Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ok, I’ll put it this way. If every homework submission for a particular CS101 assignment was essentially identical, it’s not creative, it’s functional. That’s what I mean by 2+2=4. Oracle tried to hang Google with copied code for max(x,y), which returned the greater of two parameters. That’s what you get when every single byte of software is a “literary work” worthy of independent copyright protection. Bullshit. The…
I mean... I empathize with your feeling. I'm not telling you how I think things should be, but more about how things are, in practice. In practice , algorithms are not copyrighteable, but specific implementations of algorithms are copyrighteable (and, by default, are copyrighted as soon as they are set in some fixed medium). The issue of whether something is creative enough to warrant authorship rights or any other t…
As to how it works now? I agree with you.
But listen to the argument you’re making: The otherwise uncopyrightable functional code expression becomes copyrightable if and only if it is copied by another. The exact same expression, still uncopyrightable, is only free to use if independently created and only by those that created the expression, who may then restrict or license the uncopyrightable expression as they wish.
That’s where we are.