OK lets try some facts, AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION, et al., this is the decision about the photos,
The case is NOT about the photos it’s about the
Good for you for keeping an open mind, that’s more than most people do.
It’s also good to be wary of hyper-biased sources, as that reclaimamerica site seems to be.
My claim is not that programs aren’t “creative output,” only that bare computer coding is not creative output. In my view coding is like a mathematical formula or data – it’s just an algorithm, a series of steps or instructions for doing something. That shouldn’t be protected as creative works. The code, however, when run might produce something that is creative and that might be .
Well, then we’re just going to have to agree to disagree on this one and I can be happy that copyright law is on my side. It seems to me nearly impossible under your rubric for a single person to control his or her own intended message. There’s almost no way to ensure that the public will understand that slightly different versions of the books are not the output of the original author. And it allows free riding. That is, the later people are basically using the original author’s talent and hard work to their advantage to push a message that the original author didn’t intend.
I think that an author of a novel or a painting or a sculpture has a right to prevent others from making changes without his or her permission. This is a pretty important concept in copyright law and it’s often referred to as the moral right of the creator. If I write, for example, an anti-racism book then your making minor changes to it If you want a different work, I say, do one yourself from scratch without copying any of the creative output of someone else.
Ah yes, just like sheet music is only a series of instructions for playing an instrument.
If you’re going to go in that direction, then I guess an MP3 file isn’t a creative work either. It’s basically just a compressed series of instructions for an audio synthesizer, and it doesn’t produce anything creative until you run it (by feeding it into an MP3 decoder). So, free trading of music files?
If no one ever built on anyone else’s work, we wouldn’t have any of the music, movies (I’m looking at you, Disney), or books that exist today. Even Shakespeare was a free rider.
There’s a difference between building on someone else’s work and actually copying their expression. Shakespeare was not a free rider, any more than any author who creates an original work today under our copyright laws is. Shakespeare took stories and plots that were already existing, but the words he wrote were original. Similarly, the pictures that Disney created were original. No one is stopping anyone from reusing ideas. But copying someone else’s expression directly is just plain stealing and misappropriation. the author should have the right to control the message of his or her own creation.
Not to mention Led Zeppelin. They admit that most of their songs are outright theivery. Or, without the Simpsons there would be no Family Guy. 
[QUOTE=Mr2001]
Ah yes, just like sheet music is only a series of instructions for playing an instrument.
If you’re going to go in that direction, then I guess an MP3 file isn’t a creative work either. It’s basically just a compressed series of instructions for an audio synthesizer, and it doesn’t produce anything creative until you run it (by feeding it into an MP3 decoder). So, free trading of music files?QUOTE]
No on both of these, because it’s the same as the computer programme example. As I said before, the images that running a computer programme produces can be copyrightable, the same way that the playing of a musical piece or the playing of an mp3 pod produces a work that is copyrightable. The question is what do you get when you use the programme code the way it’s meant to be used.
I’m just saying that you shouldn’t be able to copyright a mere algorithm. In other words, “I was the first to write these lines of code that allow two numbers to be added together and put a blue dot on the screen, therefore no one else can do it.”
I don’t think it’s a morally significant difference. One might argue that coming up with the plot is the hard part, not expressing it; after all, once you have a story in mind, the book is just a series of sentences explaining how it goes. 
There are countless ways to write those sentences, some of which are better than others (subjectively or objectively), but the same is true of computer code.
Algorithms would be subject to patent, not copyright. Copyright governs expression: “x := y + z; Canvas.SetPixel(0,0,clBlue);” is just one possible expression of the concept of adding two numbers together and drawing a blue dot. And, as above, once you have the concept in mind, you can easily think of a million ways to express it. You can even express an algorithm in the form of poetry.
A big program like a word processor or web browser is much more complicated than just adding a few numbers together… most beginners wouldn’t even know where to start writing one. Also, the code of, say, Mozilla Firefox is far more creative than the actual image Firefox makes on my screen, which is just a few standard Windows controls, a few icons that are just a variation on every other browser’s icons, and a big panel containing a straightforward interpretation of someone else’s HTML code.
This I would very much agree with. IMO, all ten Articles of the Bill of Rights are meaningful. I seem to be very much in a minority in holding that stance, though.
I don’t think their interpretation is inconsistent. Perhaps you could make a case that their approach to each amendment is inconsistent.
Do you do much computer programming? I ask this because as someone who does freelance coding, I can tell you that there is a lot of creativity expressed in lines of C++ or Java or Perl or any other language that you care to take a stab at. If you look at coding merely as a mathematical process to get the job done, you certainly can come up with something that does get the job done. To do the job efficiently and with minimal drain on resources is an art form of manipulating data and variables into elegant functions and building elaborately and carefully sculpted abstract objects.
The creativity lies not in doing the task, but in how the task is done. Take the same task and give it to two different coders - in the end, you will have two unique works.
The code is that something. Unless you offer protection to the code I write, there is no protection for the product that the user sees. Without the code the programmer wrote, you don’t have the product. Running the program is just another way of looking at the code. You don’t seem to understand that all of the creativity is put into the code. Everything that makes a program unique, appealing, eye catching, functional, elegant, beautiful even… all of that was put there by the coder. When I code, I have an experience in mind that I want the user to have. I create that experience through the code that I write. That visual and auditory experience that you have when using one of my programs is created because I paint it for you. The languages are my paint, my pigments. The way that I mix and arrange them is my creativity. The finished painting is what you experience.
[quote =The US Constitution, ARTICLE IV)
Section. 2.
Clause 1: The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States.
Clause 2: A Person charged in any State with Treason, Felony, or other Crime, who shall flee from Justice, and be found in another State, shall on Demand of the executive Authority of the State from which he fled, be delivered up, to be removed to the State having Jurisdiction of the Crime.
Clause 3: No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due.
[/quote]
“Person” and “Citizen” are clearly not synonymous either prior to or subsequent to the Bill of Rights.
“People” is more ambiguous.
This is exactly the right analogy. You can’t stop people from using the same techniques for obtaining colours or mising paints or choosing brushes or for applying paint or brushstrokes. You only have a claim when the finished painting that the other person produces – what can be perceived by the viewer – is a copy of your work as it is perceived by the viewer. This is the expression.
It seems perfectly clear to me. “People” means “people.”
Does that make me a Strict Constructionist?
You realize that algorithms, as experessed in papers, are copyrighted all the time, right? What was the case up until recently was that you could not patent an algorithm. Today, through the patenting of software, people are effectively patenting algorithms all the time.
That’s the thing you should be worried about.
Actually, I have some fundamental complaints about the patent system, but I deliberately made a choice not to talk about patents in this thread.
You are in a minority indeed, if you think the Ninth or Tenth Amendments mean anything. Neither has ever been the basis for any important constitutional case. Some consider the Tenth a mere “truism.” See: