Re: websites: public vs private information?

On Mon, 05 Jun 2000, Tyler Ochoa <tochoa[_at_]law.whittier.edu> wrote:
>
> I'm afraid both of you misunderstood my initial post. My point was
> that an electronic distribution of a copyrighted work does NOT take
> the form of fixed copies (material objects) being transferred; it
> takes the form of data being transferred, and then the COPIES of
> that data being fixed on the receiving end. I took it for granted
> that the copyrighted work was INITIALLY fixed on the hard disk of
> the originating server. So, I do not disagree with Mr. Lovell's
> initial response to my post.

I would say it happens that way only a minority of the time.

> To add my thoughts to your debate: The fact that a web page is
> "generated dynamically" does not necessarily render it unfixed. A
> video game screen display may be "generated dynamically," but the
> courts have held that such screen displays are sufficiently "fixed"
> in the code that generates them. So, I agree that HTML code is
> sufficient fixation for a web page.

The difference is that the video game responds to the same inputs the same way every time. This is sometimes, but not always true, with web pages. So it feels a lot muddier to me.

My point is not so much that the page is generated dynamically, but that by doing so, content from various sources are incorporated, including from the requester (Suppose the HTML form that generated the request has a field such as: "Create a form letter that includes this paragraph"). Who is the author?

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