Semi-OT: Congress about to limit artists' copyright rights

[Luke -Jr]

#include <stdio.h>

int main(int argc, char **argv) {
	puts("Hello world!");
}

---

I just wrote this small program. It is sufficiently complex (IMO) to qualify 
for automatic copyright protection. I wrote it from scratch, so that 
copyright is mine.

I am entirely sure that this exact code has been written by many others many 
times in the past. I may have even looked at their code. However, because I 
just wrote *this* program from scratch and without copying or even consulting 
someone else's, I hold the copyright to it. On the same matter, I am also not 
infringing on anyone else's copyright.

Whether I can prove this in court or not is an unrelated question. If sued 
over this particular piece of code, no doubt I could call many witnesses from 
the industry who would state that the code could very probably be an original 
work of mine and not copied. While this might not be the case for most code, 
it could very well be claimed for code which has only one possible or 
reasonable implementation, such as certain parts of device drivers or 
workarounds for bugs.