Homemade Silly Putty

kinema writes "Have you ever wanted a ball of Silly Putty as big as your head? Now you can make it at home. The University of Minnesota's Chemistry Department has instructions on how to make it on their website." Isn't silly putty a copyright circumvention tool? This should be regulated before it gets out of hand.

Comments

Gak?

[The Z Master]

This actually looks a lot like the recipe for Gak. The only difference is that Gak uses Borax, which, for all I know could be the same as sodium borate. Are Gak and silly putty perhaps the same except for the glue to sodium borate ratio?

Re:Dont Joke

[MartinG]

"silly putty" can't be copyrighted, because it is not a work.

It is probably a trademark, which could be enough to stop them using the words "silly putty", but not to stop them posting the instructions. To do that, they would need to have patented the technique of making it. Either way, copyright doesn't come into it.

Re:Dont Joke

[orthogonal]

[Much speculation by several posters about the patent, copyright, or trade secret status of the formula/recipe for Silly Putty.]

Here's what I find interesting: Slashdot links to a neat-o geek recipe for a toy, and the first thing many Slashdotters think about is the Intellectual Property status of the recipe.

I suspect that all these posters aren't lawyers; they're probably some form of "geek": engineers, programmers, mathematicians, chemists, what have you.

I also suspect that in the great years of Amerfican innovation in the 20th century -- even up to the last 10 years --, geeks would think of geek things: "wow, what could I do with a gallon of Silly Putty", "wonder if I could make it glow in the dark", etc.

Instead the geek's first reaction is more appropriate to the lawyer or law student. We've gotten so used to frivolous "business process" patents, blant SCO-like attempts to steal other people's ideas, and innovation stifling laws like the DMCA, that geeks have forgotten the instinct to innovate. Now, every geek puts on the lawyer hat, and considers, not "what could we do with that" but instead, "how could I get screwed over if I tried to innovate".

And if geeks aren't innovating, America's future has just gotten a lot more bleak.

I hope the plutocrats will remember that most of their riches (and comforts and health) grew out of geeks' playful desires to innovate, and realize that stifling innovation with Intellectual Property laws just means much less pie to go around, for plutocrat and peon alike.