A thought on defining copyright of Web pages, just to notify users, search engines etc. of the copyright status of documents, rather than an attempt to handle payment, enforce copying restrictions, etc.
In HTML there is the possibility to define METAdata elements to control copyright. In the same way that the ROBOTS META tag is supposed to control document indexing by search robots, and the PICS-Label META tag can control viewing by children, one could incorporate a copyright META tag. Attempting to "print" or "save" a document thus tagged could generate a warning popup saying "This document is copyright by (link to publisher) and may only be copied under (specified circumstances)". This is how PICS is implemented in Internet Explorer. In fact, an entire site may be protected by metadata in the homepage, and exceptions granted for individual pages.
METAdata has the advantage that it may be parsed by search engines and other software.
references: http://vancouver-webpages.com/VWbot/about-mk-metas.html#Robots
http://vancouver-webpages.com/PICS/HOWTO.html
and thence to W3.org
Andrew Daviel
mailto:andrew[_at_]vancouver-webpages.com
http://vancouver-webpages.com : home of multisearch, META generator etc.
Received on Sat Oct 26 1996 - 00:56:51 GMT
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