>But what constitutes a derivative work? Certainly, some part of the original work must be present in a recognizable form. The munging done by Monolith leaves n

>But what constitutes a derivative work? Certainly, some part of the original work must be present in a recognizable form. The munging done by Monolith leaves no part of the original work in place, so Mono files therefore cannot be counted as derivative works. Interesting piece, and while I appreciate the rather thoughtful explanation of the process and the law, I can't help but think it won't stand up. This process is basically XORing two files on a per-bit basis. Sure, the result is unrecognizable, but that doesn't mean it isn't derivative. A simple analogy of novel "munged" by replacing a with b, b with c, and so on (rot1) would be completely recognizable but that work is quite obviously dependent on the original novel. I can't imagine that would stand - you would never have made this new book without using the exact text of the original copyrighted work. IANAL