>>CLA retains a restriction on copy-cut-and-paste from the HTML; again,
>>this may not be readily enforceable but the practice of 'borrowing' code
>>from other pages is unquestionably theft.
>Disagreement here as well. It depends very much, I suppose, on what you
>view HTML code as. In my opinion, its simply a mark-up language which is
>used in conjunction with a browser to display your intellectual work on
>my screen. You cannot copyright that than you can claim copyright over
>the way in which you lay out a flyer, letter or book. Of course, we've
>all seen the actions taking place between companies over the 'look and
>feel' of a product, but thats a very different situation.
We have here an apparently major difference in perception between
what on-screen display is, and the markup to achieve that effect. I
think this difference arises because some people take as their terms of
reference what can be done on paper, and some people think "electronically"
This difficulty is going to get much more subtle. For example,
a chemist might wish to create a display containing a rotating water molecule.
The source "code" (I think its not the correct term to use) is in fact
almost pure data, which cannot be copyrighted (ie the datum that
the angle between the three atoms in water is 111 degrees is not
copyrightable). This is converted "just-in-time" to a nice molecule
by the browser, and that action is initated by the user. I think we must
be agreed that the very sophisticated effect produced on the screen is
entirely and without ambiguity not copyrightable by the original author.
Taking it one stage further. Suppose the author decides that the oxygen
atom must be displayed differently for whatever scientific
reason, and writes a script for doing do. In
textual terms this is equivalent to say italicising a word. Is that
copyrightable? I think not. Take the next stage. The author choreographs
a number of visual effects using scripts, and as a result imparts some
conceptual understanding to the chemistry of water that was not there before.
The IPR clearly resides with the author. But can the visual effects be
copyrighted?
Where I hav referred to chemistry, each subject can substitute its own
visual metaphors. I challenge the CLA to come up with
"reasonable" interpretations of copyright law in this area, which
we might reasonably be expected to convince our colleagues to
accept.
Dr Henry Rzepa, Dept. Chemistry, Imperial College, LONDON SW7 2AY;
[log in to unmask]; Tel (44) 171 594 5774; Fax: (44) 171 594 5804.
URL: http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/rzepa/
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