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From: macrakis@harvard.UUCP (Stavros Macrakis)
Newsgroups: net.legal
Subject: Re: does copyright cover public domain software? (long)
Message-ID: <607@harvard.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 13-Jan-86 20:05:45 EST
Article-I.D.: harvard.607
Posted: Mon Jan 13 20:05:45 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 15-Jan-86 01:13:48 EST
References: <775@lasspvax.UUCP> <609@ttidcb> <668@cylixd>
Organization: Aiken Comp. Lab., Harvard
Lines: 66
Summary: Copyright covers more than text.

I'm afraid that a rather over-simplified notion of copyright
protection is going around:

> >>... my own version of a best-selling program that looks and
> >>acts exactly as the original...
> >I'd almost guarantee that you would be.  When you get to court, you...
> I agree, you probably would be. But that ain't the way the system is
> supposed to work. A "copyright" is the right to control what copies
> [are made] of a sequence of words, a picture, or a sequence of bits...
> 
> Copying words IS SUPPOSED TO BE DIFFERENT than copying *ideas*,
> including the idea of what a computer program *does* ....

This is not true.  Copyright covers much more than the `bits'.  For
instance, copyright covers the essential plot elements of a story and
the characters in a story.  If you tried to put together a comic book
character called, say, Ultraman, who came from a distant planet, grew
up in a small town, had super-human powers, took on a secret identity
as a reporter, and was weakened by minerals from his home planet--in
other words, was a recognizable imitation of Superman--the copyright
owner could sue to protect its character under copyright laws.

Similarly, if you took a best-selling novel and rewrote it top to
bottom but with the same characteristic and identifiable sequence of
events, you would be violating copyright.

Even mathematical tables can be copyrighted.  Of course, it is very
hard to prove that tables have been copied (rather than being
generated independently), but it can be done by, for instance,
misrounding.  A similar technique is used for detecting illicit copies
of mailing lists--spurious addresses are added.  (After all, the
individual addresses surely can't be copyrighted, just the
collection.)

> the Patent Office ... regulate[s] and restrict[s] the flow of ideas,
> and that many many qualifications will be needed before such a
> restriction can be granted unto [unto??] you.

Far from regulating the flow of ideas, patents require their
publication.  It is their instantiation in operating devices that is
protected.

> [By my definition, any *picture on a terminal screen* is fair game
> for copyrighting. Don't know that anyone's tried it yet...] 

This has been done, actually.  In fact, I believe the first court case
trying to protect a video game depended on copyrighting what came up
on the screen.  Counter-argument: each time you play it's different.
Answer: even if that is a convincing argument (analogy with the case
of Superman shows that won't wash), the attract mode display is the
same each time.

The upshot of all of this is that copyright protects much more than
the sequence of bytes, and that indeed it protects a substantial
amount of what could be called the `ideas' embodied in a text.  Note,
too, that there are other kinds of protection beside copyright for
imitating another program.  Just as you don't need to trademark your
(distinctive) grocery store name (say, Flying Bread Company) to
protect yourself from a competitor opening a store with the same name
across the street, you have some protection even without
copyright/patent/trademark.  I believe this is called `unfair
competition' under various state laws.

Note that all of this is simplified and that I am not a lawyer.

	-s