Copyright and webpages

[s|k]

How does it apply? In the US the copyright law was written in 1967. And it clearly forbids the unauthorized copying of content. So how can you copyright a web page or determine how what kind of copying is authorized or not if in order to view the site, you have to copy it. Copyrighting a website seems insane. I understand that they don't want you to take their content and put it on your own site, but I don't believe that qualifies as 'copying' that's 'distributing.' Anyhow, they have this neato update that I just read and didn't know about. Hrm, even the 'system cache' is mentioned.

EDIT, I wonder if my avatar qualifies as 'fair use' or not.

[Dante Hicks]

Copyright is theft.

Or something.

Slashdot covered this a bit too, a few days ago (or proposed/desired changes by some). http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/01/14/0721223

[Kurashima]

It would be nice to see this kind of law enforced

Mainly because it would put the cocksuckers that are EbaumsWorld out of business

[Dante Hicks]

Originally Posted by s|k

EDIT, I wonder if my avatar qualifies as 'fair use' or not.

I've never understood questions like this, outside of a commercial context. Let's say it was decided (in a court, say) that avatars were not fair use. Would you really suddenly believe you had done something wrong? Sure Jolt or whomever might want to remove these things to save themselves from liability, but would your perception of the relative morality of your behaviour change?

[MrL_JaKiri]

Noone really cares unless you're making profit off it (see: Ebaum)

[s|k]

Originally Posted by Dante Hicks

I've never understood questions like this, outside of a commercial context. Let's say it was decided (in a court, say) that avatars were not fair use. Would you really suddenly believe you had done something wrong? Sure Jolt or whomever might want to remove these things to save themselves from liability, but would your perception of the relative morality of your behaviour change?

I don't think I'm doing anything immoral, I'm also really providing a service (I think) to Marvel by advertising their brand with my enthusiam for it.

According to US law (I don't know UK laws, but are probably similiar I assume) in order to qualify as 'fair use' you have to meet the following requirements:

1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such is of a commerical nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;

2. the nature of the copyrighted work;

3. the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relatioin to the copyrighted work as a whole; and

4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

Number 2 is kind of vague, but basically you're more likely to qualify if what you're copying is text than video. I got this list from one of my texts for a class (reference services) I'm taking.

[Nodrog]

http://www.benedict.com/Digital/Web/WebProtect.aspx

For a more official source: http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ66.pdf


Or put it another way. Suppose someone printed the archives of a site like somethingawful into book format and started selling it. Should this be allowed? Or if a person sold their daily newspaper which was just a copy/paste of articles from the BBC website.

[s|k]

What about what archive.org is doing? I can see the websites over the last 10 years for any major corporation or webservice I can think of on it.

EDIT: I also thing that cache'ing websites, as in how search engines do it, is against the copyright law. I wonder if I can opt out.

I found this on it: http://news.com.com/2100-1038_3-1024234.html

[meglamaniac]

Having no grounding in law this is probably wrong in every respect, but this has always been my rough guess at how it works:

The Internet is public domain which muddies the copyright position somewhat. As with any other means of public domain publishing, if you put it out there then it's perfectly ok to copy it so long as you don't plagiarise (ie. give credit to the authors). If copyright is asserted then it's trickier and a lot of it is down to fair use - after all, you put it out there in the PD to start with.
In fact the Internet provides more control than any other public domain publishing system, as you can use robots.txt to exclude areas or the entirety of your site from being indexed. If your material is behind some form of protection (password/signature/IP based access) then it becomes easier, as clearly that is not public domain.

As for determining what is asserted under copyright, it's the same as any other scenario.
"(C) Mr Smith, All rights reserved" does what it says on the tin, as does
"(C) Mr Smith, reproduction permitted for educational use. All other rights reserved"
Where not specified, it's usual to assume full copyright is being asserted.

But as the whole thing is international, unless you're a huge company it's usually not viable (financially or logistically) to persue people for breach of copyright.

[queball]

Originally Posted by meglamaniac

Having no grounding in law this is probably wrong in every respect, but this has always been my rough guess at how it works:

The Internet is public domain

Christ no. "Public domain" means "not copyrighted": a document where the author has completely relinquished his rights over the work, or the work has fallen out of copyright. When someone publishes an article on the web or on a newsgroup say, they implicitly licence the normal copying of their article required to read it. It's still copyrighted. Letting people read your posts doesn't make them public domain.



Also: I'm pretty sure claiming for breach of copyright isn't harder than claiming for any other tort. Small claims court etc.

[All Systems Go]

talking about copyright and webpages, a number of music tab sites have recently shut down under the threat of legal action.

Isn't that nice?

[Nodrog]

Copyright doesnt apply to things like the 12 bar blues, that would be a patent (and it sh/wouldnt be granted).

[Dante Hicks]

Originally Posted by Nodrog

Or put it another way. Suppose someone printed the archives of a site like somethingawful into book format and started selling it. Should this be allowed?

Yes.

Or if a person sold their daily newspaper which was just a copy/paste of articles from the BBC website.

Yes.