Brian said:

> On this list it's clear we understand the need for copyright.

But there doesn't seem much common understanding of copyright 
law. From what I thought I had learned - mainly from Charles 
Oppenheim of De Montfort University, and Sandy Norman of the Library 
Association - Jill Szuscikiewicz's point is right. That is, the 
original arrangement of a piece of published electronic information 
is intellectual property protected by copyright, and the particular 
use made of html in order to produce that arrangement likewise.

Reading this thread points up 2 problems:

    (a) some people have wrong ideas about what the law is;
        
    (b) some people think that the legal protection of rights in the 
        arrangement of published material is unreasonable.

I'm worried about (a) - and I accept I may be one of the people who 
have wrong ideas - because with all the eLib investment in the 
creation of this kind of intellectual property going on, there OUGHT 
to be common understanding by now of what protection the law provides.

Hard not to sound pompous about why (b) is worrying - but isn't it an 
attitude that deters (by failing to respect) excellence, innovation, 
individuality, motherhood, apple pie etc ? Or is something other than 
legal protection going to generate those (all right, I do know what 
generates motherhood) ?

Dick Chamberlain
University of Nottingham Library




  We're
> discussing how copyright can be applied for HTML resources.
> 
> Some technical comments.
> 
> CACHING
> 
> The CLA statement states you can download a file for up to 30 days.
> There are at least two caches involved  - my client cache and my
> institutional server cache.  If my server cache is chained to, say the
> HENSA national cache, there will be another cache involved.  I, as a user,
> have no control over files stored in server caches.  I do have some
> control over my client cache (depending on the client I'm using).  For
> example type about:cache in the Netscape Location box.  However in
> practice I won't look at my cache and purge files after 30 days.
> 
> Copyright statements should also take into account off-line browsers.
> I may tell my off-line browser to cache a site, and then take my machine
> offline (e.g. take my portable home and save phone charges).
> 
> How do you "tell" spiders not to cache (i.e. download for purposes other
> than "reading")?   Note this was dicussed yesterday in a copyright thread
> on a searching mailing list.
> 
> NEW DEVELOPMENTS
> 
> Things will be even more complicated in the future.  AT the WWW6
> conference I attended recently I spoke to somebody from Microsoft about
> the emerging DOM (Document Object Model) specification.  This spec, which
> has been submitted to W3C and is being discussed by the W3C DOM Working
> Group will (effectively) provide a programming interface for HTML elements
> and their content. So, for example, you can dynamically change the content
> of a document or HTML elements.  This is useful for, say, providing a
> dynamic table of contents by setting the visibility of menu sub-items on
> or off on a mouse-over condition.  Using a frame containing your HTML
> document which sets the visibility of, say, a Yahoo advert to off, for an
> accompanying frame *could* be regarded as altering the content of the
> document.  In this case the CLA statement which says that the material
> can't be altered in any way sounds sensible.
> 
> Note that Microsoft's Internet Explorer 4.0 implementation of DOM
> restricts manipulation of HTML documents to the same domain, so switching
> off adverts can't be done.
> 
> I've just had another thought about offline browsers.  Some of them add
> buttons to the top of pages when you're viewing the web.  Could this be
> regarded as "altering the material in any way"?  There were several papers
> at WWW6 on "doing things" to documents held in proxy servers.
> 
> I also attended a session on Web Collections.  This is a mechanism for
> grouping sets of related web resources for purposes such as prining and
> off-line reading.  I wonder if copyright control should/could be applied
> here (i.e. here is a relationship between a document and a copyright
> statement.  Whenever the document is printed, the copyright statement will
> be included as a footer).
> 
> This isn't the list for an indepth technical discussion.  However perhaps 
> this community could have some input into the protocol developments.
> I'd be interested in comments.
> 
> Note I'll be shortly writing a report on WWW6, and will host an online 
> conference about WWW6.  I'll announce the conference on this list, and all
> list members will be welcome to attend.  Implications of new technical
> developments on copyright might be a useful topic to discuss.
> 
> Brian
> 
>  ------------------------------------------------------
> Brian Kelly, UK Web Focus
> UKOLN, University of Bath, BATH, England, BA2 7AY
> Email:  [log in to unmask]     URL:    http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/
> Phone:  01225 323943            FAX:   01225 826838
> 
> 
> 
> 


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