Re: Fixation during transmission through Int

From: DAVID POST <postd[_at_]erols.com>
Date: Mon, 15 Apr 1996 10:04:11 -0400 (EDT)

Dale Dietrich writes:
>

snip
> I'm posting this note to ask a more esoteric technological question
> which I have not yet seen discussed here. That is, as Web pages and
> other Internet traffic, containing copyrighted works, are passed from
> the originating host computer through a serious of Internet node
> computers along the way to its final destination on the Internet
> User's browser's screen, what occurs during the transmission through
> these nodes?
>
> Do Internet node computers, including the user's Internet access
> provider, always act as mere conduits passing all messages directly
> through?
>
> Do they sometimes have to make intermitent copies, however transient,
> into RAM or onto disk while awaiting downline communications traffic to
> clear before retransmitting such messages?
snip

My understanding has always been - and I would be delighted if someone could correct me if I'm wrong -- that a form of RAM copying takes place at each of the intermediate nodes, else the routers could not process the information contained in the message headers and determine what to do with the message. It illustrates, imho, the futility of trying to maintain our ordinary notions of "copying" in this context; as the RTC v. Netcom court recognized, it would be far too damaging to the medium itself to consider each of these intermediate steps as "copies" under the Copyright Act.

---

David G. Post *
Georgetown University Law Center*

Postd[_at_]erols.com OR              *
david.post[_at_]counsel.com		*
*********************************

Received on Mon Apr 15 1996 - 14:08:58 GMT