And such a copyright protects you from someone using your work of art in its
original form. If someone copies the idea or does an interpretation then
their work is a new piece of art and they own the copyright for their new
art.

In the case of a real cartoon (the area i'm familiar with regards to
copyrights) if I draw a cartoon and you photocopy it and put it on t-shirts
then i'm protected by copyright laws. If you draw your own version of it (no
matter how good it is) and put it on t-shirts then i'm not covered.

I'm not sure how that transfers over to generated code...

I did have a (crazy) idea for a program that outputs every combination of
1's and 0's to a floppy disk. Given there is a finite number of combinations
that can go onto a disk, that means that my program can "write" any program
at all, given enough time. So once I release my program, anyone who
publishes a program on a floppy disk after I have released my program, I can
sue them because they used my program to write theirs. I've not tested this
idea so your milage may vary. :)

cheers,
Stephen

On Mon, Feb 1, 2010 at 4:51 PM, PhilB <[email protected]> wrote:

> My understanding is that anything you write is considered a work of art and
> is hence considered copyrighted to you.
> If you created a screen design with associated event code then this is
> definitely your copyright, even though you may have used part of it from
> another source (eg CodeProject.com).
> I believe that this is the case even when you do custom software for a
> paying customer.
>
> If you were an artist who was engaged to paint a portrait of somebody who
> later became famous, the painting may become valuable and be owned by
> somebody. However I believe that they cannot copy it without your
> permission.
>
> If you pay to get house plans drawn up for you, you only own the ability to
> show them to other people.
> If you wanted to get the Autocad or Revitt source file then you would have
> to ask very nicely and you may indeed be refused even though you have paid
> for the design.
>
> Having said that there are many countries that do not recognise
> international copyright law.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email protected]
> [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Tony Wright
> Sent: Monday, 1 February 2010 1:55 AM
> To: [email protected]; 'ausDotNet'
> Subject: Code generation and copyright
>
> Hi all,
>
> Possibly stupid middle of the night question:
>
> I'm interested in knowing if anyone knows how copyright applies to code
> generation. I'm talking about the code that gets produced, not the tool
> itself.
>
> Of course each piece of generated code will be unique based on any unique
> inputs to whatever template you select. Is that what makes it yours?
>
> I know people will probably make assumptions because we all do it - however
> has anyone actually looked at what the implications of this is?
>
> Regards,
> Tony
>
>
>

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