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I've believed for about 20 years now that the law still has never fully grappled with the concept of something that is both an expression of some sort and yet a
by jerf 7y ago
I've believed for about 20 years now that the law still has never fully grappled with the concept of something that is both an expression of some sort and yet also a machine. Computer code is the real-world example of that, but genetics are fairly similar.
I think it's why decisions about things like the copyrightability of APIs have been so complicated; the law has still never deeply grappled with the question of how to harmonize the several deeply different legal regimes that "executable expressions" can be affected by. What is the set-intersection of patents and copyrights? That's a really thorny question if you sit down and try to take it seriously.
- mac01021 7y agoWhat does the law say about recipes of the sort that you find in cookbooks?
- jerf 7y agoMostly that they aren't copyrightable at all, so it's not a helpful analogy since the law equally clearly holds that software is. I've heard anecdotally that that's why there's so many cooking blogs that bloviate endlessly about how the recipe will look when it's done and what it made them feel when they ate it first and maybe just a bit of history about the region where it's from before finally almost-begrudgingly consenting to share the recipe, because that's all copyrightable content that can't be legally stolen, whereas if they just posted a bare recipe, anybody could walk off with it.