13 ms·
This seems like a bad decision on the Court of Appeal's part. No, I'm not a lawyer, but I'm taking reality, not the-law-has-already-crawled-up-inside-itself leg
by bediger 15y ago
This seems like a bad decision on the Court of Appeal's part. No, I'm not a lawyer, but I'm taking reality, not the-law-has-already-crawled-up-inside-itself legalistic fantasy.
The point of a "public domain" is to have a huge stockpile of stuff, images, stories, characters, mechanisms, processes, that everyone can use to do things with. "Evoking" a copyrighted thing, that's just the sort of use that public domain works are supposed to do.
Clearly, whatever Court of Appeals here has totally bought in to the concept that a state can grant ownership of an idea to someone, that an idea is property, only usable by a single entity.
Decisions like this and the "People United" mis-judgement from the US Supreme Court really tarnish the courts by moving away from reality, and towards a fantasy where legalistic reasoning governs.
- chc 15y agoI don't understand what you mean when you say the public domain is meant to "evoke a copyrighted thing." I'm not aware of any rationale for the public domain in which its purpose it to produce knock-offs of works owned by somebody else.
- bediger 15y agoWell, what does "evoke" mean? Produce something akin to an "echo" of recognition. That's not a knock-off, that's a reminder, an homage, a tribute, a modification, a derivative. Beyond that, a copyright does not grant ownership: it grants some temporary rights to a work, in exchange for that work ending up in the public domain in the near future. You can't "own" an idea or a concept, because someone else can invent the same idea or concept. A copyright is a state-granted privilege, nothing more, nothing less.