Could, not be more obvious...the most basic information

The decision is next concerned with Rural’s selection of listings.

Rural’s selection of listings could not be more obvious: It publishes the most basic information - name, town, and telephone number - about each person who applies to it for telephone service. This is ‘selection’ of a sort, but it lacks the modicum of creativity necessary to transform mere selection into copyrightable expression. Rural expended sufficient effort to make the white pages directory useful, but insufficient creativity to make it original.

(Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Tel. Service Co., Inc., 1991, pp. 362-363)

The concern with Rural’s white pages directory identifies the level of creativity as continuous with ‘devoid of even the slightest trace of creativity’ (p. 362). ‘[Insufficient creativity’ (p. 362) must be read, from the connection to Rural’s directory, as referring to the absence of creativity. ‘[I]nsufficient’ (p. 362), as a term, also implies a level contiguous to the boundary with creativity. The nature of selection involved in ‘insufficient creativity’ (p. 362) is characterized as ‘could not be more obvious ... the most basic information ... “selection” of a sort’ (pp. 362-363).

Obvious occurs elsewhere in the decision, in quotations, as self-evident and can be similarly interpreted here (Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Tel. Service Co., Inc., 1991, pp. 345, 359). Basic is used both as fundamental - ‘basic copyright principles’ (p. 354) - and as simple or the lowest possible level - ’basic subscriber

Creativity utterly lacking 45 information’ (p. 363) - and simple and lowest possible level can be understood here. Information in compilations is consistently differentiated from data, intensely from ‘raw data’ (p. 361), as data organized into a more coherent form. ‘[M]ost basic’ in conjunction with ‘information’ then implies data that has been subject to a simple transformation into information.

Information, in the decision, functions as the final term in a hierarchy, raw data, data, information, in which each term is differentiated from the preceding term by processing conducted.

‘[Selection’ in ‘Rural’s selection of listings’ (Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Tel. Service Co., Inc., 1991, p. 362) is linked to verbs, immediately to ‘publishes’, and, later in the paragraph, to ‘expended’ (p. 362), revealing a concern with selection as a process.

The similarity in meaning between the significant clauses coupled with their syntactic parallelism - ‘could not be more obvious: it publishes the most basic information’ (Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Tel. Service Co., Inc., 1991, p. 362) - and the commonality of their reference, to ‘Rural’s selection oflistings’ (p. 362), implies that they are closely related alternatives to each other, corresponding to an inclusive OR (see Figure 4.4). ‘[O]bvious’ and ‘most basic’ are cognate with the routine, but not in contradiction with the mechanical, particularly when we are concerned with mechanical reasoning (Babbage, 1989, pp. 246-247). The clauses can then be understood as belonging to the routine and as consistent with the proximity of the routine to the mechanical.

In summary, then, ‘insufficient creativity’ refers to a level of creativity continuous with ‘devoid of even the slightest trace of creativity’ (Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Tel. Service Co., Inc., 1991, p. 362). All the terms characterizing ‘insufficient creativity’ (p. 362), ‘could not be more obvious’, ‘the most basic information’ (p. 362), could be understood in their ordinary discourse senses. The clauses primarily qualified processes, stood in an OR relation to each other, and primarily belonged to the routine.