> But -- and this is absolutely critical if we are to understand free
> online full-text access in the PostGutenberg Age correctly: My making
> my own full-text freely accessible online means *anyone* worldwide who has
> access to the web may (i) retrieve my full-text online, (ii) read it
> on-screen, (iii) download it, (iv) save it, (v) print it off, (vi) do
> online or offline computations on it. In addition, the software agents
> (e.g. google) that I choose to empower to do so (and, by default, this
> could be all of them) can, like individuals, (vii) harvest my text,
> invert it, index it, perhaps perform further computations on it.
>
> This is not even a legal fact, it is a practical, technological and
> inevitable fact about free, full-text web access and the nature of
> computers and the internet (and of files that are not fire-walled by a
> password or encryption or agent-blocker). If a law allows us to walk
> inside a building, a separate law is not needed to say we may breathe the
> air in the building; nor is a law that says we may walk but not breathe
> enforceable -- except in a sci-fi scenario that is not worth our wasting
> our time even contemplating, either in the case of walk-but-don't-breathe
> or read-but-don't-download-or-compute.
Although you are correct about the technical aspects of the WWW, your legal conclusions do not necessarily follow, and your analogy is not good. If a law allows you to walk into a building, that does NOT imply that you can open file cabinets, use computers, take sodas from refrigerators, etc. that are in that building. Similarly, the law is not yet settled on all of the copyright implications of technology. The fact that certain things need to happen to make the WWW work well is NOT to say that they are legally allowed without restriction. Case law seems to be heading in that direction, but we are NOT yet fully there.
For example, just because a paper is available online does NOT legally imply that you can print it, or save it on your computer. At least, I have yet to find any court that says so. However, there is a strong argument and cases have found that, if publicly viewable, you at least have the right to do so, and likely also the right to link to the paper. But printing and downloading (e.g., saving) the paper is a different story, and is a questionable practice in my opinion. For that, explicit permission by the copyright holder would be useful.
-Bodi Received on Thu Oct 09 2003 - 23:15:40 GMT
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