Re: Article - Internet Linking: The First Amendment Is Alive And Well.

On Sat, Oct 28, 2000 at 09:32:41AM -0700, Bob Stock wrote:
> At 01:49 PM 10/27/00, Ross Runkel wrote:
> >Article - Internet Linking: The First Amendment Is Alive And Well.
> >http://www.lawmemo.com/ip/articles/linking.htm
>
> With respect to the Utah Lighthouse Ministry case, Mr. Shapiro makes the
> decision sound easier than it was. The use of certain adverbs like
> "certainly," "clearly," and "obviously" always make me pause because they
> often are a proxy for conclusory statements. Thus, Mr. Shapiro's
> statements (1) "clearly infringed the plaintiff's copyright," (2) "the
> Court had little difficulty," and (3) "the Court had little difficulty
> determining" omit the analysis that the court itself avoided.

To Bob's cogent comments here, I'll repeat what I wrote at the time the case was discussed here.

The website in question, that later had the full text of the work in question, was located in Australia. It's not true that the ULM had any control over this site--a reader of the ULM website noted this link. I don't believe it is "clearly" the case that the act of continuing publication here was any more an infringement than was the Salt Lake Tribune's link to the same site at the same time. The law about links here should be treated the same as the dubious CoS cases--the Australia site also publishes CoS works.

The work in question was never "obviously" under copyright. Records at the Library of Congress reveal that the copyright in the 1990s covered only "new material." The records also indicate that the work was supposed to be unpublished, but the LOC records show that the work was published and deposited somehow and was available to be read at the LOC. Apparently many LDS bishops had the book, in apparently different editions, and the parts of the book in question here might be in the public domain. At least, an examination of the facts ought to be in order, not any "certain" dismissal of the defense and immediate injuction.

The question of linking is a deep one and deserves a full treatment by judges--otherwise copyright law will be used by copyright holders wrongly, to suppress publication instead of to encourage it. A report about district court opinions should be more cautious--look what happened in the Napster case. Otherwise, the fact that the Internet is larger than the court's reach, and the links multiply in defiance of the court, will cause many to disregard the law entirely. Received on Mon Oct 30 2000 - 23:02:06 GMT