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?
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.
(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.
(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.
IANAL either but that's an interesting question. I think machines must be able to generate IP though, otherwise the output of something like Pixar's render farms wouldn't be considered copyrightable, only the source models, animations, textures, shaders etc.
The output is considered to be a derivative work of the input, so the same copyright as the input applies. In the case of Pixar, the original models are definitely an original creative work, so the output is as well.
If you are simply using public domain databases as the input, and passing them through an automated process with no creative input, then you probably won't be able to get (or more to the point, enforce) a copyright on it.
Now, whether the databases he's using are copyrighted or not is an interesting question; as well as whether database copyrights even apply. Not all jurisdictions have the notion of database copyrights. Individual facts cannot be copyrighted; but collections of them can, at least in some jurisdictions. However, I don't know if the databases he is using are copyrighted or not.
In the US at least, facts cannot be copyrighted. Various cites have tried to stop alternate subway maps or transit apps from being sold, but courts have ruled that mass transit routes and schedules are facts and not protected by copyright.
I guess it makes sense that these auto generated books may fall under the same umbrella.
