James D. Forrester wrote:
On Saturday, March 19, 2005 8:07 AM, Rick
<giantsrick13(a)yahoo.com> wrote:
--- "James D. Forrester"
<james(a)jdforrester.org> wrote:
On Friday, March 18, 2005 7:56 PM, Rick
<giantsrick13(a)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.
The former is a work of art (there is always going to be some imprecision in
the drawing of a map vs. the original actual borders as seen on the Earth
from a height which might serve to cause the map's creation to be seen as
sufficiently intelligent as to warrant copyright status, notwithstanding the
selection of transformation to map from an ablate sphere to a plane, itself
(the selection, not the mechanical transformation, of course) arguably a
concious design creation.
Case in point: in the UK, the Ordanance Survey (governmental agency) and the
AA (car rescue service) both make maps independently; they alter these maps
by adding small deviances (bends in borders, squiggles in rivers, et al.) so
that copiers are detectable, but it is the copying of the map itself, not
the inclusion of their random squiggles. BICBW.
I don't think that the issue is that simple. The regional districts in
British Columbia are a creation of provincial legislation, and although
I have not researched in detail the statutes that began creating these
in 1965, a formal dexcription (if not a map) of these districts is a
part of the law. This then leads to the question of the extent to which
crown copyright applies to statutory law. In the recent Supreme Court
ruling (CCH Canadian v. Law Society of Upper Canada) which had to do
with photocopying headnotes and other added material from reports of
legal cases there was a clear statement that the decisions of judges
themselves were not copyrightable, but nothing was said about the
underlying statutes.
The current BC government is particularly business friendly, and is very
keen to put a lot of public services into private hands to the delight
of the people who are its most ardent supporters. Where government
printing and publishing services are concerned it is clear that the
illusion of copyright protection makes the enterprise more marketable.
I'm aware of the trick that would make inconsequential changes to
geographic features for the purpose of being able to trace the source of
a map. But Mr. O'Neil has made no such claim in support of his
allegation. Such changes would be probative only, and would be too
trivial to generate any kind of derivative copyright Non-trivial
changes in this case would be wilfull misrepresentation of laws by
government employees, and I doubt that they would want to go down that
road Opposition voices might see this differently in the context of
the upcoming provincial election in May.
I think we should keep the maps. It should be made clear, though, that
their status in the public domain existed before they were contributed,
and that that status does not arise because of the actions of the
contributor. What can O'Neil do about it?
Ec