[primitivesuave]

Why was this downvoted? I found it to be a pretty interesting perspective, although I do think the equation of letters in a sentence to moves in a chess game is pretty weak. Moves made in a chess game are events that factually happened in the past - copyrighting them would be akin to copyrighting a certain historical event, such that only a copyright holder is given privilege to state information about it. Letters, words, and sentences are in a creative space of expression that has its own rules and regulations.

[umanwizard]

It's a historical fact that "primitivesuave" wrote down the sequence of letters "Why was this downvoted? I found it to be a pretty interesting perspective...", but if I published it, I'd still be violating your copyright.

What's the difference between that and a chess game (which takes significantly more intellectual effort than a messageboard comment)

[Scarblac]

The difference is that they are playing a sports match, not writing a comment. The current score/position of the match is just a fact, not an artistic creation.

[logicallee]

downvotes are probably because I could have taken on a legal perspective (but didn't), and I didn't talk about how much creativity goes into producing those facts. I want to be clear that I am fully behind the judge's choice: but he made it for pragmatic reasons, not because he couldn't have chosen for games to be copyrighted if he really wanted to. They could have been if he really wanted them to be, in the same way that simple melodies have been held to be copyrighted.

Where creative choices are incredibly constrained (as with a chess game -- there really isn't that much entropy going into one), or my example with simple melodies, the application of copyright becomes interesting.