Talk:Idea-expression divide

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Even more eloquently, Latham CJ in the Australian decision of Victoria Park Racing and Recreation Grounds Co. Ltd v. Taylor (1937) 58 CLR 479 and 498 said that if you are the first person to announce that a man has fallen off a bus, you cannot use the law of copyright to stop other people from announcing that fact.

Is that more eloquent? It's clearer, certainly, but I don't know that that constitutes eloquence. --Charles A. L. 15:53, Dec 10, 2003 (UTC)

Does this idea conflict with that of intellectual property? --anonymous

This article discusses copyright, which has an idea-expression divide. You may be thinking of trade secrets, which do not have an idea-expression divide. Perhaps you got confused by the use of the umbrella term "intellectual property", which lumps completely separate legal environments together; if so, this gives more weight to Mr. Stallman's arguments against the term. --Damian Yerrick 16:44, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Maps

How does the idea-expression divide relate to maps?

At one extreme you could look at a map that shows that Paris lies within the border of france and draw a box, label it "France" and put a dot in the middle somewhere to represent Paris. Surely that's fine, as you are merely re-expressing the idea, not copying the work.

So then you take a map and note that the coastline of an area goes from point (x1,y1) to (x2,y2) then to (x3,y3)... and back to (x1,y1) again. An you make your own map, using this information, that joins up those points.

Taking this to an extreme, you could get a computer to analyse where all the points are, convert them to a raw expression of the idea (as co-ordinates) and then draw your own map using those co-ordinates.

And how is that different from copying that map?

Ben Arnold 04:15, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

So you've made a map in the form of a polygon, but the map is not the territory. Your map has vertices; a territory bordered by natural features does not, instead appearing continuous at the classical scales used for cartography. I'd guess that in this case, the shape of the territory is the idea, and a polygon in some sort of GIS vector format, the choice of what internal bodies of water and what internal political boundaries to represent or omit, and how to label things, make up the expression. If you were to take or acquire aerial photographs, you could autotrace those and create a new work, where the creativity lies in your choice of autotrace program, its settings, and any manual touch-up that you do afterward. --Damian Yerrick 16:44, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Page name correct?

Is "idea-expression divide" the British usage? Most of the texts I've seen use "idea-expression dichotomy". Bryan 15:07, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Legal Question

in the first line it talks about the purpose of the law. I assume this means copyright law and not all law in general. this should be fixed if correct.