[free-sklyarov] Topicality

[Karsten M. Self]

on Thu, Sep 13, 2001 at 09:20:29AM -0400, Roger Sperberg (rsperberg at yahoo.com) wrote:
> David Haworth wrote:
> > The ability to have your book read aloud to you, whether by a human or
> > by a computer, ought to be an automatic right and not a "permission"
> > that a publisher must explicitly grant.
> 
> Long before there was the capability for computers to read a text
> aloud to you, the audio rights for books were separated out as a
> revenue source for publishers.

Audio rights as expressed by phonocopies.  Not audio rights as expressed
by a different interpretation path of the same fundamental underlying
copy of data.

Any attempt to use copyright law to constrain use of a copy of a work --
use in such a form that does not produce a fixed copy in tangible
medium, and text-to-speach is such non-fixed expression of a work -- is
creating a fundamentally new interpretation of copyright law.  Section
1201 has already done this, but barring 1201, I cannot see
text-to-speech as an exclusive right.

Copyright specifically addresses various works covered by copyright
(sections 102 and 103):

  http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/102.html

  (a) Copyright protection subsists, in accordance with this title, in
  original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of
  expression, now known or later developed, from which they can be
  perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or
  with the aid of a machine or device.  Works of authorship include the
  following categories:

    (1) literary works;
    (2) musical works, including any accompanying words;
    (3) dramtic works, including any accompanying music;
    (4) pantomimes and chreographic works;
    (5) pictoral, graphic, and sculptural works;
    (6) motion pictures and other audiovisual works;
    (7) sound recordings; and
    (8) architectural works.


  (b) In no case does copyright protection for an original work of
  authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of
  operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in
  which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in a work.


As I read that, securing copyright protections to prohibit a mode of
extraction of expression is expressly excluded by 102(b), as a "process,
system, [or] method of operation".

IANAL, TINLA

Peace.

-- 
Karsten M. Self <kmself at ix.netcom.com>          http://kmself.home.netcom.com/

Praying for the victims. 
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