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This from the iltf-news mailing list may prove interesting to some of you... There's a discussion going on now about the (C) implications of cacheing. Should I bundle it up and send it to someone? Subscription requests SUBSCRIBE ILTF-NEWS Your Name to: [log in to unmask] (modulo mis-thinks) --Begin forwarded message-- Hahin writes: >Are there any efforts underway to develop guidelines for caching >and mirroring? I.e., when can service providers assume that it is >all right to mirror a site or cache frequently requested material? >Even for freely available material, this could be problematic if the >content publisher is deprived of knowledge about who is accessing the >material. Is anyone trying to address the problem of passing user >information back to the originating site? www.ontv.com has a product out there called webfetcher that is free to download and is employed for local caching and local copying of entire web sites. Because of the nature of the product, we (I am a principal) can detect routing, caching, gateway filters, etc. We find that the real-world situations out there are much more complicated that most people suspect. The internet and in-house networks employ probably hundreds of variations on routing, caching, etc., schemes that all effectively select content and store it at various persistence levels. Even browsers cache differently in ways that are important to copyright issues. Many schemes exist and are in widespread use for hiding identity -- for example, Linux machines are routinely employed as gateways that hide identity or change identity. Any "truth" on the Internet as to who is doing what is only an approximate truth and that, for architectural reasons, is going to be the case for a long time. Our position (at OnTV) is to register the tangible form of our web pages with the copyright office and to maintain regular dated and signatured updates since our site changes every day. The concern is not with people caching stuff -- its with origination rights (who controls origination), public display, and plagiarism (theft of creative effort). One of our engineers says rightly, I think, that you also want to prohibit "named storage" -- someone going in and intentionally naming a cached page something other than it's dynamic cache handle in order to make the page persistent beyond the needs of routine access-performance enhancement. So we are like movie makers -- if you want to make a personal copy with your "vcr" no problem, really, but if you try to make money with our stuff, we get slightly disturbed. Just some thoughts. I would love hear lawyer talk on this (it's free, right?) Also look at http://www.cbclegal.com/news/dlr196.htm#protect for a paper I wrote on copyrights based on a month's study last summer -- from a computer scientist's point of view (I've been [log in to unmask] since 1978). --END forwarded message-- 'Scuse absence of formatting... Mike Holderness --BAA26557.829183796/tom.compulink.co.uk-- %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%