[ExI] Copyright law meets synthetic life meets James Joyce

[Bryan Bishop]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org>
Date: Fri, Mar 18, 2011 at 8:28 AM
Subject: [biomed] Copyright law meets synthetic life meets James Joyce
To: tt at postbiota.org, biomed at postbiota.org


http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2011/03/15/copyright-law-meets-synthetic-life-meets-james-joyce/

Copyright law meets synthetic life meets James Joyce

Last year I wrote about how Craig Venter and his colleagues had inscribed a
passage from James Joyce into the genome of a synthetic microbe. The line,
“To live, to err, to fall, to triumph, to recreate life out of life,” was
certainly apropos, but it was also ironic, since it is now being defaced as
Venter’s microbes multiply and mutate.

Turns out there’s an even weirder twist on this story. Reporting from SXSW,
David Ewalt writes about a talk Venter just gave. Venter recounted how,
after
the news of the synthetic microbe hit, he got a cease-and-desist letter from
the Joyce estate. Apparently, the estate claimed he should have asked
permission before copying the language. Venter claimed fair use.

Man, do I wish this would go to court! Imagine the legal arguments. I wonder
what would happen if the court found in the Joyce estate’s favor. Would
Venter have to pay for every time his microbes multiplied? Millions of
little
acts of copyright infringement?

http://blogs.forbes.com/davidewalt/2011/03/14/craig-venters-genetic-typo/

Craig Venter’s Genetic Typo

Mar. 14 2011 - 12:00 pm | 3,339 views | 1 recommendation | 9 comments

By DAVID M. EWALT

J. Craig Venter. Image via Wikipedia

In May 2010, geneticist J. Craig Venter and his team made news by creating
the first “synthetic life form,” replacing the genetic code in a bacterium
with DNA they’d composed on a computer.

But during a presentation delivered Monday morning at the South By Southwest
convention in Austin, Texas, Venter talked about two ways the landmark
innovation went wrong.

In order to distinguish their synthetic DNA from that naturally present in
the bacterium, Venter’s team coded several famous quotes into their DNA,
including one from James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist of a Young Man:
“To
live, to err, to fall, to triumph, to recreate life out of life.”

After announcing their work, Venter explained, his team received a cease and
desist letter from Joyce’s estate, saying that he’d used the Irish writer’s
work without permission. ”We thought it fell under fair use,” said Venter.

The synthetic DNA also included a quote from physicist Richard Feynman,
“What
I cannot build, I cannot understand.”

That prompted a note from Caltech, the school where Feyman taught for
decades. They sent Venter a photo of the blackboard on which Feynman
composed
the quote –and it showed that he actually wrote, “What I cannot create, I do
not understand.”

“We agreed what was on the Internet was wrong,” said Venter. “So we’re going
back to change the genetic code to correct it.”
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- Bryan
http://heybryan.org/
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