I don’t know what it is I like most about pub conversations. Maybe it’s the belligerence that sets in around the fourth pint and makes you convinced you are right, and makes you begin to formulate wild assertions with little in the way of fact to support your argument. Last night, I somehow got sucked into an ultimately pointless extended “discussion” with an Australian bloke in the pub about, of all things, copyright law. [Yes I know, but we did talk about football as well, though, so it’s ok.] He said you could claim copyright on an idea. I said that that’s rubbish; you can only copyright the expression of an idea (the book you have written, not the idea for the book you were thinking about writing). Turns out I was right after all (not that I would necessarily be writing about this incident if I hadn’t been, mind), but as I was basing my argument on something I read once, and only half remembered, and as I am not exactly a legal expert, I felt compelled to back down and let it pass around the point that the argument deteriorated to the level of:

Him: “Yes you can.”
Me: “No you can’t, that’s rubbish.”
Him: “Yes you can. Einstein copyrighted E=mc2 and that made him a lot of money. I have a Philosophy PhD; I know all about ideas.” [I am not making this up; he did actually say that.]

You see, it’s so much easier to settle an argument when you have the Internet to hand. If we’d been in the office I could have pointed to any one of a number of sites that explain the UK legal position on this (in particular, that link includes a bit that says: “You should also note that copyright does not protect ideas.”), or the Berne convention and it would have all been settled.

But then, things involving rational thought are much easier when you’re not pissed, aren’t they. Not that I’m bitter, you understand…