Re: Australian law and Browsing the Web

Bob Penn <thresshold[_at_]aol.com> wrote:
>
> It seems to me that caching done on an individuals computer would
> be covered by an implied license. In contrast, it strikes me that
> when entities such as AOL cache entire sites so that subsequent
> users of AOL don't ever actually make it to the original site [which
> perhaps will have updated content such as may be the case in for a
> news reporting site], but rather view the site as it was cached
> sometime earlier by AOL would not be covered by an implied license.

I think it would depend on whether the caching was automatic or involved manual intervention. Automatic caching is simply using the copying machine that is the Internet. The implied licence should cover this. Manual caching involves a person making a deliberate copy outside the normal operation of the internet copying machine.  

> I don't know enough about the way the internet works to be truly
> convinced of my response. One concern I have with your response is
> that even if the internet widely used caching prior to the WWW, can
> we charge current web publishers with knowledge of that fact
> sufficient to conclude that they intended to allow the practice to
> continue with their own newly posted material?

Do you need to know about interim copies made in a fax machine or in a commercial printing process to authorize copies to be made in that way? No. You simply authorize the normal copies to be made and in so doing authorize any incidental copying. The internet should be no different. The problem is not whether those interim copies are authorized it is working out the boundary between `normal' operation and unanticipated operation.  

The presence of automatic caching in the Internet before the advent of the WWW to me establishes it very firmly within the `normal' operation of the machine whether it be in the form of enterprise-wide `proxy servers' or local caching.

An interesting aside is whether marking an HTML page with an instruction not to be cached is sufficient to defeat this implied licence and thereby charge a site which caches for infringement. Many caching programs completely ignore this part of the standard. Should the copyright law force them to implement it?

Tim Arnold-Moore, LL.B. (Melb)        | Multimedia Database Systems, RMIT  |
tja[_at_]mds.rmit.edu.au  B.Sc.(Hons Melb) | 723 Swanston St    -----------------
Tel: +61 3 9282 2487   Fax: ..2490    | Carlton 3053       |  simul iustus 
    http://www.mds.rmit.edu.au/People/Tja/tja.html         |   et peccator