Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Rob Myers <robmyers AT mac.com>]

On 19 Mar 2005, at 14:18, drew Roberts wrote:

> 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?

I'm still not a lawyer. :-)

Traditionally there's been a line drawn between copyrightable work and  
functional industrial design. This is another of those things in  
copyright that is just how it's done for historical reasons. If I had  
to try to explain it, I'd say that copyrightable works have to be  
understandably symbolic or encoded in some way. They have to have a  
message, not do something. Information, not functionality.

Now, I'd argue that the chip is a photographic reproduction of a design  
derived from the original textual description.

But certainly US law doesn't seem to be on my side, as the functional  
nature of the chip design seems to trump its copyrightability. Which is  
weird. So Greg's cookies look like the more appropriate model. Mea  
culpa.

On the copyrightability of circuits (but are chips circuits?):

http://www.cni.org/Hforums/cni-copyright/1996-02/0251.html

Possibly someone could page RMS on this, he's tackled it before on  
various lists but I can't find a definitively useful article for  
ASICs/FPGAs anywhere.

Here he is on "free hardware" in 1999:

http://features.linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=1999-06-22-005-05- 
NW-LF

He clarifies that article on this list:

http://opencollector.org/hardlicense/maillist.html

- Rob.