Re: The Reg on RMS in London

On Tue, May 25, 2004 at 04:47:44PM +0100, Tim Jackson wrote:

> - ok, so we don't want to allow patenting of notes and chords, because
> they are not where the real creativity lies
[..]
> - but patenting that doesn't make sense, because even if you could it
> would be pointless: all it would do is stop someone "manufacturing" the
> same "product", but if they did "manufacture" the piece of music, that
> would be copyright infringement.

No, that argument doesn't really hold up at that point. (Depending on how
'notes and chords' map to sw.) Unlike in music, there are multiple ways to
achieve the same effect in software. In music, if you re-arrange chords,
it's no longer the same piece - in software, if you re-arrange (say)
subroutines, then the program still *does* the same thing, it just does it
differently.

-- 
Paul

I stopped and considered for a moment whether such a person would behave any
differently with his head cut right off, but then realized it would make a
difference: it would allow him to stand upright again. -- Anthony de Boer