[thelist] Re: [site rippers? - conclusion]

[Paola Kathuria]

nate wrote:
> as far as i know, the web is public domain. if their site is on the www,
> it's fair game. what's the difference in downloading it, or linking to it?
> when you dl it, you're downloading their copyright/footer too, so...?

The web isn't the public domain.

Online material is protected by the same copyright laws that
protect other kinds of material.

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act was written into US Copyright
Law in 1998.  The Act expicitly covers cacheing by "service providers".
Cacheing is allowed under several conditions such as the content
isn't modified and it is refreshed with updated content as it
becomes available (see pages 10-11 in the summary document
http://lcweb.loc.gov/copyright/legislation/dmca.pdf).

With regard to linking, there was an interesting case about
deep linking last year (see hhttp://www.phillipsnizer.com/int-art189.htm)
Ticketmaster Corp., et al. v. Tickets.com, Inc.(C.D.Cal., March 27, 2000).

These refs are recycled a message I sent to CHI-WEB last year.
Here's another quote about copyright and the web:

"[...] documents on the Web enjoy the protection of copyright law no less
 than any other document. Contrary to popular legend, the act of putting a
 document onto the Web does not amount to "putting it into the public domain",
 any more than the act of handing out free paper copies of an article would
 do.

"In principle, the copyright holder is entitled to reasonable control over
 what happens to the document. For example, it would be a breach of copyright
 to sell printed copies of a document that one has obtained off the Web.
 On the other hand, whoever placed the document onto the Web obviously
 intended it to be viewed across the network, and in that sense may be
 assumed to have granted an implied licence to do with the document whatever
 is usual on the WWW."

 Alan Flavell, 1996 - from http://ppewww.ph.gla.ac.uk/~flavell/cache.html

And, finally, Brad Templeton's "10 Big Myths about Copyright" is
a good read at http://www.templetons.com/brad/copymyths.html
Although it was originally written with Usenet in mind, much can
be applied to the web.

> do i have this all wrong?

No.  Just the public domain thingy.  The rest (e.g., about
getting permission to show client work in portfolio) seemed
fine to me.


Paola