) that he copied a sentence verbatim without coming up with it himself; and (c) even if (a) and (b), that the merger doctrine would not apply, and even if (a) and (b) and not (c), that the use was unfair. By this time, you're going to have to pay the other side's lawyers and costs when you lose, and you're probably in sanctions territory.

Courts decide cases, not proofs. That's like me saying "All Americans read English. Ted cannot read English. Therefore, Ted is not American." Although logically correct, it has no bearing on reality. In some circumstances, you could perform the operations you suggest; in others, you could not.

Cheers
Chris

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-cni-copyright[_at_]cni.org [mailto:owner-cni-copyright[_at_]cni.org] On Behalf Of David Dailey
Sent: Wednesday, October 23, 2002 4:10 PM To: Multiple recipients of list
Subject: This sentence is uncopyrightable (period).

Last week in a class on programming, I scribbled the following sentence into a web form I was demonstrating:

        (1)"This sentence is uncopyrightable."

It made me wonder if the sentence I typed was true or if I now owned yet

one more copyright, or worse, if I had infringed on someone else. A search
of that literal string on various search engines revealed no prior occurrences on the web, though it seems like the sort of thing that if Bertrand Russell didn't write it then Douglass Hofstadter would have. It

was just a matter of time.

It gives rise to my main question:

[A] What is the shortest expression (in bits) for which a court has
upheld
a copyright?

Other questions, of course, emerge.

[B] Let alpha refer to a copyrighted expression. May I publish an
algorithm
A and a string beta, for which A applied to beta yields alpha? Would I be
guilty of contributory infringement or even primary infringment?

We might be tempted to answer 'yes' since we might assume that I copied alpha in creating beta. But, on the other hand, I may produce beta through
mental arithmetic:

        uif tnbmmftu dpqzsjhiubcmf fyqsfttjpo <= the smallest copyrightable
expression

The string at left was derived by adding 1 (mod 26) to each letter in the
expression at right, and there is no reason that a physical copy of the original would have been created.

Here's an argument that I should not be guilty in the scenario raised in

question [B]:

        (2)"the smallest copyrighted phrase"

Statement (2) presumably defines a referent: a phrase that the legal system
has defined or, in theory, can define. While there might be two or more such expressions (which have the same number of bits of information), this
seems unlikely since the phrase would have to be fairly lengthy it has to
be more than 24 bits, else individual colors in RGB space are copyrighted.
The definition in (2), however, when combined with the proper process of

legal scholarship (historical and hypothetical) will yield precisely that
phrase. Since sentence (2) is a string of 31 ASCII characters (counting blanks), then the smallest copyrighted phrase must have fewer than 31 characters, else we could replace it by (2) yielding a smaller copyrighted
expression.

        (3) "the smallest copyrightable phrase"

If the referent of sentence (3) can be found, then that phrase either already exists, or by the axiom of choice, it comes into existence at the
moment it is found. In either case, the referent of (3) is copyrighted and
hence (3) is equivalent to (2) which is all very pleasant since (2) has

fewer characters than (3).

        (4) The 3044-th through 3047-th sentences in James Joyce's Ulysses.

Here I have alluded to a process or algorithm by which that particular (copyrighted?) expression might be excerpted: namely enumerate the sentences in the book and find those referred to.

In both of these examples (2) and (4) however, we assume that the reader of
my description has ready access to the body of literature upon which the

algorithm operates. Therefore, though (4) defines those sentences of Joyce,
it does not infringe upon them since no actual copy is made.

A better statement of question [B] is therefore:

[C] Let alpha refer to a copyrighted expression. Assume there is an
algorithm A and a string beta for which A(beta) = alpha. Assume that A-inverse (the process of constructing beta) requires access to alpha. Also
assume that the process of applying A does not require access to any string
zeta of which alpha is a substring? Would one then be guilty of infringement (contributory or primary) for publishing beta and A?

Question [C] surmounts the above complaints about the phrasing of question
[B] that required the would-be illegitimate reader of alpha to have
access
to the original work alpha or a container thereof.

In order to declare the phrase "the smallest copyrighted phrase" illegal

then, one would need to show, first, that the expression it refers to can
be reconstructed without legal reference to a body of literature that contains the phrase; and, second, that the encoder who wrote this cryptic
way of alluding to it did.

[D] Is this the way the law works? It seems as though the provisions
within
DMCA on removing copyright protection assume that the author of alpha has
used A-inverse to produce beta from alpha, thence protecting beta, rather
than the reverse: using A and beta to decrypt the unenciphered-but-copyrighted alpha.

Copyrights are "inheritable" in the following sense. If alpha is copyrighted then any string which contains it as a substring is also copyrighted. Thus strings inherit the copyright of substrings. Hence, there
is no limit to the length of a copyrighted work since one may simply append
k copies of the letter 'a' to the work and produce a longer, copyrighted work.

[E] Are there inheritably uncopyrightable strings? Namely is there any
utterance the occurrence of which in a document renders the entire document
uncopyrightable?

While there might be a smallest copyrightable expression, there is no largest uncopyrightable expression.

        S(4)1 "This sentence is uncopyrightable." is in the public domain.

We may then define S(4)n recursively as follows:

        S(4)n = "S(4)n-1" is in the public domain.

We have thusly enriched the public domain with infinitely many new utterances much to the pleasure of Eldred and supporters, provided only,
that we may find infinitely many ways to nest quotation marks:

        S(4)2 " 'This sentence is uncopyrightable.' is in the public domain." is
in the public domain.

[F] Are there short phrases rendered illegal by copyright law?

        (5) This sentence is c*********d.

I have blanked out the letters 'opyrighte' in sentence (5), since the sentence, if typed, makes a claim about its own copyright status. This claim is likely false since it is probably too short to qualify. Section

506 specifies that making a false claim of copyright is illegal. Hence, I
must avoid the temptation to fill in the blanks.

Now back to (1):

        (1)"This sentence is uncopyrightable."

If this sentence is true, then it is not illegal, it is merely a fact in

the public domain. If on the other hand, it is false, then it is copyrightable and hence (since it is expressed in a tangible medium), copyrighted. By virtue of its own claim that it is not copyrighted, when in
fact it is, it may be contributing to the creation of illegal copies of itself and may therefore be illegal through contributing to infringement of
a copyrighted work. Section 506 seems not to punish works that falsely claim no copyright, only those which have overtly removed or altered copyright marks; so I'm probably safe, unless someone else wrote it earlier but then, they should have known better, and so any infringement
of mine (other than contributory) is innocent.

Notes:
(a) "Uncopyrightable," by the way, shares the distinction with "dermatoglyphics" as having 15 letters, all of which are distinct, as confirmed by askoxford.com
"http://www.askoxford.com/asktheexperts/faq/aboutwords/"

(b) The continuing controversy surrounding ownership of Joyce's work may be
tracked a bit at
http://digital.library.upenn.edu/books/bplist/archive/2000-01-20$1.html.

For another analysis, see
http://www.sru.edu/depts/cisba/compsci/dailey/copyright/joyce.htm where a
hypothetical argument (stemming from the late 1980's) for how to reverse

engineer Joyce's work is offered.

C I began, as my last footnote, to ponder whether this analysis is copyrighted -- or might it be the natural outcome of the application of

the ideas of people like Kurt Godel to copyright law and hence a fact? Or
might it contain one of those nasty inheritably uncopyrightable strings?

But when I went to type the letter 'c' inside parentheses (like notes a and
b above), my word-processor (MS Word) automatically turned my keystrokes

into the copyright symbol. It really did! I knew word-processors were getting smarter, but this was a truly impressive work of artificial legal
advice! So, who am I to argue? Received on Thu Oct 24 2002 - 15:00:39 GMT