On 16 Nov 2006 at 15:07, Johannes Gebauer wrote: > On 15.11.2006 Noel Stoutenburg wrote: > > Yes, well it's more complex than that, more on the order of > > "character 82 1024 evpu's from the beginning of frame 2348, with > > character 236 located above character 82 and syllable 463 from the > > lyrics table located .4376 inches below the bottom of the staff". > > Some elements, like the characters in the fonts used are > > incorporated by reference, other items, like the distance of the > > character from the frame, are directly in the file, and I am of the > > opinion that the Supreme court having decided that the description > > of a single character is a "computer program", that lower courts > > would likely rule by extension, that a Finale file is a "computer > > program" too. > > Well, they are. I honestly cannot see the basic difference between a > data file like a Finale file and a Visual Basic data file. In fact, > Word files may even contain Visual Basic data.
Well, a Finale file is a database file, not a computer program, like a VB file (or VBA in the case of Word). Data is not copyrightable, so I think that it would be a gray area. But I don't think it really matters. A photographer's negative (or in the age of digital photography, the raw digital photo) is not a computer program, but it is required to produce the final printed photo, and the photograph retains copyright in the negative. A Finale file seems much more like the negative than anything else, seems to me, whether it counts as a computer program or a data file. The court in the Sawkins case found that the expertise required to make the edition was sufficient to give Sawkins his own copyright in the edition, even though there was nothing whatsoever in what Sawkins did that any other musicologist would not have done exactly the same (he was constrained by the evidence in the sources and the harmony and structure in the music itself). There's far more "creativity" in engraving with Finale than there is in what Sawkins did, in my opinion, though both require significant amounts of expertise. I don't agree with the Sawkins decision, personally, but it is the law in certain domains. As an analogy, it seems to me to be pretty close based on the reasoning used by the judge in the case. -- David W. Fenton http://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
