Development of Creative Commons licenses

[drew Roberts <zotz AT 100jamz.com>]

On Saturday 19 March 2005 04:54 am, Rob Myers wrote:
> IANAL but I am a software developer. ;-)
>
> On 19 Mar 2005, at 01:15, drew Roberts wrote:
> > Couldn't you build a dedicated peice of hardware that acted like MS
> > Office but
> > had no software per se?

I don't think what you have written below actually answers this question in 
the context in which it was asked.
>
> You can write a piece of *software* that acts like MS Office but has no
> code in it. The important thing for copyright is whether you are
> copying the original code, not whether your code is functionally
> equivalent (that's patents). Reverse engineering and functional
> equivalency aren't an issue. Copying or deriving are.
>
> When Office is written, it is C++ code stored as human-readable ASCII
> on a hard disk. It is then translated to assembly code, then that
> assembly code is translated to object code. That is then linked. We're
> already three steps away from the original "writing". The linked code
> is transferred to a removable tape drive, couriered to the CD pressing
> plant, and scratched onto a sheet of glass as a series of pits. This
> glass is then pressed against metal foil which is glued between bits of
> plastic.
>
> Once some poor soul buys the CD and takes it home, the metal and
> plastic is then spun at high speed under a laser, and this is
> interpreted as data which is copied onto another hard disk. When a user
> wishes to run the software, bits of the data on the disk are copied as
> electrical pulses held in optically etched patterns on silicon.
>
> The original copyright has acted virally through all these derivations
> and translations. Like fan fiction. If we take a Java program that is
> produced the same way but compiled from bytecodes to native machine
> code by a JIT on loading, that (machine translated) work is a
> derivation (a translation) of the bytecodes, and so still copyrighted.
>
> The medium that the code is recorded in isn't an issue any more than
> whether you photocopy, screenprint, scan or paint a photograph affects
> whether you're infringing the original copyright.  Nintendo's GameBoy
> range uses software distributed as ROM cartridges, for example. The
> same game may be available on an old Nintendo 64 cartridge or in a
> GameCube CD-Rom (Mario 64 for example). Copying one of these onto audio
> tape would still be copying. Arranging a series of stones in a Zen
> garden to encode the data in binary would still be copying. Machine
> translating it into a real language like Lisp would still be copying.
>
> In this instance the medium is not the message, and whether software is
> stored temporarily or permanently on silicon isn't an issue. This is
> the same reason that every router on the net is a high-powered
> copyright infringement machine, btw. :-)
>
I think I know all of this, even though I am in many ways ignorant. The 
question that I was trying to have answered (I hope this is it, even I am 
getting confused now) is what is the difference between a high level design 
translated into ROM and one translated into an asic. The postulation that was 
after all was said and done, both were pieces of non-changeable silicon. Why 
should one be considered a copyrighted derivative of the original "source" 
that was used to produce it and one a non-copyrighted functional devicer 
"cake" baked from the original "source" "the recipe" that was used to produce 
it?

Please note, when I claim ignorance, I am not claiming total ignorance, just 
vast ignorance.

all the best,

drew