From: Rick giantsrick13@yahoo.com Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia map of British Columbia --- "James D. Forrester" james@jdforrester.org wrote:
On Friday, March 18, 2005 7:56 PM, Rick giantsrick13@yahoo.com wrote:
How can a red dot on an otherwise blank map of
British
Columbia with the county lines listed, possibly be copyrighted?
One imagines that the contention is that the source blank map is in fact held in copyright.
How is a blank map with the outlines of the counties copyrighted? Any more than a list of counties would be copyrightable.
RickK
Off-topic, yet, somehow, I feel, relevant:
He had bought a large map representing the sea, Without the least vestige of land: And the crew were much pleased when they found it to be A map they could all understand.
"What`s the good of Mercator`s North Poles and Equators, Tropics, Zones, and Meridian Lines?" So the Bellman would cry: and the crew would reply "They are merely conventional signs!
"Other maps are such shapes, with their islands and capes! But we`ve got our brave Captain to thank: (So the crew would protest) "that he`s bought us the best-- A perfect and absolute blank!"
--Lewis Carroll, "The Hunting of the Snark"
And the iTunes Music Store sells completely silent tracks with DRM protection for $0.99...
...and John Cage's publisher claims copyright protection for the work 4'33", consisting of that quantity of silence, and claimed infringement and demanded a quarter of the royalties for a work by Mike Batt consisting of a minute of silence, see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/music/2133426.stm . (Batt insisted his silence was original and not a quotation a portion of Cage's work...) By the way, anyone who thinks that's ludicrous had better be aware that it's nothing but... and should consider joining the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
-- Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith@verizon.net "Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print! Sample chapter at http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html Buy it at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/