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| Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, April 27 2012 @ 10:05 PM EDT |
I'm not sure I see the disagreement. The possible exception might be code
written to be printed out, framed, and hung on a wall, and even then I'm not so
sure. I think that the framed code should be treated as a literary work (do
people still write perl poetry?) whereas more generally functional code should
not.
I would argue that a faucet that is in the shape of a dragon, for example, is
primarily functional, but also secondarily expressive. A better example (closer
to self-documenting code) would be a faucet in the shape of a waterfall. It's
not quite a perfect example, but the faucet may be covered by copyright as a
sculpture if it's not mass produced (I think - I'm not entirely sure how that
works). But that may be more-or-less analogous to how I think about code on the
wall vs. code to be executed.
So, yes, code can be both functional (primarily) and expressive (secondarily) at
the same time (with the above-noted exception), but I don't think that the
secondary expressivity should qualify it for copyright protection in light of
its functionality.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: Wol on Sunday, April 29 2012 @ 01:15 PM EDT |
Actually, I'd say it's like a mathematical proof.
If I copy Godel's proof from a book, then I need copyright permission. If I work
it out for myself, and happen (as is not unlikely) to come up with the exact
same proof, symbol for symbol, then it's independent creation.
That it may be difficult to tell the difference is down to the fact it's maths,
tough luck on the lawyers...
The more complex the work, the more likely there are to be differences, and the
more likely the software/proofs are likely to be superficially different and
therefore independent creations.
Cheers,
Wol[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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