[sword-devel] Copyrights and derivative works

[Jerry Hastings]

At 01:31 AM 1/18/2003 -0500, Patrick Narkinsky wrote:
>...In general,
>databases of factual information are not copyrightable....

Be careful with that. Take a digital camera and click the button to make a 
picture. At that point what happens is "mechanical", and each pixel 
produced conveys a "fact" about the view the camera is digitizing. The 
digital picture produced is something that in some sense is a collection of 
facts. If you would think the published picture would not be copyrightable, 
you would be wrong.

I think we can agree that:
it is a fact that the ASCII value of the first character in the NIV (I) is 73,
it is a fact that the ASCII value of the second (n) is 110,
and it is a fact that the third (space) is 32,
...
...
....
and it is a fact that the last (period) is 46.

Is this a collection of facts? It seems to be what some are calling a list 
of facts.

If we take these facts and use binary to represent the ASCII value listed 
in each fact, and enter that binary number into a database, where each 
record has one field that is one byte long, and the record number is also 
the position in the NIV of the character represented by the binary number, 
it would be something like:
01001001
01101110
00100000
...
...
...
00101110

Do you think this database of facts would be an infringement of copyright? 
I think this database is the NIV.

Jerry