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On Tue, 18 Apr 1995 meyer@newslink.org wrote:

> >There are two ways to pass on a link.  One is to become a proxy server, 
> >which means you copy the page into your proxy's memory and pass the html 
> >via http to the browser's machine.  This would be a copyright violation, 
> >since you are copying the publication into the memory of two computers 
> >for commercial use.
> 
> Probably, but not automatically. The technology isn't as important as the 
> purpose. If the copying is a mere convenience for a single use of something 
> that could be obtained in a less convenient way without violating 
> copyright, the use probabably would be deemed a fair use. (Sony v. 
> Universal)

Actually, this is more like a "rebroadcast".  You are replicating the
information without a replication license.  Often, news wires will allow 
a limited amount of replication.  Sending a citation to a superior or 
subordinates.  Even a citation sent to a mailing list or a newsgroup is 
not likely to raise the ire enough to merit the legal fees of prosecuting 
a copyright procedings (criminal or civil).  On the other hand, if you
republish/redistribute several dozend citations several dozen times, you 
might be encouraged to negotiate distribution terms.  Most services would 
rather have a good "bulk customer" than a penny ante criminal anyway.

> If you put a GIF on the Web as a free item that anyone may download, then 
> anyone may link to it from an HTML page. If you don't like that, you can 
> take it off the Web. The key here, as far as copyright law is concerned, is 
> that no one is depriving you of monetary reward. After all, you already are 
> giving the thing away for free.
On the other hand, if you put a copyright notice and a "distribution 
subject to license" or "all rights reserved" and Compuserve served up 
40,000 hits of your web pages in a month, you would have a nice 
negotiating edge when you set your royalty schedule.

> HOWEVER, you could be accused in an unfair competition tort is you, say, 
> used your version of the free item to drum up support for your Web site at 
> the expense of the support the originator was trying to drum up by giving 
> the item away for free at his or her site.
Again, most of this is worked out through copyright and license agreements.
Mosaic for example is not public domain, it is however distributed under 
the General Public License Agreement.  There are restrictions on what you 
can and cannot do with Mosaic.  You can give it away or sell ti, but you 
cannot come up with proprietary enhancements which render the GPL 
versions "Obsolete".  Netscape represents a "thin ice" interpretation of 
this license.  You also cannot sell a binary version without telling your 
"customer" where to get the source code.  SPRY and Compuserve may find 
this a bit inconvenient.

> So it's a difference that makes no difference? Not really. Tort common law 
> is a state-by-state affair, with no provision for crossing international 
> boundaries, unlike copyright law, which is increasingly global in scope.
On the other hand the revised copyright act of 1976 is a Federal law and 
is enforced in Federal courts and violators are sent to Federal Prisons.


	Rex Ballard

From rballard@cnj.digex.net Mon Apr 24 18:04:52 1995
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