Re: Who owns the Town (Web Pages)?

Thanks for the responses. I do think a strong case could be made for the town pages being a derrivative work. And I want to stress that no one is doing work for which they have not been paid. The Merchants and the designer need to work out an arrangement for ongoing work, or bag it and start over from scratch.

What I find most interesting about this situation is that both parties were fairly naive about the nature of the Web. The designer recreated the pamphlet as a homepage and was paid x amount of money for his efforts. But the function of a Web page goes beyond the graphics, it lies in how connected it is to other sites, and how up to date the information is. Rather than a one shot deal, an effective Web site is really an ongoing commitment, like buying into a telephone service. This is why controlling the address is so important. Once you've encouraged other sites to link to your page, it's alot more complicated to switch your address. (Of course at this stage, there are relatively few links to the site)

Alexa Jaffurs, Science Reference Librarian Weselyan University Science Library
Middletown, CT 06459

860/685-3732
ajaffurs[_at_]weseleyan.edu Received on Tue Mar 19 1996 - 13:57:30 GMT