Copyright (was Re: [sword-devel] John Gill)

[Paul Gear]

Jerry Hastings wrote:
> 
> >Paul Gear wrote:
> >
> >I can't speak for American copyright law, but for British and Australian
> >law, there is definitely _no_ requirement that creativity be involved.
> >We recently had some copyright and intellectual property lawyers come to
> >speak at the Queensland AUUG conference
> ><http://www.auug.org.au/qauug/qauug2000.html>, and they made this very
> >clear.
> 
> I didn't find much info at that link, but you are correct.

The link was so i didn't have to define AUUG or explain who the lawyers
were...

> Australian law
> does have such a thing. It is called a neighbouring right.

What exactly is a "neighbouring right"?

>  From what I see it has to do with photographic reproduction. But the idea
> has broad implications and is what many want to see for electronic data
> files.
> ...
>   As I understand it, (not that I know much), this is a print only kind of
> thing and did not apply to electronic files. That may have changed or is on
> the way!

The lawyer i was speaking to at this conference certainly seemed to
think that the limitation would or at least *could* be applied in an
electronic context.

> The news paper example is a "print" issue. A dictionary would also have
> this same print issue. I would think it would be protected also because
> they contain creative expression.  (I sometimes just say "creative" but I
> should be saying creative expression). Not all dictionaries express the
> meaning of a word with the same phrases.

OK - that was probably a bad example.  I was confusing the intent of a
dictionary (to express common usage and commonly-accepted ideas) with
its method (creative expression).

Paul
---------
"He must become greater; i must become less." - John 3:30
http://www.bigfoot.com/~paulgear