On 8/19/2010 3:07 PM, RJack wrote:
"17 USC ยง 102. Subject matter of copyright: In general.
(b) In no case does copyright protection for an original work of
authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method
of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the
form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied
in such work."
"In no case does copyright protection... extend to... *regardless
of the form* in which it is described... or embodied in such
work."
Notice how this anti-GPL crank elides the idea, procedure, etc.
phrase with an ellipsis. Of course, without that elision, the
copyright law says that protection extends to the work but not the
idea, exactly the way it has always been construed. That's what the
court says in Atari v. Nintendo
<http://digital-law-online.info/cases/24PQ2D1015.htm> and it's what
the court says in Apple v. Franklin
<<http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=10063204125696546680>.