Ken is not the only one who has implied circumventing alleged copyright
on icons and artwork by redrawing them.
Before this, last time I think I remember seeing something similar in
connection with Quaqua and Leopard artwork,
but it is a very common ploy.
Even if Mark Twain said something to the effect "where ever copyright
is mentioned fools gather" I would
be interested on some authorative opinion on this. Mine is not. I know
from experience this is a touch subject and
I hope not to stir any flame war or hurt anyone's feelings, so let me
state that for me this is totally
academic and impersonal, not against anyone or supporting any cause, so
this is not directly in
reference to Ken's mail which just prompted me to start on this
subject.
Having said that:
If there is a copyright on an icon or artwork, how does redrawing it
remove this copyright? Redrawing
is just one means of copying that artwork. And as far as I see
copyright law does not state that
some form of copying is ok and some is not.
On the other hand, icons are such small things and all, say push
buttons or arrows, so much alike,
that even minuscule changes could be deemed to make an icon orignal
work of art and not be
a derivative work of the original artwork. Or so I would argue, if I
tried to pull off the redraw
stunt.
Is there a copyright on an, say arrow, icon? This, as I can see it,
realy depends on the icon and even
if a single icon does not have a copyright, a collection of artwork
can, as a whole, have copyright. On the
otherhand Apple was unsuccesfull in its law suit to defend the Mac look
and feel as a whole. I find it
hard to believe that the most of the icons, scroll bars, brushed
metal, progress bar etc could be succesfully
defended in the court as being original enough to warranty copyright
protection.
Even if they were copyrighted, isn't there an implied licence to copy
them?
Any time a user invokes an application, it is deemed as making a copy
of that application, after all that is the
bases of enforcing copyright on software in the first place. If running
a software would not be copying then
copyright law would not apply and we could all do as we please. So when
I create a web page and put a button on
it and Safari renders it using the Apple artwork I think it is clear
that this allowed and not a copyright
violation and thus we can concude that there is an impled licence to
copy, atleast under these circumstances.
And there are myriads of such implied cases and circumstances, none on
which Apple has ever attempted to to enforce
copyright, so I think it would be hard to convince a judge and a jury
that they do not allow copying.
I think it is too much to expect a stand on this from Apple, but I
would not hesitate to use a lot of
the Aqua icon bitmaps and some such small things without redrawing
them, if I so fancied.
Of course Apple is a big corporation and you usually get the best
justice money can buy, so even a
smallest hint of litigation from Apple would be enough get me back in
line.
br Kusti
>>> Ken Orr <email@hidden> 1.7.2008 22:03 >>>
I've redrawn these images in Fireworks (I wanted to avoid any
murkiness of using Apples image artwork) - if you'd be interested in
using my icons I'd be happy to send them to you.
On Jul 1, 2008, at 2:32 PM, Mike Swingler wrote:
> On Jul 1, 2008, at 11:09 AM, Steve McLeod wrote:
>
>> Hi there,
>>
>> This code, when run on Leopard, gives me a nice "add" button.
>> JButton addButton = new JButton(new
>> ImageIcon(Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit().getImage("NSImage://
>> NSAddTemplate")));
>>
>> Unfortunately "NSImage://..." is only available on Leopard, as far
>> as I can tell.
>>
>> Can someone suggest a nice alternative approach that works on
Tiger,
>> too?
>
> Unfortunately, this functionality only exists on Leopard. Even if
you
> write JNI and call [NSImage imageNamed:], the NSAddTemplate stock
> image does not exist on Tiger for native applications.
>
> Sorry,
> Mike Swingler
> Java Frameworks Engineer
> Apple Inc.
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