Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
No, not the XHTML structure of the book, but the CSS definitions themselves. This is arguably a "creative" component of the book and hence may be subject to copyright. As I said in an earlier post, though, a little research suggests that there has been no legal decision made as to whether an XML scheme constitutes a programming language or a program, and hence it is up in the air as to whether or not it actually is protected by copyright.
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It's not "up in the air" at all and I wouldn't use the word "arguably" here - again, the copyright is for the content of the book. Show me the CSS in the pbook version and you'd come close to maybe having something that remotely resembles a point. From a technical standpoint, CSS is not XML (not even close), so pardon my confusion regarding your "XML schema" comment.
Just because something hasn't been settled in court, doesn't mean it's up for discussion. The question whether cars are fruits or vegetables hasn't been decided by a court either.
And even if you could somehow make the argument that a given set of CSS files is a "computer program", the publisher would either have to register a separate copyright for the CSS as a "computer program" (which no publisher has ever done and it's doubtful that ebook CSS merits copyright protection in the first place, see below) or you'd need to show that it is substantially a part of the copyrighted work itself and not merely a technical necessity. Again, your argument strikes me as overly pedantic and literal-minded - it's akin to claiming that we can't use the colour black when discussing "Harry Potter" because "Harry Potter" is printed in black and using it would somehow infringe copyright.
A computer program is not copyrightable under all circumstances; in the US, for example, it needs, among other things, to be "sufficient to constitute original authorship." This is essentially a threshold question whether the “de minimis” maxim [that there has to be a minimum amount of originality for copyright protection] applies. Furthermore, the program needs to provide a humanly-readable copyright notice and it must be registered at the copyright office.
Neither of these three conditions apply for the CSS of an ebook (the first condition might apply for a very typographically, richly illustrated book like "The House of Leaves" which still leaves you way short of copyrightable material).
While I understand that it is necessary for MR to not even come close to copyright infringement, your claims in this thread are a little... let's just say, out there.
Matt