Re: Copyright in Arrangement (Was: Re: Academics and coursepacks)

On Tue, 21 Jul 1998, Dan L. Burk <burkdanl[_at_]shu.edu> wrote:
>
> In the case of the Qumran fragments, the number of possible combinations
> is potentially quite large, but not unconstrained -- the arrangement
> must make some type of sense, the scribal hands must match, the PCR
> signatures of the animal DNA (in the case of the vellum fragments) must
> match, and so on. In the case of known scriptural works, the selection
> in most cases is also guided by existing versions of the works.

Your point on the constraints (textual, style, and others) that greatly reduce the number of possible combinations is well taken. I think that I was a bit unfair in not revealing what the 4 pieces contain. What these pieces contain (they could be 4 frames from a comic strip, 4 pieces of a woodcut picture, 4 sonnets, 4 incomplete songs) contain will probably determine the number of possible combinations (4 frames of a comic strip can not be ordered more than one way while 4 incomplete songs could be ordered in 24 different ways) and thus, as the number approaches 1, the opportunity for the person to copyright his own arrangement of the pieces becomes nil.

Joseph Pietro Riolo
<riolo[_at_]voicenet.com> Received on Thu Jul 23 1998 - 00:20:53 GMT