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

[Jerry Hastings]

At 06:19 PM 7/5/2000 +1000, Paul Gear 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. Australian law 
does have such a thing. It is called a neighbouring right.

See: http://www.cni.org/Hforums/cni-copyright/1996-01/0562.html

 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. The original idea being that a person could have a lot invested in 
producing a printable text of something that is PD. Perhaps the original 
was in script or it is a collection of unwritten facts. Before photographic 
reproduction was possible there was not a problem. But with it came the 
possibility that someone could very easily and cheaply reproduce the new 
work and unfairly compete.

  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! But, even with this kind of law one could still produce his own 
typeset and print the work. He just couldn't take advantage of the other 
guy's investment and just photo-reproduce it. Likewise, one should be able 
to rescan and OCR a PD work and be free from infringing on another person's 
scanning and OCRing labor. If it comes to that.

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.

Jerry