Anthony DeRobertis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > On Dec 16, 2003, at 10:20, Brian T. Sniffen wrote:
>> I didn't say there's no copyright generated by the pairing -- just >> that the pairing can't be separated from the writing of the plugin. >> The plugin author, in the course of writing and testing his plugin, >> must have assembled the combination of host+plugin in a persistent >> form. > > If the author distributed it unpaired, then I re-pair it, that's not > under the original author's copyright (if any) on that pairing. > > Debian pairing the plugin doesn't generate a copyright. You may well be right, I can't really claim to know. But you don't seem to be answering Brian's point. If I understand him, he's saying that the author of the plugin is doing the work of pairing his code with the host (even if, in fact, it will be paired many times and by many people) and that that's where copyright subsists, and where a derivative work is created. Arguably, the plugin itself (sans host) is a derivative of the plugin+host which the author created first. But even if the courts don't take such a literalist view, I have trouble accepting your claim that since the creative work and the pairing that results from it are separated in space & time that there's no derivative work. Clearly the pairing was the purpose of the authors creative work -- to argue about whether or not he actually paired it is to devolve into philosophical hair splitting. If I'm a radical artist and fire a cannon from miles away to land on a sculpture, is the resulting "art" not a derivative of the original sculpture because I wasn't there when it hit? How about if it's a copy rather than the original? -- Jeremy Hankins <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> PGP fingerprint: 748F 4D16 538E 75D6 8333 9E10 D212 B5ED 37D0 0A03
