[Gllug] OT: Copyright and Snow Balls

[Formi]

On Mon, 1 Dec 2003, Richard Jones wrote:

> On Mon, Dec 01, 2003 at 12:00:03PM +0000, Ian Scott wrote:
> > but I do not have a problem with the principle of being able to
> > copyright an artistic idea.  And I can certainly see the argument
> > that if you use imagery that is closely associated with an artist
> > (e.g. Dali's egg watches, Hirst's formaldehyded sheep) it looks like
> > the artist has endorsed the ad.
>
> No, I'm sorry. This is really a problem.
>
> If you can copyright something as nebulous (and, IMHO, daft) as
> melting snowballs, then by extension we're going to see people
> copyrighting:
>
> * User interfaces (wanna make a competitor to Outlook or Office so that
>   people won't need much retraining? - sorry, you're SOL)
>
> * Unix (yes, all "Unix-like" things such as Linux become derived works)
>
> * Win32 (need to reimplement the Win32 API to allow programs to run on
>   your competing OS?)
>
> This is far beyond the original intentions of copyright.
>
> And even worse, (a) copyright last effectively forever, and (b)
> copyright isn't invalidated by "obviousness" or "prior art".
>
> Rich.
>

 Glad to see somebody is on the same wavelenght as me on this one.

 Bit by bit, the powers to be, keep snatching the rights of you and me.

                                                   Formi.


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