Sylloge: What kinds of imitation are permissible?

Why does this site look like Google?

Well, the original reason is lost to the some previous middle-of-the-night fog, but I thought something was funny. Can't remember what exactly, so I'm not sure if that funny thing made it in. But I have been thinking about the idea of intellectual property lately, and this made me think:

  1. Should I have been allowed to do this?
  2. In what respects should I be constrained in playing with found objects in the ideosphere?
  3. I copied the HTML from Google's pages and made the necessary changes, but I could have just as easily written it myself. In this case, does it make any difference?
  4. The logo I made myself (you can see how poorly the typefaces match if you compare them side-by-side) but the little underline graphic on this page I "saved as ..." from Google's site. Does it make any difference?
  5. This is not a parody of Google and doesn't fall under any other copyright exception that I know of. But I like Google (it is a great service) and would replace these pages without gripe if they asked me to (though I can't see why they would). Is that "good enough"?
And then, when I was doing the annoying job of writing the page to fit the Google search results format, a bunch of other questions came to mind:
  1. Is the transformation of "content" from one "presentation" or "view" to another something which can effectively be done by machines? In a generalizable way? Any arbitrary transformation?
  2. There is no matter without form. Can there be content be without design?
  3. Is there a clear cut distinction between content and design? (Is our everyday language on these matter theoretically defensible?) Or is the relationship more like the ends of a continuum? (I can't recommend Hofstadter's Le Ton beau de Marot enough on these matters.)
  4. Jouke Kleerebezem got me thinking about designing for searchers. This little exercise does nothing towards advancing on that idea, but it has been in my mind for quite a while now: "Now we know how to compose for a listener, how to write for a reader, how to build an interface for a user and how to cater to a client; but how will we author for a searcher?"
Of course, this is not an inappropriate place to make clear my attitude about "owning" the things that appear on Sylloge...


The Author Asserts the Moral Right to be Identified as the Author of this Work

I like the sound of that, and that's all I really want. If you want to do something with the photographs that I post here, commercial, personal, artistic or stupid, go ahead and do it. Credit is nice but not necessary (I'd like to hear about it if you can spare the email). Same goes for the graphics that I create for this site. Ditto the "ideas". Text must be credited, but you don't need to ask permission (again, letting me know is courtesy) — I can't imagine what use you'd have for the text though. Obviously, this does not apply to things I didn't create (which are either noted as such or are obvious). The moral right asserted in all other instances (or "creator", "artist", "photographer", etc., as appropriate) only prohibits you from claiming authorship (you liars).

I assert the moral right to be identified as the author, but I promise to exercise that right selectively. And I don't own any of it.

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