
Programmer creates 800,000 books algorithmically, starts selling them on Amazon - Libertatea
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/143382-programmer-creates-800000-books-algorithmically-starts-selling-them-on-amazon?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=programmer-creates-800000-books-algorithmically-starts-selling-them-on-amazon
======
duey
I work in ecommerce and this guy and others like him have been creating this
stuff for 3-4 years. It's a massive annoyance for us as the only real
identifier we got from suppliers is the publisher name, we blocked them for
awhile but then we started seeing a massive range of publisher names coming
through in order to get around blocks (I assume every other retailer was
blocking them as well).

When we first started seeing the automated content books, literally overnight
our product set increased several million titles - I now estimate that about
20 million of the 50 million products we have are automated books (they come
out with new "editions" all the time as well). This obviously has a massive
impact on our search results - these books have keyword laden titles and
descriptions, and without a solid identifier it was very difficult to get rid
of them. Thankfully recently the suppliers that print these products have
started flagging them as crapware.

As for the customer response to this type of product - it's definitely
negative, with a massive return rate. As far as I am concerned, this is a
massive scam - hedging on the fact that some people are to lazy to return the
books.

~~~
powershop-co
I wonder if it wouldn't be a good idea to "hellban" them. When they visit the
site, they see the books - but for all other users they'd effectively be
invisible. It might not be worth the programming effort, though. I wonder how
many books this guy sells.

------
rwg
Just what Amazon needs: 800,000 computer-generated books crapping up the
listings along with the thousands of on-demand printed copies of Wikipedia
articles. Wonderful.

~~~
msutherl
I can't believe this guy has no sense of humor[1]! He's completely serious
about providing a service and making tons of money from it.

In one question the interviewer asks: 'could you make a novel for instance?'
to which he replies 'well, novels don't usually make money'. Wouldn't you
think the correct answer would be 'well, it wouldn't be very good'?

Hauntology at its best[2].

[1] <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8WuGKyBR90>

[2] <http://booktwo.org/notebook/hauntological-futures/>

~~~
potatolicious
> _"to which he replies 'well, novels don't usually make money'. Wouldn't you
> think the correct answer would be 'well, it wouldn't be very good'?"_

Perhaps the same question can be posed to many startup founders in our
community. Very often people in the startup scene seem much more interested in
extracting profit (or really, just making the exit) rather than creating
something _good_ (in whatever way that you might personally define goodness).

~~~
michaelt
Plenty of developers write software never hoping to make a dime from it or
hire anyone else to work on it. But they have little reason to worry about
incorporation or branding or 'pivoting' or 'series a funding' or 'growth
hacking', and they self-identify as 'open source developers' rather than
'start up entrepreneurs'.

------
jrabone
Aw, man. I used to hate this guy when I worked on the title authority team.
The programmatic titles alone often caused the title matchers to infer that
all the books were somehow related, and cluster them all together. Oh, the
happy hours spent unpicking the resulting mess. The Wikipedia guy was the
worst in terms of sheer pointlessness though. Personally I'd delete the lot of
them. Hard to think that your job is worthwhile when it consists of cleaning
up after other people's crappy perl scripts...

~~~
moe
_Hard to think that your job is worthwhile when it consists of cleaning up
after other people's crappy perl scripts..._

At least you are not alone. Every sysadmin in the world knows how you feel.

------
thematt
Ugh. It feels like the cesspool of the SEO underworld is physically
manifesting itself.

~~~
nickpinkston
I was waiting for that to come from the 3D printing crowd, but books on-demand
work too.

~~~
jiggy2011
3D Spam? Oh my

------
philparker
Phil Parker here. Interesting posts. Here are some links that can clarify for
some: Here is a piece about reaching underserved subjects/languages:
[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-jarvis/davos-2011-too-
lit...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-jarvis/davos-2011-too-little-
con_b_814778.htm) Here is a current project dealing with agriculture:
[http://gulfnews.com/news/gulf/uae/education/campus-in-abu-
dh...](http://gulfnews.com/news/gulf/uae/education/campus-in-abu-dhabi-helps-
make-farming-easier-with-new-radio-technology-1.1041606) Here is a poetry
project (graph theoric stuff):
<http://totopoetry.com/poetry/credits/edgepoetry.htm>

My favorite page: <http://www.totopoetry.com/search.asp?word=truth> I have
used this approach to write definitions as well (www.websters-online-
dictionary.org) The following contrasts definitions of zealously: 1\. In a
zealous manner. [Human] 2\. In an enthusiastic, fervid, ardent or fervent
manner. [graph theoretic] 3\. In a fanatical manner. [graph theoretic]

A vid on fiction automation: <http://vimeo.com/17168987> A debate/reaction
amongst literature people: [http://www.thepassivevoice.com/10/2012/can-robots-
really-wri...](http://www.thepassivevoice.com/10/2012/can-robots-really-write-
novels/) Cheers Phil p.s. most of the “books” are used by businesses in narrow
markets, and are econometrically estimated, not compiled from internet
sources.

~~~
Magenta
Phil! Is that Phil Phil or motion-capture salamander Phil?

~~~
philparker
Of course!

------
jsilence
In the video it can be seen that a fair amount of what the automated system
does is versatile formatting ... in Word and Excel. But why oh why?
(Semi)-automated formatting of documents is a problem that has been solved
with expert results in LaTeX.

Also deviations in the data are recognized and highlited, but not (yet?)
examined and elaborated upon. No doubt this will be possible in the near
future.

So, kudos for the general approach. Can't wait for the automated reading
programs for digesting these books. And that is meant only half jokingly. The
data is there, the general knowledge is there and there is enough reasoning
power to draw conclusions. The next step would be to make automated descisions
based on the available data, so politicians could join the authors in beeing
unemployed...

Well I for one welcome our new text blasting overlords.

------
justhw
This [1] _The 2009-2014 Outlook for Wood Toilet Seats in Greater China_ seems
to be the most reviewed book (35) at 3.3 stars, being sold for $495 USD.

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/2009-2014-Outlook-Toilet-Seats-
Greater...](http://www.amazon.com/2009-2014-Outlook-Toilet-Seats-
Greater/dp/B001T44Z0W/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1355520388&sr=1-1)

~~~
thetrb
If it was $4.95 I might have ordered it as a Christmas gift. But $495 is
slightly too much...

~~~
robryan
Yeah, there might be more of a market for actually buying these books as
jokes.

------
JasonFruit
At 29 USD for 38 pages, Basketry[0] doesn't look like a particularly useful
buy.

Also, from the description: "…editorial decisions to include or exclude events
is purely a linguistic process." Is it really correct to describe that as an
editorial decision? (Not to mention "editorial decisions…is"?)

[0]: [http://www.amazon.com/Basketry-Websters-Timeline-
History-700...](http://www.amazon.com/Basketry-Websters-Timeline-
History-7000BC/dp/0546867626/ref=sr_1_7?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1355519798&sr=1-7)

~~~
greenyoda
The index for this book is also useless. It seems to index every word in the
text, whether it's significant or not; for example, "September". Also the
index has entries for "Nova" and "Scotia", but not "Nova Scotia" (which is
presumably where these two words came from).

I don't think that real authors would face any significant competition from
this guy.

~~~
rhizome
It also would seem to cast a lie to the claim that they are generated
"algorithmically."

~~~
dbaupp
The context is unclear: what would cast a lie to that claim?

~~~
rhizome
"Random high-level items" is not much of an algo.

~~~
__david__
Even bubble sort is an algorithm...

~~~
rhizome
Bubble sort _does something_.

~~~
__david__
So does indexing "Random high-level items". It's an algorithm, just not a
particularly good one, which was my point.

------
krenoten
The reviews tend to paint a pretty grim view of the quality of these books,
but the sarcastic ones are some of the funniest reviews I've ever read.

Here's an honest one that shines a light on the quality:

"The description for this book is TOTALLY misleading. It is NOT a book of
quotations and phrases. It is a reference book of where to look to find
possible quotations- like the old filecard cabinets in the library. On the few
pages where you can actally find a quote, it reads like this one: Jack London,
from Jerry of the Islands, "I am writing these lines in Honolulu, Hawaii."
Huh?? That's it. That's all there is! I'm not sure who would use this book.
Certianly not me! I was very disappointed as I was looking for a collection of
quotes from notables like Mark Twain, Jack London, etc."

Edit: Sort by avg rating. Goldmine of comedy in the reviews for "Butts" and
"Scrotum" books. Wow.

Here's the review for "The 2009-2014 Outlook for Plastics Lamp Shades in the
United States":

"(4/5 stars)An instant classic in the Icon style

While this outlook hardly holds a candle to comparable classics such as The
World Market for Silica Sands and Quartz Sands: A 2009 Global Trade
Perspective, the information is invaluable for any red-blooded American. The
five-year span is parsed in fascinating prose, and the 176 pages fly by,
feeling almost like a 150-page work.

Don't let your lack of background knowledge deter you - there isn't too much
reference to the 2004-2009 report, and most of the important information is
explained in exposition.

Luther Blaze runs the show in this non-stop thrill ride of an economic
adventure. His last outing ended in the government setting up a secret
commission to investigate his possible wrongdoing in stopping the mysterious
project Mantis, but now he's back, and ready to run roughshod over anyone in
his way.

At a price of approximately 2.81 per page, you know you're getting your
money's worth with this paperback. It's a perfect read for the park, or a lazy
Sunday afternoon. On a side note, this book is a real pick-up gem! I
personally attracted no less than three beautiful women, all of whom wanted my
thoughts on the challenging themes and motifs. They all gave their numbers,
and there's been no looking back!

The biggest problems with this book are largely physical aspects of the book.
I didn't care for the font too much. And the beige background on the cover
betrays the intrigue within.

The Icon International group has hit another classic out of the park. I look
forward to the next book with baited breath, and I can't wait to see how Agent
71 and Dash get out of this jam."

~~~
jonnathanson
The funniest part of "Scrotum" is that it's priced at $28.95. For an 84-page
paperback, whose sole purpose is to trace the usage of the word "scrotum"
throughout an oddly specific period in English linguistic history (1678 -
2007). I mean, perhaps the content farmer should also write a pricing
algorithm?

The review is, indeed, ball-bustingly hilarious.

~~~
ChuckMcM
So how soon before the algorithm then uses the comments as part of the next
revision of the book? Its an interesting way to demonstrate the value
proposition.

In this case algorithmically selecting stuff from around the web generates
random books, but they have little value for the most part. Books that are
researched and curated on the other hand have higher values. The only
difference being the curation, not the basic information. So it gives you an
insight into pricing curation.

Next up, a bot that sends out 800,000 DMCA takedown notices, oh wait we
already have that for youtube.

~~~
jcr
I think using the word "value" is a bit too strong at this point, but maybe
someday algorithms along these lines (and the ones I mentioned to you in
email, article spinning) will be able to do more good than harm. The trouble
is, at present, they are more harmful than beneficial.

Machine generated, or guided, curation may eventually become a good thing, but
as you know all too well, there are far too many uses of such tech that are
harmful (e.g. poisoning search results, &c).

~~~
ChuckMcM
I agree with you, clogging up Amazon's stuff with 800,000 titles is a sad
effect.

It suggests that crooks in the 21st century don't rob banks, rather they rob a
million people of 50 cents because none of them feels ripped off enough to
prosecute and even if they did they are only out 50 cents.

------
iyulaev
Reminds me of SCIgen: <http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/scigen/>

Generate conference-ready CS papers in seconds!

~~~
wazoox
Thank you, you made my day. This is really fantastic, I particularly
appreciate the nonsensical scales on the graphs (time expressed in dB, number
of CPU in Joules) and the hilarious fake reference papers scattered with well
known names (Even Erdos :).

~~~
halviti
You might be entertained to know that a peer-reviewed journal went as far as
to accept a generated paper for publication.

<http://thatsmathematics.com/blog/archives/102>

------
DanBC
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4919729>

------
hashmymustache
What a greedy misappropriation of an otherwise incredible tool.

I assume what pushed him into the market was the software's economic analysis
of the latent market for spam books on Amazon 2010-2014

As a medical student, I particularly love books like this[0] with their
description: "If your time is valuable, this book is for you. First, you will
not waste time searching the Internet while missing a lot of relevant
information. Second, the book also saves you time indexing and defining
entries. Finally, you will not waste time and money printing hundreds of web
pages."

How is this not fraud?

[0]: [http://www.amazon.com/Stevens-Johnson-Syndrome-Dictionary-
Bi...](http://www.amazon.com/Stevens-Johnson-Syndrome-Dictionary-Bibliography-
References/dp/B004D4Y4JM/ref=sr_1_9?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1355524929&sr=1-9)

------
guimarin
This guy is clearly in the wrong business. Books, who cares about books, he
should turn his system onto writing patents.

------
xefer
How does it determine the price? By the pound? Amazon should clearly mark
these as computer generated. I'll bet most of the purchases are from people
who didn't know what they were even getting.

~~~
Thrall
Is there evidence that anyone's actually bought one?

~~~
robryan
Some people tend to assign a fair bit of trust to the Amazon brand (which may
be eroded by things like this). The fact that a book is on Amazon may convince
some people that it is a book of a quality you would usually expect from
traditionally published works.

------
westicle
Roald Dahl came up with this idea decades ago.

For anyone not familiar with his work, I highly recommend his collection of
short stories titled "The great automatic grammatizator". The major plot of
the eponymous story is about a hacker who builds a novel-writing machine so
that he can drive authors out of the market by out-producing them.

Very entertaining and, it seems, prophetic.

------
DanBC
Does the Library of Congress (and the other national library collections) have
to keep copies of all these books?

Because actually now I'm angry that tax dollars are spent buying, shipping,
storing, garbage.

------
jebblue
>> Because of his specialty in marketing, it’s easy to assume that these books
are designed for spam-like purposes

I just want to know, is this even legal? Is he selling books?

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book>

"The body of all written works including books is literature. "

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literature>

"Literature is commonly classified as having two major forms—fiction and non-
fiction—and two major techniques—poetry and prose."

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prose>

"Prose is a form of language which applies ordinary grammatical structure and
natural flow of speech rather than rhythmic structure (as in traditional
poetry)."

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_speech>

"In the philosophy of language, a natural language (or ordinary language) is
any language which arises in an unpremeditated fashion as the result of the
innate facility for language possessed by the human intellect."

The answer is no, since the text did not come from human intellect but
computer programming; they can't be classified as books.

~~~
Thrall
If you go looking for overly specific definitions of words in natural
language, which is effectively defined by its usage, any conclusions you draw
from these 'definitions' will be flawed at best. Obtaining your fundamental
definitions from selected lines in wikipedia adds bias as well as
inaccuracies.

Also, even assuming your definitions were reasonable, you fail to explore the
possibility that his books are poetry.

~~~
jebblue
Wiki articles can be maintained by anyone, feel free to correct/improve the
ones I referenced.

I did not fail to consider the poetry route, I ignored it because poetry comes
from human emotion and human feeling.

------
kgc
Title is incorrect. There are only 522826 of this author's books listed on
Amazon, not 800000: <http://goo.gl/byxKn>

------
Yhippa
So this guy has been able to find a common schema across several different
domains and add rules to it to churn out content. I like the concept. I
watched the video in the article and could see how this could be used for
instruction in the case where the resources like trained teachers are scarce.

I've had a feeling for a long time that due to the predictability of humans
and our processes that it this is inevitable. I think it's great that he can
do this for things like instruction but if this were to get "smart" enough
that would put a lot of people out of work.

------
DanBC
I'm curious about the licencing - he's scraping some stuff from Wikipedia, but
it's not clear which bits.

I'm also confused about the super high price. Is this deliberate to avoid
having to refund to very many unhappy customers?

And while these books are probably awful he's going to be known by the future
people as one of the innovators of auto-generated content. At least he's not
breaking spam filters with Markov chains.

It's gently odd that AI got stuck for a while; I very much hope that AI
research and practice gets a bit more attention and funding.

------
czbond
Funny what passes for "algorithm" these days.

Ahhhh.... a marketer "programmed" it. All cleared up now.

~~~
TallboyOne
I know the entire process is extremely seedy, but I can't deny it does seem
kind of complex.

------
user-3
dick creates 800,000 useless books algorithmically, starts defrauding people
on Amazon

------
jcfrei
Kinda reminds of the analogy about monkeys writing on typewriters, where a
million monkeys would in a thousand years come up with something as
Shakespeare. I may go out on a limb here, but by the end of the next decade
the most popular book of the holiday season might be one that was actually
written by a computer...

------
draq
Does he really use Microsoft Access and Microsoft Word for the automated
process or was that only for demonstration?

------
acqq
In fact: An unethical programmer produces 800000 spam entries on Amazon, earns
money from those who got tricked.

------
jbperry
As formulaic as some series are, I wonder how long it will be until a best
seller is "written" by a program?

~~~
scrumper
"The Policeman's Beard is Half Constructed," written in 1983 by a program
named Racter. Bestseller? It's very well known, but I don't know how well it
sold.

~~~
bcoates
Racter was more of a William S. Burroughs cut-up program, it mostly randomizes
and regurgitates it's input. Policeman's Beard required carefully selected
input and is on the border of being a hoax.

~~~
scrumper
Huh, did not know that - thanks. Interesting.

------
oellegaard
Usually I would not say something like this, but I hope he gets sued for this.
Big time. He claims to sell books to doctors and patients - there is no way he
should be allowed to. With no control of the content, chances are big that he
gives wrong advice. This make me feel bad.

~~~
propercoil
I hate it as much as you do but it's an open market and wrong advice is not
criminal.

definetly a hacker though

~~~
westicle
Nobody said it was criminal. But it is most likely negligent.

If I rely on his books which presumably have no editorial oversight, he'd
better hope I don't suffer a loss as a result.

~~~
propercoil
I bet there are several clauses in these books the protects him from a legal
perspective similar to all of the evergreen products out there.

------
pbreit
If Amazon's search and discovery work correctly, no one should see these books
until they start generating sales. So it might almost be like they don't exist
until/unless the "publisher" can generate some interest and sales.

------
BrianPetro
I could see this being useful to pull resources together for an abstract
paper.

Putting this on amazon is definitely overkill for now. He should have proven
the value by first generating books under his name and seeing the response.

------
candybar
I assume Amazon can nuke this experiment and future clones simply by requiring
a modest payment, even a dollar or the price for a single copy for listing,
right?

------
benoits
definitely not a "programmer"... He's an economist and professor at Insead (a
top biz school). Here is his profile:
[http://www.insead.edu/facultyresearch/faculty/profiles/ppark...](http://www.insead.edu/facultyresearch/faculty/profiles/pparker/)

"Beginning in March 1998, he launched a private initiative (dubbed the “K to
12 +2 project”) after directing a workshop for the World Bank which considered
illiteracy. One aspect of this problem is the lack of educational materials in
local languages (the smaller the language in population, the less likely the
publishing industry will find it profitable to serve such communities, leaving
some 1000 written languages without basic textbooks). Using automated
authoring processes he pioneered, his international business publications have
funded a variety of multilingual educational materials including a free online
multilingual dictionary, PC games, videos and ebooks. He has applied this
approach to support projects sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates
Foundation creating thousands of factsheets (using meta analysis) on tropical
plants, and is now working on automated rural radio scripts, call center
materials serving smallholder farmers, and SMS content engines working with
the GSM Association, the Grameen Foundation, and Farm Radio International in
Kenya, Uganda, Malawi and India, among other developing counties. As a hobby,
he has applied graph theory to automatically author hundreds of thousands of
didactic poems (limericks, sonnets, haiku, acrostics, etc.), and is on working
fiction and academic studies."

Interesting research area. Unfortunate that such laudable motivations ended up
in so much ridiculous spam... Perhaps a separate category on Amazon or hosting
the content on another site would be better for everyone?

~~~
petercooper
_Unfortunate that such laudable motivations ended up in so much ridiculous
spam... Perhaps a separate category on Amazon or hosting the content on
another site would be better for everyone?_

Agreed, when I'm searching for books on the outlook for wooden toilet seats in
China, I really want to be able to filter down to the legitimate guides only.

------
kevbin
> Computers won’t be replacing humans for writing the great American novel or
> entertaining the masses on TV

Want to bet? Of course they will.

------
jacobr
Libraries in Sweden, and probably in other countries as well, have their own
"algorithms" to decide what to purchase - at a university it could be
everything related to a particular topic, for instance. This means that these
computer-generated books are in stock in many libraries (at the taxpayer's
expense).

------
nogoodnik
Hey, this gives me a great idea: I could write a program that will gather
email addresses on the web and automatically email my sales pitch to every
single one of them. And I could sell both this program and my email lists to
other companies willing to pay for them.

------
fudged71
Thanks for the link, this was really interesting. Compiling and creating
content in a human readable for can be extremely valuable. I wonder if this
system will be used for artificial intelligence purposes some day; learning
about any topic on the web.

------
Dove
I wonder if he'll ever collide with this guy:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4906456>

------
animexcom
Does this software just plagarize online content?

~~~
readme
Probably.

------
mcantelon
"Application is language independent." My guess is these "books" are pretty
horrible. Interesting idea though.

------
antoniuschan99
People this is all fake. It's not real or he's just a scammer. Look at the
reviews he's got, it's all by the same person or the reviewer reviewed other
titles of his books. Insead is a real place though, so dunno why he's a real
prof there.

------
bdcravens
I looked at some of the author's titles - they all had one star

------
TommyDANGerous
That is so cool. I wonder how much they are selling.

------
sonabinu
I love his creativity but it is an omg situation

------
Steko
Is there where we reap upvotes with strident comments about how terrible
curation is? No, wait for the Apple articles? Hookay.

~~~
derleth
So 'curation' means 'arbitrarily refusing to let someone give something away
for free for absolutely no good reason'?

<http://www.jwz.org/blog/2012/07/apple-dicks/>

(Oh. No. Apple had a very good reason: It was called xscreensaver and fuck
you. I believe the second reason was the most important one.)

~~~
rayiner
Yes, because giving people choices imposes a small but real cost upon them.
It's science.

~~~
derleth
> Yes, because giving people choices imposes a small but real cost upon them.
> It's science.

I'm going to charitably guess you're being sarcastic.

~~~
rayiner
Not at all:
[http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/christopher.hsee/vita/Papers...](http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/christopher.hsee/vita/Papers/DazedAndConfused.pdf)

~~~
derleth
So you think this is relevant... why?

------
michaelochurch
I'm ashamed to admit that I actually bought one of these. Don't worry, I had a
good reason.

~~~
antichaos
If you had a good reason, why do you feel ashamed?

------
mylittlepony
I think only humans can create IP, though IANAL.

~~~
darkarmani
Well, when you use a computer to compile your source code it is still
protected by copyright. You have affixed your creation to media. (There are
some occurrences where you don't have to affix to media to get copyright --
yoga and dance choreography)

Copyright is supposed to protect an expression of an idea. I'm not sure how
far you can bend the argument to say that computer reorganization of facts is
expression.

For pixar and animations, the end result is an expression of artists' designs.

Can you have copyright without an expressive aspect? Is there any human
expression in this output?

~~~
derleth
Assuming all this will be judged under American law, as Amazon is an American
company, the interesting cases here are _Feist v Rural_ :

> Feist Publications, Inc., v. Rural Telephone Service Co., 499 U.S. 340
> (1991),[1] commonly called Feist v. Rural, is an important United States
> Supreme Court case establishing that information alone without a minimum of
> original creativity cannot be protected by copyright.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_v._Rural>

(The specific holding was that you can't copyright the phone listings in a
phone book because a simple alphabetical listing isn't creative enough.)

and _Bridgeman v. Corel_ :

> Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp., 36 F. Supp. 2d 191 (S.D.N.Y. 1999),
> was a decision by the United States District Court for the Southern District
> of New York, which ruled that exact photographic copies of public domain
> images could not be protected by copyright in the United States because the
> copies lack originality. Even if accurate reproductions require a great deal
> of skill, experience and effort, the key element for copyrightability under
> U.S. law is that copyrighted material must show sufficient originality.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgeman_Art_Library_v._Corel_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgeman_Art_Library_v._Corel_Corp).

(Again, a court stated that in order to create a new copyright, the person had
to exercise some creative spark; no machine alone can do that.)

> I'm not sure how far you can bend the argument to say that computer
> reorganization of facts is expression.

The Supreme Court seems to have said that it can't be a purely mechanical
reordering. Of course, the whole point of having a judge is to create new
judgements based on new fact patterns, so precedent isn't an absolute guide to
future rulings.

