Re: Caching and copyright

On 11/12/95, tstanley[_at_]leland.stanford.edu (Timothy Stanley) wrote:
>
> Suppose AOL or another online providor caches WWW
> pages that are often accessed by their customers. This saves customers
> time in accessing the pages and saves bandwidth on the internet in that
> the pages do not have to be reloaded from the original WWW page host.
> The saving of bandwidth helps both AOL and the original WWW page host.
>
> But suppose the original WWW page host of these pages is charging per
> hit of the pages.

Charging whom? The visitor who points his or her browser at the web site? If so, then there is probably something in the URL (e.g. hidden variables, etc.) that make the URL non-identical to any URL previously presented by an AOL customer to the web proxy. If so (and assuming compliance with web specs), then the second visitor will get freshly loaded text, not old text from an AOL cache.

> If AOL caches these pages on its disk space then it is
> unlikely that these hits by AOL customers (millions of them) will be
> counted. Thus the original WWW page host will not be able to charge it
> clients as much as it might want and the host will not have as good of
> an accounting of how many times the pages are actually being assessed.

Or do you mean that the WWW host is collecting revenue from an advertiser in relation to the number of page hits? In that case, the advertiser is getting a slight bargain, it is true. But this need not be insurmountable. Consider that an advertiser in a magazine is often able to arrive at some sense of the number of readers as distinguished from the number of copies sold. People pass around magazines, sometimes reading a friend's copy rather than buying their own, and yet the world of magazine advertising does not collapse.

Or do you mean the WWW host is renting space on its hard drive to a person who doen't have their own web site, and is charging the person per page hit. Then it is good news for the WWW host and for the person; they both benefit if caching happens. No problem at all, as far as I can tell.

> The question I have is AOL's caching of the pages a copyright violation?
> (caching benefits the profit making enterprise AOL by allowing quicker
> access for customers of the pages and saving AOL bandwidth)

You didn't say which country's copyright law you are talking about. Let's assume the U.S. Assuming that the AOL caching is in compliance with the HTTP protocols, then I suggest it is not a violation of copyright to do the caching. The person who puts text on a web site knows, or should know, that HTTP-compliant caching will take place.

What does HTTP-compliant mean? Lots of things, for example, when you hit "reload" in your browser it should really reload from the WWW host (not from an AOL cache).

> What about individuals? Is there an implied license to cache the pages.
> Thus a hit might really just include the number of first visits per
> session. Within each session there could be multiple visits.
>
> My guess is that this caching problem will become significant in the near
> future if a per hit charge is being used by WWW page hosts. AOL could
> suddenly eliminate a few million users from being included in the count.
> I am not sure how this should be addressed, but I suppose that original
> WWW page providors could ask for an accounting from AOL of the number
> of hits as a condition for allowing them to cache the pages for their
> customers.

The HTTP spec has no provision for such accountings, and I think it is unrealistic to expect such accountings so long as the caching is HTTP-compliant.

> I do not see the individual caching problem as being as
> significant as the original WWW page providor is still getting a
> count of the number of visits.

You are going to have to be a little clearer on what you say the "problem" is. As discussed above, I am not clear on why HTTP-compliant caching would be a "problem" at all.

---
Carl Oppedahl, oppedahl[_at_]patents.com  Oppedahl & Larson, patent law firm
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