[Coco] The end of the Hot Coco saga?

[John R. Hogerhuis]

On Mon, 2005-07-25 at 19:06 -0700, Jim Cox wrote:
> I remember someone recently posting to the list that 
> recipies cannot be copyrighted, only the book that they 
> are in.
> 
> How would this logic apply to programs listed in 
> magazines?

Recipes are not protected by copyright to the extent that they are a
mere list of ingredients and purely useful instructions. The
instructions themselves, depending on various factors might be protected
in their particular expression. The basic idea is that copyright
protects a particular expression of ideas. If I copied the ingredients,
and reproduced the instructions from memory there would be no
infringement. That is, if you want to protect an invention, the law
gives you patents and trade secrets as the way to do that, not
copyright.

Computer software programs, however, are clearly protected by copyright.
Some things about software aren't, like say a header file that defines a
bunch of constants and a set of function declarations... that's pure
mechanism, there's probably only one way to write such a header file.
But actual program logic, comments, graphics produced by a program, etc.
are all covered by copyright, either to the original authors, or if they
assigned their copyrights, to the publisher of the program.

So nice try, unfortunately for us what you are suggesting would infringe
copyright. Just because one work is contained within another doesn't
mean that it loses protection. In fact every magazine is a web of
copyrights and copyright assignments. Take Hot Coco... the article text
and programs are copyrighted by their individual authors and owned by
themselves or their estates. They gave some kind of license to Wayne
Green to publish them. Same for advertisements. Then WG published a
magazine and created a new copyrighted work, each individual magazine
issue in which various design elements are put into play (the cover art,
the graphic design and layout, editorial columns, etc).

We are lucky with Rainbow that Lonnie knows what he can and cannot do
legally, and is happy to have people continue to enjoy Rainbow. Too bad
we can't say the same for IDG and Hot Coco.

-- John.