lionelhill
Technical User
This is another of those dull copyright questions...
The world is awash with books of Sudoku puzzles, all of which are (of course) copyrighted. The world is also awash with Sudoku software, freeware, shareware, cheapware, even expensiveware. It's a nice easy problem to do, and many of us Sudoku addicts have had a go, mostly for the selfish reason that we didn't want to buy the newspaper or someone else's software.
(1) OK, the probability is absolutely tiny, but on the principle that anything that can go wrong in software will, and always at the wrong moment in the wrong hands, what is the ethical and legal situation if the Editor of a National Newspaper happens to turn on my freeware Sudoku generator, and it accidentally (and entirely randomly) generates today's copyrighted newspaper puzzle?
(2) And what's the situation with puzzles like this anyway? Should they be copyrighted? Can it be enforced? Anyone can download a freeware generator and produce a bookful of puzzles at the touch of a button, but there's no creativity in the process, and I find it hard to think of the button-pusher as having ownership over the creation. But equally, there's no way you can prove from a Sudoku that it was carefully crafted by human hand (like many of the best puzzles) rather than made randomly by someone else's software.
The world is awash with books of Sudoku puzzles, all of which are (of course) copyrighted. The world is also awash with Sudoku software, freeware, shareware, cheapware, even expensiveware. It's a nice easy problem to do, and many of us Sudoku addicts have had a go, mostly for the selfish reason that we didn't want to buy the newspaper or someone else's software.
(1) OK, the probability is absolutely tiny, but on the principle that anything that can go wrong in software will, and always at the wrong moment in the wrong hands, what is the ethical and legal situation if the Editor of a National Newspaper happens to turn on my freeware Sudoku generator, and it accidentally (and entirely randomly) generates today's copyrighted newspaper puzzle?
(2) And what's the situation with puzzles like this anyway? Should they be copyrighted? Can it be enforced? Anyone can download a freeware generator and produce a bookful of puzzles at the touch of a button, but there's no creativity in the process, and I find it hard to think of the button-pusher as having ownership over the creation. But equally, there's no way you can prove from a Sudoku that it was carefully crafted by human hand (like many of the best puzzles) rather than made randomly by someone else's software.
