Copyrighting empty files

[dsill at relay.nswc.navy.mil]

>From: Kenneth Almquist <ka at june.cs.washington.edu>
>AT&T could claim that an empty file infringed on its copyright of /bin/true
>by asserting that the empty file was a derived work, but since the process
>of converting the System V true program to the empty file involves deleting
>every single line of text from the System V true program, I expect that a
>court would rule that the empty file does not contain any points of
>similarity to the AT&T true program, even if AT&T could prove that the
>empty file was constructed using the command
>
>	sed '1,$d' /bin/true > empty

Ah, but an empty file and AT&T's `true' *are* similar in that they
both contain no executable statements.  If the empty file is also
executable, then they have even more in common.  And if it happens to
have the same name or performs the same function, then maybe they *do*
have something in common.  The saving grace, though, is that a judge
is very unlikely to decide that the implementation of `true' is an
innovation, and not an obvious, natural outcome of the shell
environment.

And AT&T wouldn't have to prove that the empty file was created by
manually manipulating their copyrighted work; that's just not the way
copyright law works.

-Dave (dsill at relay.swc.navy.mil)