Re: websites: public vs private information?

On Mon, 05 Jun 2000, William S. Lovell <wsl[_at_]cerebalaw.com> wrote:
>
> On Sat, 03 Jun 2000, Barry Caplan <bcaplan[_at_]i18n.com> wrote:
> >
> > Actually, no. The HTML you receive is the end product. Programming
> > languages (of seemingly infinite variety) are used in multi-tier
> > applications to generate HTML and HTML fragments. ASP files are
> > modified HTML, with other code embedded, but they are not HTML, and
> > they are not the only way to generate HTML. CGI scripts are another
> > common well known example which are not HTML at all.
>
> Wrong again. The HTML code that generates my web pages is fixed
> in my computer -- I know that, because I wrote it. But whether
> it is precisely the HTML code or perhaps some other code that
> generates the HTML code is quite beside the point. I have 0s and
> 1s on my hard drive without which my web pages would not exist;
> there would have been nothing that I could have uploaded to my
> web server. Those 0s and 1s on my hard drive constitute "fixation"
> of the data that ultimately appears as my web pages.

Well, for very basic HTML, there is a one to one correspondence of content and code. But what you are describing really is source code, which is a set of instructions to both the web server and the browser about how to display something. Is that subject to copyright -- probably.

But is quite easy, and quit common for even this code to be generated dynamically from other code, in a non-deterministic manner. In fact, when doing so, elements provided by the requester (the browser) are incorporated. This may be fair use, may not be, under copyright terms. IANAL, but I wonder...

> > > Given your definition of "fixation" that may be true, but like I
> > > said, that stuff (links or whatever) seen by whoever on whatever
> > > site had to come from somewhere.
> >
> > Well, yes, but it is not "my" definition. I am only saying the way
> > things are actually implemented. IAMNAL, but I am a technical manager
> > and web developer. For instance, my company makes enterprise software
> > for certain intranet applications that dynamically generate every page.
> > Depending on the application, there at least 5 and maybe as many as 15
> > servers required to generate the page.
> >
> > Anyway, sorry for the all the technical details below. But I think
> > it is important to understand them at least at this conceptual level
> > (and I admit it is fuzzy even for techies) before making a case that
> > HTML is fixed in a certain place for copyright purposes.
> >
> > Still (and I am writing this only after thinking hard on the issue),
> > I can not think of a single place or time in the system where the HTML
> > that is received at the browser is fixed in any medium - RAM, disks,
> > or anywhere else.
>
> For reasons noted above, that is beside the point.

I think it is precisely the point... maybe the HTML itself as it arrives at the browser is copyrighted (but by who?), but the display it generates may change each time it is run (and it may only run once anyway), so is what is viewed in the browser what is copyright, or is the HTML itself copyright. They are not the same thing.

> > Even just arriving at your browser may not be enough to "fix it"...
> > is the copyright in the messages the browser receives or the display
> > the browser creates from the received messages. These are clearly
> > not the same thing:
>
> "Machine readable" data are subject to copyright protection after
> fixation just as is the written word, and it matters not that
> different machines do different things to make the data "readable,"
> nor that any particular "reading" may be made up from data from
> various sources (e.g., banner ads).

That may very well be... IANAL. But it seems like a big issue to me that the data that is "fixed" at the browser comes from various sources, some under fair use, some with restrictive licences, some improperly... does that mean anything I can republish on the net subject to copyright to my benefit regardless of how I got the content to your browser?

> > - The browser formats basic HTML (according to some input form the
> > human user at the browser end!
>
> Yeah, but later. First it comes about through fixation on the hard
> drive of the guy who wrote the thing in the first place and then
> made it available.

Only in the most simple cases. In 1994 this was essentially true. By 1995-1996, it was essentially the minority case. My company's customers use our sw to generate easily millions of web pages a day. I can assure everyone that in not one single does the HTML that is displayed ever exist on anybody's hard drive except the final recipient.

Thought experiment: Does your favorite search engine have every possible search that someone can make, along with the response that would go with it, already pre-saved waiting for you to make that search? There aren't enough hard drives in the world to do that!

> I believe you confuse the means for making the "machine readable"
> data actually readable, i.e., your various browsers and such, the
> fixation of that data in 0s and 1s having been carried out long
> before that by the original author, or else there would be nothing
> to talk about here.

Exactly. My point is that the content ("fixed data") that browsers display are not *always* fixed before they come to the browser. And that falls into the "or else" part of that statement.

I would say that there probably is something to talk about anyway, I just want to frame the discussion around how it really works technically so the discussion makes practical sense.

Barry Caplan
<bcaplan[_at_]i18n.com> Received on Sun Jun 11 2000 - 17:55:07 GMT