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Comment by burgerbrain | Hacker News Reader

"That's a self-defeating statement. By copying it, you've acknowledged its value."

I've just copied your comment, but I nevertheless think that it is of low value (as evidence against your hypothesis, I present the case of myself copying your low value comment...).

Proof by recursion!

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This raised a (silly) question in my head: Does a public comment on the Internet, like the one he made, fall under his copyright thus allowing him to deny you the right to copy it?

Technically yes, I believe so. I suspect it would be rather hard to win that case however.

Technically yes, but your response is fair use because the purpose and character of your response was literally "fair and reasonable criticism" and did not "supersede the use of the original work".

Exact same reason parody is cool.

Why technically? Simply yes, unless the website terms and conditions provides otherwise.

However his quoting of it would probably fall under fair use, even though he copied all of it.

I only said technically because the case for fair use would be so strong that in practice I doubt I could actually be sued successfully.

One could argue that the very fact that you saw fit to copy my statement to present an "impressive" rebuttal proves that my statement was valuable artistically.

I don't believe that the materials used in art need have artistic value of their own.

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