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Comment by fsck0ff | Hacker News Reader

I can't believe a list of commands is GPL licensed, this is ridiculous...

By the letter of the law, the arrangement is copyrightable, though the information itself is not, in the same way that the arrangement of a phone book is copyrightable even though the phone numbers are not. Yes, it is ridiculous.

> the arrangement of a phone book is copyrightable

Not in the US.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_v._Rural

http://www.law.cornell.edu/copyright/cases/499_US_340.htm

You just posted links that agree with the person you're replying too - that a list of numbers is not copyrightable but arranging that list in a particular way becomes copyrightable.

> The court ruled that Rural's directory was nothing more than an alphabetic list of all subscribers to its service, which it was required to compile under law, and that no creative expression was involved. The fact that Rural spent considerable time and money collecting the data was irrelevant to copyright law, and Rural's copyright claim was dismissed.

Therefore, the arrangement was not copyrightable, as it was a simple alphabetic listing with no creativity.

> In regard to collections of facts, O'Connor states that copyright can only apply to the creative aspects of collection: the creative choice of what data to include or exclude, the order and style in which the information is presented, etc., but not on the information itself. If Feist were to take the directory and rearrange them it would destroy the copyright owned in the data.

The arrangement was copyrightable. An alphabetic list isn't, but arranging that list turns it into something copyrightable.

> An alphabetic list isn't

And this, and nothing else, is what we're talking about.

Here's the post that I responded to.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5342078

> the arrangement of a phone book is copyrightable

An alphabetical list is not copyrightable, but you can arrange a phonebook to make it copyrightable.

The arrangement of a phonebook can be copyrightable.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com