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| Authored by: albert on Sunday, July 07 2013 @ 08:46 AM EDT |
"...So you cannot copyright written or spoken expression that communicates
your beliefs..."
This is incorrect. You can copyright the expression. The law says:
"...In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship
EXTEND TO any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept,
principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described,
explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work..."
It's the idea, etc. that can't be copyrighted. It makes sense for copyrights. I
just wish they applied this to patents as well.
Titles of songs, novels, articles, etc. cannot be copyrighted. Same for chapter
headings. Short phrases cannot be copyrighted.
I use song lyrics as an example, since they usually consist of common words, and
a relatively small number of them. It is the particular arrangement of those
words that is copyrighted.
With software, the vocabulary is extremely limited. Even if you had several
thousand instructions, this is nothing compared to English (~500,000 words,
IIRC).
Because software instructions tell the CPU what to do, they are functional.
There is no creativity involved. I can write code to accomplish a certain task,
but that task is a procedure, and in many cases, there are no alternative ways
to code it. Enforcing copyright on such code amounts to monopolizing that task.
This is not allowed.
FMs statement you quoted is total fantasy, but it does show some creativity :)
Did he get that from Oracle?
Perhaps he needs to try writing fiction....he has a talent for it!
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