On 5/20/05, Michael K. Edwards <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > As a paraphrase of candidate E, it's erroneous. The grammar, as I > read it, doesn't allow it to be anything else. But a licensee is > certainly welcome to argue for the presence of an ambiguity there if > they have some reason to prefer candidate C.
One other observation here: It's entirely possible that a court would not find this phrasing ambiguous. Here's the full text of the definition of "derivative work" from 17 USC 101: A "derivative work" is a work based upon one or more preexisting works, such as a translation, musical arrangement, dramatization, fictionalization, motion picture version, sound recording, art reproduction, abridgment, condensation, or any other form in which a work may be recast, transformed, or adapted. A work consisting of editorial revisions, annotations, elaborations, or other modifications which, as a whole, represent an original work of authorship, is a "derivative work". I believe that we've established that for a work to be "not a derivative work" that it's not sufficient to show that it's a collective work. And, some of those possibilities -- elaborations, annotations, adapted, recast, etc. as well as the bit about "based upon one or more preexisting works" all seem to point at the idea that if a computer program as a whole is to be granted special copyright protection beyond that of its individual components that it is a derivative work of those components. And I think we can agree that, at least within the U.S., this definition is a part of copyright law. [On the flip side, if it can be shown in court that there's some criteria under which all programs are free of copyright law, that's probably a good thing for the free software community.] -- Raul
