On Thu, Aug 15, 2002 at 01:53:47PM -0600, Richard Stallman wrote: > I think word lists are copyrightable. The selection is a matter of > choice, not simple fact. Is this a position statement of the FSF, at least if one reads the "are" as "should be"? I am curious because traditionally, copyright has been grounded on the degree of originality in a work, not the quantity of labor that went into producing it. Also, in the case of word lists, it may be especially difficult to discern an independent creation from a modified work that has been stripped of its original copyright notice. The more general-purpose the word list -- as is frequently the case with spell-checking applications -- the more challenging this process of discernment becomes. It is similarly nonsensical to assert copyright over simple musical constructs, such as arpeggiated triads, 12-bar blues and other chord progressions in one key using only the tonic, subdominant, and dominant scale degrees. (There is a finite and small number of ways to juxtapose three chords without repeating them.) -- G. Branden Robinson | Reality is what refuses to go away Debian GNU/Linux | when I stop believing in it. branden@debian.org | -- Philip K. Dick http://people.debian.org/~branden/ |
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