On 19.11.2012 18.33, Rich Freeman wrote: > On Mon, Nov 19, 2012 at 11:10 AM, Peter Stuge <pe...@stuge.se> wrote: >> Anthony G. Basile wrote: >>> The answer appears to be that a file is the unit >> >> I personally consider it to be smaller; a number of lines within >> a file, or even a single line, all depending on things. > > Yup - any creative expression is copyrightable. Your two line email > is completely copyrightable, and so is the one line you quoted. That > said, Anthony couldn't have used copyright to prevent you and I from > quoting him, as it would almost certainly be considered fair use. > That doesn't mean that his email wasn't copyrightable - only that > copyright is not an impervious protection. >
Under Finnish law there's the concept threshold of originality and I doubt you would get a court to accept a single line of email for that. There's also a body creating precedent for it but I haven't investigated their decisions. I tried googling but couldn't find a source for it but I think FSF has also operated so that they haven't required copyright assignment for single patches worth a couple lines. This is my memory from talking to a GNU maintainer some years back. Regards, Petteri
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