Is it simply a sign of the times that almost every mailing list I subscribe
to has had a discussion about copyright issues these last few months?
There is certainly a great deal of mis-understanding and wishful
thinking about copyright on the net. Please, please, before following
up to this discussion, read some readily available FAQs about copyright,
and we can all avoid rehashing the mis-understandings. Here's a start:
<a href="http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/hypertext/faq/usenet/Copyright-FAQ/top.html">Copyright FAQ</a><br>
<a href="ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/law/copyright/faq">copyright faq</a><br>
<a href="http://www.4patent.com/copy1.htm">Copyright Information</a><br>
In <32342E74.353C@austin.ibm.com>,
"Robert B. Turk" <rturk@austin.ibm.com> wrote:
>...
>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.
There is a significant difference between making a document "publically
available" and making it "public" - just because I make a document
available to be read, viewed, or even printed does not mean that I want
to give up ownership of the content which I worked to create.
Libraries make books publically available, but they *buy*
those books and thus pay the copyright holder for them.
Note that copyright does not apply to ideas but to the expression of
those ideas. Recall that one of the bases of copyright law is:
"to promote science and the useful arts, by securing for limited
times to authors ... the exclusive right to their ... writings."
(US Constitution, Article 1, section 8, quoted in:
http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/hypertext/faq/usenet/Copyright-FAQ/top.html
If you want to propose a scheme that rewards people for their contributions
to science, useful arts, and so forth, but that does not involve copyright,
please write it up and market it - or convince a few hundred people that
it is a good idea and then take it to your Congress-persons.
As far as the Internet Archive goes, they seem to be headed directly for
civil litigation, since they apparently intend to make copies of copyrighted
material without specific permission and for purposes other than those
intended by the copyright holders. It should be an interesting case.
Note that it is making the copy that matters, not whether they plan
to publish the copy or make money from publishing it.
Copyright isn't a perfect solution to my mind, but it is what we
currently have, and it seems to work fairly well if we work with it.
I see no reason to abandon it simply because of the advent of the Web,
or Usenet, or FTP, or scanners, or GIFs, or OCR, or any of the new
technologies that have come into our lives recently.
I'll agree that there is a niche for on-line payment for licensed
copies of content, but I see no reason for the availability of new
technology to instantly replace a system that works fairly well.
Disclaimers - I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice, read the FAQ,
your mileage may vary, contents have may settled during shipment,
close cover before striking, light fuse, place on ground, move away.
-- Denis McKeon dmckeon@swcp.com