Re: Copyright & The New World Economic Order

On Fri, 23 Jul 1999, Nick Zales <zales[_at_]execpc.com> wrote:
>
> Greetings copyright gurus. This is interesting. In response to a
> question on the seeming hypocrisy of the death penalty coexisting with
> the 1st Commandment, I wrote:
>
> > That's an easy one. "Thou shalt not kill" refers to murder, not
> > to a justified killing of an evil person as a punishment.
>
> Later, S. Martin Keleti <keleti[_at_]manifesto.com> wrote:
>
> > The commandment rendered into English from Hebrew as "Thou shalt
> > not kill" is better translated "Thou shalt not murder."
>
> So, did he violate my copyright? It's not that easy to say yes or
> no, or is it?
>
> To be clear, this is purely an intellectual exercise. I think it shows
> just how difficult it is to determine something as being "original" when
> the group of words available to describe something is so limited.

If you mean copyright in the expression "Thou shall not kill" -- you'd have a tough job convincing a jury that you had copyright in those words. No copyright, no locus = no case. The requirement that a "literary work" be more than a few words strung together, acts a an automatic brake on any claims. That said, maybe "Supercalifragalisticexpialidocious" could claim to quality as a literary work,by virtue of sheer length...

CS

"Galvanising Ideas"

Colin Seeger, Consultant, Management of Intellectual Property. P.O Box 3227, Tamarama, Sydney, Australia 2026 Tel: (61) (02) 9365 1186, Fax (61) (02) 9365 1286 <seeger[_at_]ozemail.com.au> Received on Wed Jul 28 1999 - 14:03:27 GMT