> The law cannot "prevent" other from viewing the pages, but it DOES create a
> cause of action for improper copying. But Linda is free to use technology
> to further enhance her rights. This is not an either/or issue. One can do
> BOTH to protect one's creative works, but there is no OBLIGATION, under the
> law, for her to block others from improper use.
You seem to be in denial of the basic fact that Linda chose to use a machine to negotiate and act on her behalf. You emphatically ARE under a legal obligation to honor the terms of contracts or licences that are formed by machines that act on your behalf. Denying this point is not even helpful to your argument: if you aren't responsible for your machines actions, then I'm not responsible for my machine's actions either and you have no cause to sue me.
The law is well settled that if you set a machine running and it acts in accordance with your commands that you are legally obligated by its actions. You might as well argue that vending machines don't make sales because machines can't enter you into a contract without synchronous human participation. If you care to dispute this point, please provide some references. And don't try to confuse the issue: this point is a matter of contract law, not of copyright law.
The copyright act preserves only a right to authorize. Contract law defines how authorization occurs. If you use a machine to negotiate your authority, then you are so bound and your rights are used up as far as the party and act in question are concerned. There are no causes of action against authorized copying, nor against authorized creation of derivitive works. If you negotiated poorly, then your only legal recourse is to learn from your self-defined mistake and change the way you negotiate in the future. For example, you could do exactly what Linda did and reconfigure it to behave differently. Or you could unplug it altogether. The law doesn't obligated you to do anything other than honor the agreements you negotiate. The copyright act does not help you negotiate, as many a musician has discovered when they finally got the paltry check from their record label.
I recently posted a written record of McDonald's HTTP authorization (and active participation) in the creation of a copy of their picture on my machine, which clearly and explicitly grants me the right to have a copy made on my machine and to display it with requested referring page. You are about as likely to get a court to ignore this evidence as you would be to exclude a sales receipt on the basis that a merchant who pushed the buttons on the register didn't intend to agree to the contract of sale. A court is required to start its analysis by examining the tangible evidence of what actually took place, and that HTTP transcript is pretty definitive evidence for what happened when my machine negotiated with yours. To the extent that it is somewhat technical, the HTTP specs provide the written trade code to guide the court in its interpretation. However, it's pretty plain in it facial meaning.
Or as I said before, argue that machine actions don't obligate their human masters in which case you STILL have no cause of action against me when my machine created a copy of your work all by itself.
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