On Sun, Dec 04, 2005 at 11:30:17AM -0800, Sean Kellogg wrote: > On Sunday 04 December 2005 09:38 am, Francesco Poli wrote: > > If I understand correctly what you mean, you are talking about > > statistics automatically generated by a specific program that counts > > words in the document, or something similar. > > > > If this is the case, I would say there's no creativity in the statistics > > generation process. > > Probably no creative expression from the original document ends up in > > the statitics, either. > > Then, the statistics are not eligible for copyright protection, that is > > to say, they are not copyrighted. > > Yes, that's right on. The final document that will be produced (as described > at least) is not a copy of the original and is not a derivative since it does > not involve an act of authorship. Unless the statistics contain enough information to reconstruct the original document verbatim, in which case it almost certainly qualifies as a derivative (or literal copying, depending on jurisdiction) since it's simple transformation... corner case, but it's there. From the context... unlikely but maybe. It's definitely fair use though, if your country has such a thing. Mine doesn't (nobody is sure what this means in practical terms, ambiguity abounds). -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- |
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