New subject: question about copyright and code, is this legal?

8 Oct 2003

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On Fri, 3 Oct 2003 23:07, Patrik Stridvall wrote:
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[correct summary of the law deleted]
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As far as Wine is concerned though I can't think of
any Windows API that:

Returns pure facts (not having any unique expression)
Would fulfill the requirement of needed a significant
effort to collect to collect the fact.

So no I wouldn't worry about it as far as Wine is concerned.
Unfortunately it appears there may be one: LCMapString. If 
all the things we 
have discovered about the tables are correct (and I am by no 
means assuming 
that they are), then the Microsoft sort key table meets the 
industrious 
collection requirements and returns facts in a way that could not be 
duplicated without duplicating the table (it returns the 
table entry in 
literal form, so it couldn't even be represented as a 
different table).
The significant effort requirement is for EACH fact seen by ITSELF.
For example if a make a database with the home and work addresses and
telephone numbers for every Wine contributor EACH fact seen by ITSELF
will take significant effort (at least on average) since they are
in most cases are not readily available.
In your example above anybody knowledgable in some language,
say Japanese, can easily determine the return values for
inputs involving their language for LCString AFAICS.
Futhermore the example I made above is what the law was designed
to protect so it is doubtful any court would even attempt to
extend it to your example. The intent of the lawmakers is VERY
important here in Sweden.
...
This is what is (generally) returned by LCMapString. The 
actual table is 
included in an external file under NT (sortkey.nls), so one 
option (likely 
the best option) would be to implement LCMapString using a 
standard table 
from unicode.org, then provide a facility so that people in 
the US and Canada 
can (at their own risk of course) use the Microsoft versions 
relying on 
Feist.
In addition I doubt any court in Sweden would even try the case since the
facts in questions was intentionally published by Microsoft in the US
where the collection of facts was not protected because of Feist
and thus legally importable from there...

RE: question about copyright and code, is this legal?