Re: Artistically creative expression has no role in software design

["Marc A. Criley" <mcNOSPAM@mckae.com>]

"Robert I. Eachus" <rieachus@comcast.net> wrote:

> Maybe copyright law should recognize this.  That would mean that you
> could copyright code design, and ANY code that was an instance of your
> copyrighted design would be covered by the copyright.  Copyrighting the
> requirements is a bit more troubling, but not much.  If you do a good
> job on any programming task, you may put more than half your effort into
> the requirements.  (Of course, you can instead put much more than half
> your effort into debugging...)

Recall the title of the original article: "The Case against Copyright
Protection of Non-literal Elements of Copyright Software". The author is
arguing in fact that the design itself should not by copyrightable, because
the design is as functionally driven to a singular solution by the
requirements as the code is.

This then starts to smell like advocacy for software patents--but that's
another issue with its own pros and cons (mostly cons -- mc :-).

Marc