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Comment by brookst | Hacker News Reader

Not advocating copyrightable software, but it seems clear to me that if databases are copyrightable because they represent curation, then software must be too.

Any line of code, probably not. But a program as a whole, sure.

Otherwise I think you blow up music copyrights too, since a single note isn’t copyrightable and a song is just a bunch of individual notes.

At some point, choosing, ordering, and organizing a collection of non-copyrightable quanta produces a copyrightable work. And I think it had to be that way.

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"if databases are copyrightable because they represent curation, then software must be too."

Circling back around to creative works, the process of making art is also one of curation, as had been amply demonstrated over 100 years ago by the Readymades of Marcel Duchamp.[1]

The curation involved in prompt selection and selection of which AI-generated works/images to use should therefore be just as copyrightable as databases, if all that copyright demands is curation.

[1] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Readymades_of_Marcel_Duchamp

I'll just go ahead and say Readymades aren't art and express my belief that the artistic community will survive the copyright loss of loosely arranged furniture so we can avoid justifying the current state of affairs with avante garde silliness. John Cage made a musical piece 4'33 which is 4 minutes and 33 seconds of silence which has as much to do with music as Readymades do with art.

His other works include curated noises such as buzzing blenders, falling objects, and street traffic. The only art is the act of convincing someone these things are art or deserving of copyright.

I've yet to find a better definition of art than that of Andy Warhol, who said "art is what you can get away with." Considering that both Duchamp and Cage got away with convincing the world that their work is art, it is.

To the degree that I've been able to verify, Warhol borrowed that one from Marshall McLuhan.

John Cage also wrote some genuinely beautiful music and was a sincere and thoughtful artist.

It just needs to said that he wasn't a merely a "gimmick" man.

I'm only familiar with those elements of his career so if you have so recommendations I'd be happy to explore his other work.

Try "A Room" for solo piano. It's akin to proto-minimalism with a bit more "spice".

His writing is apparently very good although I've never delved deep. His work was motivated by his interest in Zen and similar topics rather than any kind of high-concept modernism.

You mean to say he's a con artist?

I give the benefit of the doubt that Marchel Duchamp and others genuinely believed in the artistic merit of their works and their enthusiasm made it easier to persuade people to agree with their viewpoints. The brief history of these artforms suggests that in the absence of their champions they don't resonate with artists but are still talked about because they stoke conversation about the nature of art. Maybe that was their original intent. I don't think these endeavors were profitable enough to suggest dishonesty over passion but if someone tries to sell you a moose head mounted over a toilet for 500k because it's "art" you may want to question their motives.

Good art typically stands on it's own and connects with people without the need to explain why it's significant. Salvador Dali's work is visually interesting even if you have no clue what any of it means. If I see a bunch of objects scattered around a room it looks like clutter. If I see a bunch of paint splattered to a canvas if looks like a mess. If someone has to explain why these things are "art" is it the art that's compelling or their argument? The exception to that would be optical illusions.

Art is somewhat subjective so someone will always argue their own preference but if anything is art because "it's all subjective" then nothing is art. Buttering my toast in the morning could be art because I spread it using a spoon instead of a knife and that is an expression of rebellion against societal norms. Did I sell you on my art or my argument and is the latter what we want?

Apologies, I wasn't being serious - an attempt at wordplay.

I think the open question is whether software is in the realm of patents or of copyrights. It's not unreasonable to suggest the former, since software is kind of like a widget that does stuff, except virtualizing the "widget" part to run on a generic widget of sorts. Copyrights traditionally applied to works that you would consider "artistic" rather than "inventions."

What you're suggesting, about a minimal work, is litigated endlessly with respect to music copyrights (since a lot of pop music is very similar, arguments about plagiarism get crazy), but is part of the law already.

Aren’t dry, non-fiction books copyrightable? I don’t think “creative” necessarily means “artistic”, just making something where there was nothing. It’s hard for me to see a software program as a whole as uncreative in the same way logarithm tables are.

I agree it’s a complex are with no easy answer. But I really think that software, like words and notes and numbers, scales from the generic and unprotectable to the highly creative and protectable. I guess I’m saying we shouldn’t invalidate copyright based on the medium being software, any more than we would for the medium being audio.

The expression can be as dry as a desert. Is the result an act of creativity? The bar is pretty low.

Say you had a book that listed the price of eggs over 100 years. You introduced each chapter, perhaps describing the egg market at the time, etc.

The book is copyrightable though lists of egg prices aren’t. Maps are another fun case for copyright.

It’s neither, it doesn’t fit. Chip masks are another whole branch of IP law. As strange as it sounds, they are a bit like two sides of the same coin.

Software alone is not patentable. You get around that by patenting a system.

That is the state of the law today, where software gets copyrighted and can't be patented, but the debate about this is more about what ought to be the case.

Good luck changing it!

While not so in other jurisdictions, databases are not copyrightable in the US. That was true when I last read Groklaw at least.

Sweat of the brow (any work you do is copyrightable) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweat_of_the_brow

vs.

"Original work of authorship" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_law_of_the_United_St... (in particular the comparison section https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_law_of_the_United_St... )

The court case that set this difference down was Feist Publications, Inc., v. Rural Telephone Service Co. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_Publications,_Inc.,_v._R....

It would be good if songs weren't copyrightable. Going back to having music as a part of culture would be nice.

software works are normally subject to copyright without much further ado.

database works are more commonly subject to rights _similar_ to copyright, but often a class of work in its own right.

The US has for IP protections: copyright, patent, trademark, trade secret. There is no “similar to” copyright.

Databases can be copyrightable. Not all are, but to the extent IP protection extends to databases it will virtually always be copyright, with maybe an occasional trade secret (which is almost the opposite of copyright)

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