RE: [dvd-discuss] Bunner wins DeCSS trade secret appeal

[Noah silva <nsilva(at)atari-source.com>]

> Congress was not so much trying to provide a language to distinguish computer
> science properties, but rather to distinguish copyright properties. They needed
> to determine what would qualify for the section 117 machine use copying
> rules(installation, adaption for use, and archiving). They provided a
> definition that captures all things that these concepts are relevent to.
> 
> I beleive there have been copyright cases over html code, for example, which
> was considered it to be a programming language. Most computer scientists will
> find this a bit odd, but a purest could argue that there isn't much difference
> between the gcc application parsing text written in C and mozilla parsing html.
> Both perform a well defined and repeatable transition of machine state.
> 
In my mind the difference is that the HTML needs mozilla, and the output
of gcc doesn't need gcc anymore. but....

the difference here is while I might argue that HTML isn't a program or
that my object file generated from pascal code is... I think they are both
should enjoy copyright protection, along with your Excel macro (if it's
non-trivial), etc.

 -- noah silva