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EU Court Adviser Says Software Ideas Can't Be Copyrighted
bhagwad writes "The EU continues to ooze common sense as a court insists that software functions themselves cannot be copyrighted. Drawing a box or moving cursor are examples. To quote: 'If it were accepted that a functionality of a computer program can be protected as such, that would amount to making it possible to monopolize ideas, to the detriment of technological progress and industrial development.'" Note that this is a "non-binding opinion by Yves Bot, an advocate-general at the Luxembourg-based EU Court of Justice,"
and that the court "will rule on the case next year."
So drawing a box or moving a cursor *on a PC* should be applicable to copyright?
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
My opinion.
Company A should not be able to use Company B's sourcecode should they decompile it (or steal it).
However if Company B creates software that moves widgets around a screen depending on buttons you press on a keyboard. Or causes widgets to do tasks- they should not be able to prevent Company A mimicing their software.
Certainly, things like corporate logos should be protected- but what the software does functionally shoudln't.
If one company can independantly write source that acts the same as another company- they have derived it seperately and fairly.
I'm of the same feelings of patents too. If company A can make a machine to do the same as company B- they should be allowed.
They shouldn't be allowed to mould their parts on the other company and build their own machine that way- but if they can build an equivalent machine that does the same thing- that shouldn't be illegal.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
I think both out-of-control bankers and out-of-control IP squabbles are symptoms of the current attitude in society, or at least among MBAs, that money can be created out of nothing. It's financial alchemy: it appears to work at first, but only because they are siphoning money away from somewhere else in the process, hence the recession. Solve the underlying attitude problem, and we solve all the symptoms at once. How to do that, I have no idea.
I am making the case, that people who exploit loophole are generelly frowned upon by other people. A ambulance chasing lawer would be a typical example. Strangely, it's A-OK for corporations to do so.
And I reffer to your "That may be, but if bullshit is the law it is hard to fault companies for using it to their maximum advantage[...}". It would be not hard at all, it we would be talking about people.
Friend, the corporations we have to worry about are not the "US corporations" or the "British corporations" or the "French corporations".
The ones that are destroying our societies on both sides of the Atlantic (and Pacific) are the transnational corporations who strive for a position of power above mere nations.
It's not yet too late to put these out-of-control entities back in their place, but it will take a long hard fight. The good news is that the fight has begun, apparently all around the world.
You are welcome on my lawn.