WEBMASTER wrote:
> 3) We are now advised that permission should be sought for every external link
> to ANY other website.
The so-called links are hypertext references, deliberately designed upon the
model of a reference in an academic journal, by Time Berners-Lee and others
at CERN. It is accepted practice, even in Law journals, that articles do not
need to get permission to quote a reference. Otherwise, how could you get
any debate going? No academic lawyer will advise you otherwise.
If your advisers suggest differently, your university should sack them.
What we need is a campaign to make it clear that attempts by lawyers to
restrict academic freedom are unethical. No university should hire any
legal advisers who are not willing to fight for academic freedom. It is
in the interests of copyright and patent lawyers to bring more aspects of
life under those laws, so that they get more work. But the social cost
of making software patents legal, and extending copyright from the image
to a reference are so high, these selfish attempts should be fought from
the start. Otherwise you end up in more expensive court cases later,
as is happening now between libraries and the copyright licensing agency.
--
Dr. David R. Newman, Queen's University Belfast, School of
Management and Economics, Belfast BT7 1NN, Northern Ireland (UK)
mailto:[log in to unmask] Tel. 028 90335011 FAX: 028 90249881
http://www.qub.ac.uk/mgt/staff/dave/
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