My understanding (which may be slightly if not completely incorrect ;-) )is
that publicly available web pages are protected under existing copyright
laws but that they can be viewed (i.e., downloaded for indexing) under the
"fair use" clause. This clause indicates that copies may be made, but not
to replace the original distribution (and thereby commercial profit in the
printing industry) of the copyrighted material.
What this boils down to is that you can copy web pages just like you can
copy a book at you local library. You can't copy it to avoid paying for the
book, storing the book on other media (electronic), or for any type of
commercial gain. Likewise you can't download a web page and create a mirror
site without permission and you can't download a page, change the title and
repost it on your web site.
Most copyright infringements that I have seen that are blatant on the
internet are page layout copying (noticable only on complex layouts) and GIF
copying. No prosecution has been followed through that I know of though.
For more information you may want to refer to the new international
copyright agreements specifically targeting electronic mediums that were
just ratified.
BTW, what exactly does "download them directly" mean? Do I have to use a
proxy server, etc.?
-- Wayne Rust -=- Full-text indexing and retrieval specialists. InfoSphere, LLC -=- http://www.proindex.com rustw@proindex.com PO Box 225, Pleasant Grove, UT 84062 (801)221-5902 Fax(801)221-5903_________________________________________________ This messages was sent by the robots mailing list. To unsubscribe, send mail to robots-request@webcrawler.com with the word "unsubscribe" in the body. For more info see http://info.webcrawler.com/mak/projects/robots/robots.html