Re: [future of drivers?] a proposal for binary drivers.

David Schwartz
2006-03-13T02:23:45Z

Sorry for any format issues, I'm not able to use my normal email client
right now.

> Static Controls also explicitly says that the analysis of whether
> scenes a faire applies is vastly different for a work of greater
> complexity and size than the TLP ("Neither do the cited cases support
> the district court's initial frame of reference. [cases cited],
> involved copies of Apple's operating system program -- a program whose
> size and complexity is to the Toner Loading Program what the Sears
> Tower is to a lamppost. Given the nature of the Apple program, it
> would have been exceedingly difficult to say that practical
> alternative means of expression did not exist...").

The whole issue here is people who claim that copyright allows them to own
*any* way to make an NE2000 network card work with linux v2.6. How can you
say that practical alternative means exist if the claim is that every such
way is owned?

You can use hardware that's already supported in the kernel. You can use
other operating systems than Linux. But Static Controls could also have made
cartridges for other printers or printers from other manufacturers.

The issue is not the complexity of the TLP, the issue is simply that you
cannot use copyright to get protection that is capable of being expressed in
functional terms. You cannot own every way to express a functional idea.
That's what patents are for.

DS