>>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.
> Disagreement here as well. It depends very much,
>I suppose, on what you view HTML code as. In my
>opinion, its simply a mark-up language which is
>used in conjunction with a browser to display
>your intellectual work on my screen. You cannot
>copyright that than you can claim copyright over
>the way in which you lay out a flyer, letter or book.
>Of course, we've all seen the actions taking place
>between companies over the 'look and feel' of a
>product, but thats a very different situation.
I don't know much about the technicalities of the law here, but I'd
have thought that HTML is the vehicle for copyright intellectual work,
and that therefore it is equivalent to a font in a printed work. Fonts
are copyright, but the publishers license them and that is not what
you infringe when you rip off a book by copying. What you infringe is
book design (which IS copyright) and the information which is
conveyed. So, I would say that HTML itself is copyright in the same
way as a font; the code for a particular page is copyright in the same
way as a book design; and the ideas and intellectual work is copyright
as we all know! What makes it more difficult to enforce is that
Web page design is more accessible - we can all have a go - and the
work involved in implementing the techniques in certain ways can
easily be avoided, because the code used is right there for the
picking. You can't take a book or journal and simply use their layout
just because you have Quark Express without a good deal of backwards
engineering.
Jill Sz
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Jill Szuscikiewicz
MIDRIB Project Manager
Computer Unit
St George's Hospital Medical School
Cranmer Terrace, London, SW17 0RE, UK
Tel: 44 (0)181- 725 3420/3204
Fax: 44 (0)181 - 725 3583
Email: [log in to unmask]
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