Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Rob Myers <robmyers AT mac.com>]

On 20 Mar 2005, at 16:14, drew Roberts wrote:

> On Sunday 20 March 2005 10:16 am, Greg London wrote:
> > drew Roberts said:
> > > Not that I disagree with the analysis or the intention behind it...
> > > but... binaries are a functional strin of 1s and 0s and yet aren't 
> > > they
> > > considered a copyrighted derivative of the copyrighted source they 
> > > came
> > > from.
> > >
> > > Is this just another special exception to the rules?
> >
> > No, because the string of 1's and 0's still REPRESENT something
> > rather than being the THING-ITSELF.
>
> So, a binary is not functional?

It is not. If I have a CD with a binary on it, I can't get it to do 
anything functional. A binary is instructions for something else to 
follow in order to perform some functionality. It is the configuration 
for a universal machine, not a machine itself.

Let's go back to the cookie example. A cookie recipe is not a cook, it 
just tells a cook how to perform a particular act (baking cookies).

A binary is a text to be "read" by some functional system. It is not 
itself a functional system. An ASIC (for purposes of this discussion) 
is a functional system. It is not text to be "read".

> It is instead and artistic expression?

Copyrightable work doesn't need to be artistic or expressive. The 
phrase "expression of an idea" doesn't mean expression in the starving 
artist sense of emoting or having a unique vision, it just means that 
you get it out into the world in some tangible form rather than it 
being a fleeting thought.

To be copyrightable, work just needs to be novel and have taken some 
nonzero effort to create. And it needs to not be merely functional. 
ASIC designs seem to fall down on the last point.

> I want to understand this thinking both from a reasoned perspective 
> and from
> the "that's just what the law says" perspective.

It is reasonable to regard a binary as not being functional, it is just 
data. The fact that this data can be used by a CPU to bake cookies -uh- 
run a particular program doesn't make that data functional.

- Rob.