Michael Poole <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Brian Thomas Sniffen writes: > >> But in your model, am I performing the MUA, the MTA, the network >> stack, libc, the firewall, the NAT software, the routers in between, >> Spamassassin on your side, the mailing list manager, your MTA, MDA, or >> MUA? All of them? > > You perform the MUA, MTA, network stack, libc and anything else you > cause to run on your side. You sending mail would be private > performance of those, because you both operate and invoke the > software, and so you would not be bound by restrictions on their > public performance. I would be publicly performing the MTA on my end > for you when my MTA accepts mail from you. Execution of my mail > filters, MDA and MUA are private performance on my part.
But there's no creativity in my execution of that code -- only what was originally there. That is, since a computer program is partly creative expression of an idea, and partly a functional device, copyright law protects the former but not the latter. So in executing the code, I'm not interacting with the creative expression at all: I'm using it, not performing it. That's no more a public performance than driving a well-designed sports car is a public performance of its design. >> > I do not see how altering the data in transit is pertinent. Are you >> > arguing that because some application uses IPv4, it can be encumbered >> > by a copyright license on code running on a router, or vice versa? >> >> No, but surely the person running the router is performing its code, >> in your model. And if the router alters data in transit, then it >> creates a derivative work as it passes the packets along, right? >> Surely, then, the license on that alteration matters. > > Yes, the person operating the router is publicly performing the > router's code. However, because mechanical transformations are not > derivative works under copyright law, and because communications > providers are allowed to forward data on request[1], the router's > forwarding actions do not infringe any copyright on either the data or > programs that generate the data. I wasn't talking about a purely mechanical transformation -- consider that I replace one out of every thousand packets with my own poetry. The license on the poetry then does matter. I suspect you may misunderstand the way in which "mechanical transformations are not derivative works" -- it's not that there's no copyright on the work after it's been transformed, but rather that it's exactly the same copyright as before transformation. > [1]- 17 USC 111(a)(3), plus any implicit permission from originator. > > Michael Poole -- Brian Sniffen [EMAIL PROTECTED]