The Cunctator cunctator at gmail.com wrote:
On 4/3/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
On Mon, 02 Apr 2007 17:21:12 -0600, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
In this case, the criterion for list membership is "has been on the Top Gear Cool Wall". This is no more a matter of subjective interpretation than coming up with a cast list for an ongoing TV show.
That is defensible in the case of an individual car, yes. Like saying it was No. 1 in the charts. But, as with the charts, including the entire list violates copyright.
Huh? You keep repeating this, but the evidence for the claim just isn't there.
I am not a copyright lawyer (thanks be to God after reading this thread) but it is quite clear that this list is a violation of copyright. The decision to put cars in various sections of the 'Cool Wall' is a creative process. Copying the results of this creative process in its entirety is therefore a violation of copyright. The copyright rests in the compiling of a list by arbitrary criteria; compiling a list by objective criteria would not be copyright.
The Stanford guide to Copyright and fair use is clear:
http://fairuse.stanford.edu/Copyright_and_Fair_Use_Overview/chapter0/0-a.htm...
"the work must be original -- that is, independently created by the author. It doesn't matter if an author's creation is similar to existing works, or even if it is arguably lacking in quality, ingenuity or aesthetic merit. So long as the author toils without copying from someone else, the results are protected by copyright.
Finally, to receive copyright protection, a work must be the result of at least some creative effort on the part of its author. There is no hard and fast rule as to how much creativity is enough. As one example, a work must be more creative than a telephone book's white pages, which involve a straightforward alphabetical listing of telephone numbers rather than a creative selection of listings."
What we have here is a creative selection of listings.