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IMO, the optimal solution will be to make some kind of change in copyright law which distinguishes between personal, imaginative, creative works (like a novel o
by duskwuff 3y ago
IMO, the optimal solution will be to make some kind of change in copyright law which distinguishes between personal, imaginative, creative works (like a novel or a painting) and corporate, formulaic, functional works (like a word processor or a textbook). Whether the line should be drawn along the personal/corporate axis or the creative/functional one is up for debate.
- aidenn0 3y agoThere are already some divides for personal/corporate (see e.g. the "Work for hire" rules), and purely functional works are already limited in how copyrightable they can be (see e.g. [1]). Once you get away from purely functional into things like textbooks and word-processors, things get complicated quickly. If I write a word-perfect clone, that's pretty darn functional, yet I probably make lots of creative choices in the process that are hidden from the user. If it's a word processor with its own peculiar interface, there are even user-visible creative choices. Did you perhaps mean aesthetic versus functional? If so, then that's even more of a treacherous area. How many people have Minard's famous chart[2] hanging on their wall for aesthetic reasons? Or what about e.g. Dr. Suess' books. Are those aesthetic, or are they an educational tool? 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexmark_International,_Inc._v._Static_Control_Components,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexmark_International,_Inc._v..... 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minard#/media/File:Minard.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minard#/media/File:Minard.png