[Linux-aus] Meaning of object code/binary format/executable format in GPL/BSD style licenses

[Glen Turner]

Andrew Donnellan wrote:

> I believe that under copyright law to be a separate copyrighted work
> requires that it be creative. Therefore, manually translating it can
> be considered creative (it's actually reimplementing the same
> algorithm (which cannot be copyrighted) in a different language),
> where as a machine translation is not creative and is therefore
> considered not copyrightable making it a derived work as it is based
> on an already copyrighter work.

That's not the case in Australian copyright law, since that
argument was successfully used in Apple Computer (a Apple II
clone maker copied the ROMs and Apple sued, Apple lost since
the ROM binary was of not a literary work -- the assembler
was the literary work).  After that success the legislation
was altered.