This goes a bit offtopic, but it interests me so much...
On Tue, 9 May 2000, DEMERRE DIETER wrote:
> Remember *all* web-pages are (mentioned or not) copyrighted by their
Yes, as long as the page is complex enough (<i>hello</i> or something is
hardly complex enough, at least by Finnish law)
> original creator and thus normaly to store a digital copy for future
> usage could infringe the copyright-rules.
The copy is necessarily done by simply processing and viewing a web
page. The remote server sends a copy of the page (which is ok assuming the
server is owned by the page copyright owner. Althought this might not be
true, for say advertisements or something).
The copy is done by the Linux kernel when it copies the buffers to the
user space program memory space (I suppose). Another copy is done to
computer's display memory.
Even if the original copy is destroyed, it doesn't make any more legal to
do new copies of the material. Even if you think so, the www page will
almost certainly be saved to browser's cache on hard disk.
1. Assuming that all the above /is/ legal, why the heck saving a more
permanent copy to hard disk would not be? Can anyone explain?
(either by US law or Finnish law :)
2. Assuming that even viewing (=accessing from your computer) www pages
is /not/ legal, then we all are criminals.
Now, which one of the above assumptions is true, or is neither of
them? And why?
3. Assuming the third possibility, that viewing www pages is legal but
saving to disk is not, is a threat for information. In the old days (and
still nowadays) when information was on paper, like mags, a lot of people
subscribed to them and got a legal copy. The (written) information was
saved along with the mags and it was unlikely that everybody would have
destroyed their copy. Example: after a legal battle, the trademark
"Linux" was assigned to Linus by using as proof old issues of Linux
Journal.
Increasingly in future more publications will go online. But if it is
illegal to save permanently a copy of a web page to disk, then the
information will disappear forever when the server crashes, the company
goes out of business, or a lot of other things. Libraries are unable to
save the information either (they have to respect copyright
law too). Therefore this possibility -- legal to view but not save --
is a threat (for history, sciences, etc...)
The second option (that we are all criminals) is quite ridiculous. So when
creating and tuning laws, it should be rejected. The third option threats
all not-freely-copyable information, so it _should_ be rejected to. The
only (simple) alternative left will be the first, and therefore I think
that information _should_ be allowed to be saved (but the law might not
presently allow it).
(Well, I guess I'm a little politically GNU-biased ;)
Comments?
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