Algorithms or Copyright, Was: Plagiary or politics?

[Robert Jasiek <jasiek@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Elmer Elevator wrote:
> your most magic original algorithms

An algorithm is an object of science; it cannot be copyrighted.
An algorithm as part of a source code of a public program to which
copyright applies or of a private design draft may not be examined
without permission by the author. So one has to prove that a
particular algorithm is the result of illegal examination and not
of reinvention.

Trivial examples:
1) Every CG programmer can be expected to reinvent a data structure
for the concept of string. No one could argue that any illegal
examination would take place.
2) A program might have an algorithm with an assignment for some
constant parameter c:=0.164282478. Another program with a value
d:=0.16428248 in the same context would be alleged of illegal 
examination of the other program.
3) Two programs by independent developers with, say, 50% common
major algorithms mean an illegal developer of one of them.

-- 
robert jasiek
http://www.snafu.de/~jasiek/