Re: Question About GNU General Public License

[David Kastrup]

<telford@xenon.triode.net.au> writes:

> In gnu.misc.discuss David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org> wrote:
> > <telford@xenon.triode.net.au> writes:
> 
> >> In gnu.misc.discuss David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org> wrote:
> >> 
> >> > My eyesight seems to get worse.  I fail to see a quote of a court
> >> > ruling stating that extracted symbol tables would not fall under
> >> > the original copyright.
> >> 
> >> I'm pretty sure a symbol table would fall under the "phonebook"
> >> ruling that a table of facts presented in obvious
> >> (i.e. non-creative) format and ordering cannot be considered a
> >> creative work.
> 
> > Who claimed that it was?
> 
> If the end result of the derivation has no creative content then
> there is a good argument that it is not protected by copyright.

I'd say it has no _new_ creative content, but it is an extraction of
creative content.

> There may have been creative content in the source material but the
> derivation process is in this case a process that extracts only a
> table of facts and not the creative elements.

But the "facts" are idiosyncratic to the creative elements.  If I
make a list of all set bits in the source material, this is not
something creative.

> Remember that officially, the creative content of programming is the
> arangement of instructions in a particular order to achieve a
> purpose. A symbol table contains no arrangement of instructions.

But it is an immediate consequence of such an arrangement, like the
list of all set bits.

> Another example: google counts the number of times various keywords
> are used in various websites. A count of keywords is a mechanical
> derivative of the original site content but no one has even
> attempted to claim derivative work status of google's index data on
> this basis (same for any search engine).

Well, you can't claim damages in this case because Google only
summarizes data that is openly available, anyhow.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum