While I do not want this to devolve into a fight, I will stand by my original answer.
The test of whether a copyright exists is whether it will be upheld in court. The producers of the second Batman movie with Micahel Keaton were successfully sued for plagiarizing a statue which is a piece of public art in Los Angeles; a piece of very similar art was shown prominently in the movie.
I should be amazed if the author of a brief notation scribbled on a pad could sustain a similar suit.
Copyright covers a variety of kinds of works. One is “literary works”. It appears very unlikely that the OP was describing something which would be construed as a literary work unless some further action was taken with it, such as treating it as a publishable poem. The point is that you don’t have to merely write something for it to have copyright; it has to be a writing which qualifies. (And yes, posts to a message board like this would likely generally qualify).
If courts did not impose such standards of reasonableness, then pretty much anything anyone created at anytime could be claimed as a copyrighted work after the fact. I doubt a court would pay much attention if I tried to hassle someone whose photograph included an image of my freshly mown lawn on the grounds that I had really intended the lawn as conceptual art.
It is true that one does not need to register a copyright with the Copyright Office for it to exist. It seems pointless to raise this as an objection to my answer, as I did not assert that it was necessary.
All of this, I think, raises an interesting point about the law, and about the sort of legal discussions which crop up frequently on this board. Resolving a legal issue generally requires more than merely citing Black Letter law. As Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.observed, the law is whatever courts in fact will do. Overlooking this point has tripped up countless people including, for instance, numerous tax protesters who combed through the Federal Code until they found an ambiguous or contradictory phrase which they decided proved they didn’t really have to pay taxes.
In the context of present US copyright law, the above phrase doesn’t make sense. If it is something that can be copyrighted, then it is copyrighted as soon as it is fixed in a tangilbe medium of expression. It is possible that you mean “or at least register the copyright”. Otherwise, you seem to be asserting requirements for copyrightability that have already been abandoned.
Can you provide us with examples of when courts imposed such “standards of reasonableness” in deciding whether something can have a copyright?
While U.S. Copyright law until 1989 did require a proper copyright notice to be affixed to the work, it has never required registration of a work to create a copyright. U.S. statute and case law has always acknowledged the common law concept that an author owns the copyright to a work from the moment of creation. In Wheaton v. Peters (1834), the majority decision of the U.S. Supreme Court said,
World Domination isn’t necessarily illegal. You seem nice enough that you wouldn’t do anything illegal, so I don’t think you have to worry.[/suck up to potential World Emperor]
Suppose Q.E.D. writes his Diabolical Plan for World Domination[sup]TM[/sup] as a beautiful epic poem in exquisite manuscript on my paper in my home, takes his first copy with him, and registers it with the Copyright Office. I still own the paper with the impression. Am I limited in what I can legally do with my copy of it? Why can’t I make a light rubbing to make the words legible, then frame it and hang it on my wall?
Walloon, you’re right that the courts have held that collections of facts are not in and of themselves copyrightable. But the “creativity” involved in those court cases is, to my understanding, a different type of “creativity” from the type cankerist was referring to. My point is that you do not have to compose a formal “work” to earn copyright protection.
With respect, sir, the brevity of your first reply in this thread seemed overly ambigous and general to me. Now that you have explained what you meant further and in greater detail, I withdraw my objection to your statement.
This is a complicated question and actually ties into the Who owns a letter? thread. FWIW (but I’m sure Walloon will correct any of my slipups :D) here’s my take.
Who owns what?
The case is a classic one and apparently already posed in Roman law (about a painting on a piece of wood). For modern Dutch law it would be that you would in principle have joint ownership (you in the material, QED in the copyright and the copyrighted work, since he put effort into it and made the material into something new), but if the worth of the copyright clearly exceeded the material QED probably would probably be able to force you to accept a payment for the worth of the material. If the other way around (graffiti on a building), the owner can simply remove the ‘work’ and possibly even claim damages.
Still, it is intriguing that you say that he in fact made the actual copy himself on your paper as a by-product, then you might try to argue that he left you that copy. I don’t have an immediate answer ready. I guess this is why sculptors should completely destroy the mould from which they made the bronze sculpture.
Putting the work on the wall
See the other thread.
I’m rather curious about the form such an epic poem on world domination would take. Maybe the closest we’ve come is Plato’s Republic.
OK, IANAL but wouldn’t an attempt to block admission of a written statement in a criminal case by admitting to being the one who wrote it be so unconscionably stupid that the person should be convicted on that basis alone?
Now, that just hurts my feelings … taking off gloves…
Ahem. In order to be protected by copyright, a work must contain at least a certain minimum amount of original literary, pictorial, or musical expression. Copyright does not extend to names, titles, and short phrases or clauses such as column headings or simple checklists. If you think that when you post a message board with “hey, everyone, how are you doing?” is protected by copyright and you can prevent MGM from using it in the script for their upcoming movie, think again.
Obviously there is a spectrum of creativity over which rights may or may not be accorded. The alternative would be to allow ‘authors’ the right to monopolize, for example, simple words and phrases, having at their disposal the powerful protections, including criminal sanctions, afforded under the Copyright Law.
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