Re: The Internet Archive robot

Alex Strasheim (alex@crawfish.suba.com)
Mon, 9 Sep 1996 14:22:02 -0500 (CDT)


> It is my belief, however, that a document on the world-wide-web has been
> made public, and therefore it shouldn't matter whether a web browser
> caches it, or simply views or prints it, or whether a robot references
> the file, or whatever...that the web should mean free sharing of ideas.

> All your copyrighted materials or intellectual property should be behind
> some kind of authentication or security barrier, beyond which a
> traverser agrees to certain terms of non-disclosure before getting
> access to the information. Then if you need to hold someone accountable
> for doing something inappropriate with your sensitive information you
> can go to your logs and say that "You signed this agreement by entering
> this web space...so you can't do that..."

The problem is that these are legal issues, and this just isn't the way
it works. I'm probably more radical than most on these issues -- I'd
like to see a lot of the teeth stripped from copyrights and patents, I'm
not even convinced that we should enforce copyrights under any
circumstances.

But just because I feel that way doesn't mean that I don't have to follow
the law.