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From: larryl@nvuxr.UUCP (L Lang)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc,comp.sys.mac,comp.sys.apple
Subject: Re: Copyrighting Icons
Message-ID: <585@nvuxr.UUCP>
Date: 12 Apr 88 14:21:12 GMT
References: <24@imspw6.UUCP> <1522@dataio.Data-IO.COM> <1707@pixar.UUCP>
Organization: Bell Communications Research
Lines: 19
Summary: Binary Combinatorics

In article <1522@dataio.Data-IO.COM> bright@dataio.UUCP (Walter Bright) writes:
>A lot of people think that small icons should be copyrightable. If your icons
>are, say, 16 * 16, then there are 65,000 possible icons. Anyone can simply
>copyright all combinations, and then prevent anyone else from using
>*any* 16*16 icons. This is obviously ludicrous.

Hmm...  If there are 16*16 pixels in the icon, each of which may be on or off,
then aren't there
	2^(16*16) = 115,792,089,237,316,195,423,570,985,008,687,907,853,269,
			984,665,640,564,039,457,584,007,913,129,639,936
possible icons, rather than
	2^16      = 65536

That may take a little longer.
Personally, I'm busy renaming all the stars. :-)

Larry Lang

"My fingers and toes are the only digital computer I've ever really understood."