Development of Creative Commons licenses

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

On Sunday 20 March 2005 12:02 pm, Rob Myers wrote:
> 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. 

I know I am being a bit foolish here but, you can't get the general purpose 
machine to do anything useful without the binary either so, what, the machine 
is non-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).

Any why is the binary not considered a recipe, which other's have stated is 
not subject to copyright?
>
> 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.

Ah, but aren't there indeed works which are the creation of someone's 
intellect, which are novel, which have taken some nonzero effort to create 
and which still cannot be copyrighted?
>
> > 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.
>
First, I think if you have been following the thread, I have really been 
asking about a binary burned to ROM and put in a machine in such a way that 
when the machine came on it "ran the binary" "only" - where only is not 
really only as all "programs" needed to run the binary will have been burned 
to rom and treated the same way.


Second, if we could find some automatic way to take a general purpose machine 
(computer) and a binary and convert the two into a single purpose machine 
that does only what the general purpose machine would do under the guidance 
of the binary, will the single purpose machine be or not be a copyright 
violation of the binary?

all the best,

drew