Disable web graphics, violate copyright law

[hpguru]

Disabling graphics in web browsers violates copyright law
http://www.politechbot.com/p-03895.html

Facing each other,
a thousand miles apart.

[altosax]

quote:
Date: Thu, 15 Aug 2002 00:12:27 -0400
To: [email protected]
From: Doug Isenberg <[email protected]>
Subject: Pop-up ads and the law

Declan:

   As you know, a district court judge recently entered a preliminary
injunction against Gator in a lawsuit brought by numerous website news
publishers over Gator's pop-up advertising service.  In my most recent
column for The Wall Street Journal Online (now available on GigaLaw.com at
http://www.gigalaw.com/articles/2002/isenberg-2002-08.html), I examine the
potential greater effect of this lawsuit.  For example: "Terence Ross of
Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, the news publishers' attorney, even told me that
he thinks Internet users who configure their browsers to disable graphics
(a common tactic to boost the speed of Web surfing) are committing
copyright infringement because they are interfering with Web publishers'
exclusive right to control how their pages are displayed."

Doug Isenberg, Esq.
Author, "The GigaLaw Guide to Internet Law" (Random House, October 2002):
http://www.GigaLaw.com/guide

yes, i'm interfering with web publishers' exclusive right to control how their page are displayed, but web publishers are interfering with my private life and my right to control what content i'm expecting to view on a web page.

altosax.

 

[pooms]

Well, that's B.S., HTML authors have never had an "exclusive right
to control how their pages are displayed". That's not what HTML
is about. If they want that, they should use PDF or something.

I dare them to try and say that a sight-impaired person must not
increase font sizes because it "interferes" with the web publishers'
rights!


 

[hpguru]

I agree with you 100% but with the current DRM lunacy that's about one can only wonder how long it will be before what we do becomes a felony. It may sound nutty but it wasn't very long ago the US congress was discussing the legalization of hacking by content owners.


Facing each other,
a thousand miles apart.

[Arne]

Well, here the word Copyright is meaningless. We do not have either the word nor any law called this. Allthough many Scandinavian sites puts this word at the bottom of their webpages, it is totally meaningless.

That does not mean the content is not protected, but it is protected under a different law. It has to be something unique, which is made by the author. No html code, javascript and such are considered unique. What he/she writes on the page, might be considered unique and in that case it must be something that the author has written himself; like if I wrote my life story it would be considered unique. If I wrote a html guide, which there are 1000s of on the net, probabilities would be that it would not be considered unique.

So reendereing the code on a webpage, before it hits my browser, will never be seen as a felony or anything. What I wish to see is my own business.

Best wishes
Arne
Imici username= Arne

[TEggHead]

quote:
Well, here the word Copyright is meaningless. We do not have either the word nor any law called this. Allthough many Scandinavian sites puts this word at the bottom of their webpages, it is totally meaningless.

Well, not entirily, although Scandanavian Copyright laws do in general allow you to copy much more than Americans are accustomed to, especially in non-profit situations, they do have copyright laws.

Norway has the Kopinor Association, in Finland some sites already had to close down because they re-distruted Scientology material without prior permission and
the guy orriginally spreading the stuf lived in Sweden and is still battling with Scientology over this. Danmark copyright laws do not even allow fair-use copying. These are only a few of the referencese to Scandanavian Copyright laws I found, but you get the drift...

Disclaimer. I am absolutley not associated with Scientology (or any other religion for that matter)

JarC

 

[Arne]

Let me repeat myself. We do not have a word that says "Copyright". We do not have a law named "Copyright". If a person writes the word "Copyrighted" on his webside here in Scandinavia, it has no meaning at all.

You refer to KopiNor, which has nothing to do with this. In Norway there is Aandsverksloven which I have refered to the meaning of above.

I hae never said that there is "free for all to copy". You have to read my post more careful. The part about Unique text.

Best wishes
Arne
Imici username= Arne

[TEggHead]

quote:
Well, that's B.S., HTML authors have never had an "exclusive right
to control how their pages are displayed". That's not what HTML
is about. If they want that, they should use PDF or something.

That is true for those aspects pertaining to how it is displayed, but the difference is that it pertains only to layout and not to content

Furthermore there are the capabilities of the used browser to reckon with, not every browser is capable of displaying/rendering eveything that is included in a page's html code.

But by and large the basics are true indeed, you may not have any leg to stand on when debating the layout, but a copyright holder has a very large chance on success when making a claim based on content. Mainly because they are two different aspects of the same thing (look at it as if you would with a book, you can claim copyright on the text of the book, but not on it's appearance, excluding textual and graphical representations)

There is however a counterside to this, if claims based on content ever come to an injunction of some kind than this has far reaching consequences for free-hosted websites. Then they will nolonger be allowed to insert bannerad or usagetracking code embedded within the actual page directly, since that would constitute a change in content, but no doubt banners that get inserted in a separate frame will not be affected/prevented by this since that does not constitute a change in the original content.

JarC



Edited by - TEggHead on 16 Aug 2002  12:58:03

[Arne]

For those who can read Norwegian here is a very good explanation of the Norwegian law about protection. It is written by Professor dr. juris. Olav Torvund

http://www.torvund.net/artikler/art-opphav.asp


Best wishes
Arne
Imici username= Arne

[TEggHead]

quote:
Let me repeat myself. We do not have a word that says "Copyright".

Sheesh you mean language wise speaking...ok, but the idea/notion of intellectual ownership itself does exist, and I thought you meant that, my mistake...

JarC


 

[Arne]

Sorry for not being clear on that. You see, there is a very great misunderstandig among Scandinavian people, specially Norwegians, who believe they are under protection by US law. That is why they write Copyrighted on their native websites Some even think they are under FBI jurisdiction LOL. I guess some people watch too much television.

But apart form that, there is no law and most certainly will never come a law that tries to force me to see a webpage in a special manner or probits me from filtereing whatever I wish to filter. I don't even have to read the sport section in the newspaper (thank God)

Best wishes
Arne
Imici username= Arne

[TEggHead]

quote:http://www.torvund.net/artikler/art-opphav.asp

Haha, he's got a good point in paragraph 9 , how else are you going to install a program if copying is not allowed and installing constitutes making a copy...

 

[Arne]

So the next suggestion might be 2 years in jail for reading my computer's cache

In Denmark, though, it is forbidden to deep link. This is fairly new and only about a couple of months old.
Best wishes
Arne
Imici username= Arne

[Jor]

quote:
In Denmark, though, it is forbidden to deep link. This is fairly new and only about a couple of months old.

Yes, I heard... talk about insane laws.
What's next, four months jail if you repeat what someone else said?

 

[Jor]

quote:
In Denmark, though, it is forbidden to deep link. This is fairly new and only about a couple of months old.

Yes, I heard... talk about insane laws.
What's next, four months jail if you repeat what someone else said?