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Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, May 04 2012 @ 09:41 AM EDT |
"However, if the SSO already exists as a fact, any expression of that fact
is not protectable. Classification of the Beatles performance as Pop/Rock/ is a
choice of the author and may be sufficiently creative to be protectable."
With all due respect I disagree.
The objective of the classification is not to entertain, nor to inform - its is
to enable navigation.
I offer this contrasting anecdote:
Jim spends his entire adult life collecting stamps and publishes the definitive
work classifying every stamp ever made. country/class/design.
That's copyrightable because the work is there to entertain and inform other
philatelists.
Now if Jim makes a website of all his stamps, and arranges them in the same
heirarchy so that other philatelists can quickly and easily use it as a
reference, then I would argue that the purpose is for navigation and that other
stamp collectors, if they want to put their collections on a website too, should
be free to use the same SSO. This is *not* the same as scarfing Jim's JPGs or
narrative (which are portectable).
But it *is* the only way to advance society's interest in stamp collecting as it
permits widespread adoption of Jim's SSO so that other resources can become
compatible and thus federated so enabling further cultural development.
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Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, May 04 2012 @ 09:50 AM EDT |
"So, sometimes the SSO is a function of fact and sometimes it is creative
expression depending on what was put in place first during the API
development"
Agree. But in my experience the discipline of classifying information is rather
systematic. The taxonomy example is a good one?
I don't think it took creativity as such to realise that some animals have
backbones, some not, some have fins, some not etc to figure out that a trout and
goldfish are more similar than a trout and a rat.
I do think the creation of taxonomies "SSO"s if you will, is clever
and needs educated, trained people to do it properly but no more so than it
takes educated, trained people to figure out how to paint a bridge.
But lets not confuse the painting of a bridge with the painting of the Mona
Lisa. Only one of these is "creative".
The planning and execution of the bridge building might be creative "Hey
how do we paint that bit? In winter? With traffic moving" but the end
product is not a creative expression. Well, unless you paint the bridge with
zebra stripes.
Hey now theres an idea...
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