Joe Moore wrote: > Michael Poole wrote: > > See also http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ14.html, which remarks both > > that the whole of the derivative work must represent an original work > > of authorship, rather than an arrangement of distinct works, and that > > mechanical (non-creative, ergo non-copyrightable) transformation of the > > original does not make a derivative. > > Doesn't this mean that the compiled (in the computer sense) binary is not a > derivative work of the source? (mechanical transformation from C code to > ELF executable does not make a derivative?)
Correct. > That's an interpretation of law that seems a bit too extreme to be > reasonable. It's not an interpretation, it's the legal definition of derivative work. > It would (if correct) make a lot of current copyright infringement (or as it > is sometimes called "software piracy") legitimate. Since I'm not > distributing the source code (which is the original work of authorship), > just a mechanical transformation of it (ergo non-copyrightable), giving > MSOffice.exe to all my friends is not a copyright violation????? Why do you think so? The result still falls under the same copyright protection as the original has. It's just a different representation. Thiemo
