The statement has now been changed and is now more realistic. As I work
at CLA I must bear some responsibility; though I'm sending this email
from home.
Brian Kelly asks how it stands in copyright law; I think it is entirely
valid. CLA owns the copyright to the underlying literary work and is
entitled to authorise the making of copies - which includes the copies
made into cache memory and the copies made when the file is downloaded.
It can therefore apply conditions to that use.
A time limitation on cacheing is reasonable: Web pages are dynamic works
and may change. The CLA copyright page has now changed (the time limit
is increased from 7 to 30 days); someone with a long-term cache or will
still be operating under the old terms.
A prohibition on viewing the source is unrealistic only because it is
unenforceable; it isn't intrinsically unreasonable. Regular use with a
browser shouldn't require viewing the source.(except diehard telnet
users...)
Some sites manage to restrict it technically; I haven't found out how -
if you look at the MSNBC site at http://msnbc.com for example, "view
source" is greyed out in Netscape.
CLA retains a restriction on copy-cut-and-paste from the HTML; again,
this may not be readily enforceable but the practice of 'borrowing' code
from other pages is unquestionably theft.
While CLA's copyright notice may have been unenforceable, it is not as
"daft" as those which simply say "All rights reserved - no copying at
all without the prior written permission of the copyright holder" (I
won't embarrass the owners of sites that I've seen this on by naming
them, but some of them should certainly know better). As copies must be
made in order to view the page, these notices effectively prohibit any
viewing. IMHO it's better to have a clear copyright statement, with a
hotlink from every page, than no copyright statement at all or a
self-defeating one taken verbatim from a book.
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