Note that still wouldn't get you beyond the 'system magic' of "...any method
now known or later developed, and from which the work can be perceived,
reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a
machine or device".
If you stop and think about it some number of
compression schemes treat compressed data as one big number and they fall prey
to the definition of copies. That would include algorithmic compression where
you essentially write a program that re-creates the original work without the
identity confusion of say word documents.
I think you'd have better luck with
dynamic memory, where the data is read back and written again to boost
capacitive charge insuring separation of zero and one thresholds. Something
that fades away if it isn't constantly 'repainted' seems not to qualify. The
'fix' is in in this case too:
A work is “fixed” in a tangible
medium of expression when its embodiment in a copy or phonorecord, by or under
the authority of the author, is sufficiently permanent or stable to permit it to
be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated for a period of more than
transitory duration. A work consisting of sounds, images, or both, that are
being transmitted, is “fixed” for purposes of this title if a fixation of the
work is being made simultaneously with its transmission.
.
The
question being whether this is in keeping with what the founding fathers meant
by writings, more in keeping with something written on a chalkboard, or written
in the sand with a stick.
From a short story, imagine if you will data
stored in the transmission delay in interplanetary communications, the receiving
station retransmitting data back to the point of origin, which could in term
retransmit back to the recipient. Dynamic memory, yet nothing more than
transmission, which isn't included as fixation. The perception of the
transmitted information is at best always of transitory duration. No different
than a dynamic RAM.
The future likely holds any number of such dilemmas to
hold up against the definition language attempting to make copyright future
proof. Note that HR 94-1476, the Copyright Act of 1976 and the CONTU Report
make it clear no expansion of copyright was intended, yet that has occurred by
expanding the definition 'Writings' ("To promote the Progress of Science and
useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the
exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries") beyond historical
precedent.
Just as equating the machine code generated from source code
copyright protected as a literary work as a copy, equating the pattern of
magnetic permeability stored on a hard disk surface signaling the original data
requires a hard stretch. It's a semiotic equivalent and not an actual copy of
something fixated by another means. The very idea implies idea-expression
merger.
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