Hmm, I guess I don't understand. Gödel numbers have been around since
Kurt created them. Unless, that is, the court is referring to assigning
numbers to specific, unique functions. Then, yes, I would agree that
each agent's set of Gödel numbers could/should be protected. But what's
the point? There are always translation tables. (01)
I have been leery of URI's for similar reasons. It is easy enough to
create them, but what's to keep some entity from Hooveing them all up,
and then copyrighting the whole thing? Seems that we went through then
when Webster was fighting the dictionary wars. Lawyers can clean up the
mess. (02)
-John Bottoms
FirstStar Systems (03)
On 10/28/2010 12:57 AM, doug foxvog wrote:
> On 10/27/2010 5:37 PM, Simon Spero wrote:
>> Some people have suggested that I post a pointer to the decision in
> "AMERICAN DENT. ASSN. v. DELTA DEN. PLANS ASSN., F,3D 977 (7th Cir,
> 1997)"
>> The opinion is from the 7th circuit (the cool IP circuit :-)
>
> This is an interesting argumentation style.
> * Articles are copyrightable, but others may express the same facts in
> their own language.
> * What is copyrighted is text, not the facts therein expressed.
> * Whole ontologies are copyrightable. [This would mean their text, since
> text, not a set of ideas, is copyrighted.]
> * The long textual descriptions of the categories are copyrightable.
> [Other expressions of these ideas would not be covered.]
> So far, this was strongly argued, and probably not controversial.
>
> But then the controversial part of the ruling is presented, not only with
> no supporting argument, but weakly modifiedby "we think". They don't sound
> too sure of their findings:
>
> "we think that even the short description and the number are original
> works of authorship."
>
> If the short description is not a phrase that is common in the field, then
> it would be copyrightable. Paragraph 6 gives an example that appears to be
> a "short description", although it is relatively
> long, and shows how it could be reworded in multiple ways. However, more
> general short descriptions from higher up in the taxonomy might not be so
> complex.
>
> The argument about copyrighted numbers moves away from copyrighting text to
> copyrighting the assignment of a code to a concept.
> "The number assigned to any one of the three descriptions could have
> had four or six digits rather than five; guided tissue regeneration
> could have been placed in the 2500 series rather than the 4200 series;
> again any of these choices is original to the author of a taxonomy, and
> another author could do things differently. Every number in the ADA's
> Code begins with zero, assuring a large supply of unused numbers for
> procedures to be devised or reclassified in the future; an author could
> have elected instead to leave wide gaps inside the sequence. A catalog
> that initially assigns 04266, 04267, 04268 to three procedures will over
> time depart substantively from one that initially assigns 42660, 42670,
> and 42680 to the same three procedures."
>
> The creativity discussed here is not the creativity of creating new numbers
> that have never been used before, but of assigning those numbers to [types
> of] procedures. Certainly, the result is part of the whole copyrighted
> work, just as the names of characters in a novel are. An author can
> choose many names, but for some creative reason selects specific names.
> Does this mean the individual names of characters are copyrighted?
>
> Copyright does not preclude an indexer from going through a novel and
> specifying for each character which page(s) in the work s/he appears on
> and writing a short description of the character. Wouldn't an analysis
> of an ontology that describes each of its categories and the associated
> category name (i.e., code value) be similarly not precluded?
>
> I don't see any argument along these lines in the opinion.
>
> -- doug foxvog
>
>> Opinion was written by Easterbrook, but Posner can't write them all.
> Well, he could if he wanted to, but he probably had to rescue Chuck
> Norris, or something.
>>
>> ------
>>
>> http://www.law.cornell.edu/copyright/cases/126_F3d_977.htm
>>
>> [1] This case presents the question whether a taxonomy is
> copyrightable. [...]
>>
>> [4] Any original literary work may be copyrighted. The necessary
> degree of "originality" is low, and the work need not be
> aesthetically pleasing to be "literary." Feist Publications, Inc v.
> Rural Telephone Service Co., 499 U.S. 340, 345-46 (1991). Term
> papers by college sophomores are as much within the domain of
> copyright as Saul Bellow's latest novel. See Bleistein v. Donaldson
> Lithographing Co., 188 U.S. 239 (1903). Scholarship that explicates
> important facts about the universe likewise is well within this
> domain. Einstein's articles laying out the special and general
> theories of relativity were original works even though many of the
> core equations, such as the famous E = mc^2, express "facts" and
> therefore are not copyrightable. Einstein could have explained
> relativity in any of a hundred different ways; another physicist
> could expound the same principles differently.
>>
>> [5] So too with a taxonomy - of butterflies, legal citations, or
> dental procedures. Facts do not supply their own principles of
> organization. Classification is a creative endeavor. Butterflies may
> be grouped by their color, or the shape of their wings, or their
> feeding or breeding habits, or their habitats, or the attributes of
> their caterpillars, or the sequence of their DNA; each scheme of
> classification could be expressed in multiple ways. Dental
> procedures could be classified by complexity, or by the tools
> necessary to perform them, or by the parts of the mouth involved, or
> by the anesthesia employed, or in any of a dozen different ways. The
> Code's descriptions don't "merge with the facts" any more than a
> scientific description of butterfly attributes is part of a
> butterfly. Cf. Nash v. CBS, Inc., 899 F.2d 1537 (7th Cir. 1990)
> (discussing the fact-expression dichotomy). There can be multiple,
> and equally original, biographies of the same person's life, and
> multiple original taxonomies of a field of knowledge. Creativity
> marks the expression even after the fundamental scheme has been
> devised. This is clear enough for the long description of each
> procedure in the ADA's Code. The long description is part of the
> copyrighted work, and original long descriptions make the work as a
> whole copyrightable. But we think that even the short description
> and the number are original works of authorship.
>>
>> Simon
>>
>
>
>
>
> =============================================================
> doug foxvog doug@xxxxxxxxxx http://ProgressiveAustin.org
>
> "I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great
> initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop it must be ours."
> - Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
> =============================================================
>
>
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