Re: This sentence is uncopyrightable (period).

On Tue, 2002-10-29 at 08:53, Keith Tabor wrote:
> The only way to challenge a persons claim to copyright is to
> take the matter to court.

But there is little need to make such a challenge -- simply don't copy code without permission. With patents, one can infringe without any copying or even knowledge of the original.

> PS: If patetns were allowed on several of those ways
> to write 1+1=2 in the early days of programming they
> would have expired by now. If they were protected by
> copyright law they would still be protected for at
> least 50 more years. Not that I would think those
> should be valid, but there is quicker recovery from
> our mistakes in patent law than there is in copyright
> law.

True, the copyrights would be valid for 50 years, but copyright doesn't prevent independent reinvention. This independant reinvention is quite common in the CS field -- look at ClearType, count sort, or LZW for examples. Additionally, copyright has better support for interoperability than patents.  

> --- Mikus Grinbergs <mikus[_at_]bga.com> wrote:
> > On Sat, 26 Oct 2002 03:40:30 -0400 (EDT) Gregory
> > Aharonian <srctran[_at_]world.std.com> wrote:
> > > >I only made it about half way through your post
> > when it struck me
> > > >that you are analyzing the law with mathematical
> > logic. They
> > > >are not very related.
> > >
> > > Which is why the US wasted thirty years from the
> > 1970s to the 1990s
> > > watching lawyers and judge flop around like fishes
> > on a beach trying
> > > to (unsuccessfully) make sense of software
> > copyright. Had they spent
> > > more time paying attention to mathematics and
> > logic, we would have
> > > gotten much more quickly to where software belongs
> > - the patent world.
> >
> > Aside from modes of expression in the "artistic"
> > world (e.g. dance,
> > painting, etc.), it seems to me that (original)
> > software creation
> > involves a __more__ direct transcription of mental
> > IDEAS than most
> > anything else I can think of.
> >
> > As a practicing software developer, I feel that a
> > PRODUCT which
> > involves software (e.g., a better alarm clock) might
> > be patentable,
> > but __never__ software itself. To me, the IDEAS
> > behind software
> > are equivalent to the IDEAS behind a mathematical
> > algorithm - and
> > I grew up believing *those* cannot be patented.
> >
> >
> > Mikus Grinbergs <mikus[_at_]bga.com>
> >
> >
> > p.s. While I acknowledge the desire to reap
> > royalties, there are
> > only a finite number of ways to perform '1 + 1
> > = 2' in software.
> > Were *all* those ways to become "Intellectual
> > Property", it
> > would in my opinion raise barriers against
> > independent software
> > development.
> >
>
>
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-Dave Turner                    Stalk Me: 617 441 0668
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