Re: Licence to view source code.

Edward Barrow <edward[_at_]plato32.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> >
> > My questions:
> > [a and b deleted]
> > (c) does the implied licence (or equivalent doctrine) extend to:
> > i) viewing the document source code?
> > ii) printing the document?
> >
> > [My answer to (c) i) and ii) in the UK would be 'probably not' but I'd
> > be interested in others' opinions]

Greg MacGowan <greg.macgowan[_at_]law.uc.edu> replied:
>
> With respect to (c) ii), I don't see a problem with printing the document
> provided that the electronic copy is deleted.

How do you arrive at this conclusion? Copyright law protects a number of very specific rights. The major one (and the one most relevant here) is the right to reproduce the work. The electronic copy is one reproduction. A print-out is a separate reproduction. Copyright controls the making of these reproductions, not what is done with them after the copies are made (I'll leave the broadcast and performance type rights out of this because for most purposes on a digital network they cannot be infringed without infringing the reproduction right at the same time). Even the right of publication involves further reproduction although I suppose you could argue that a reproduction was made for other purposes and only later used to publish.

I fail to see how deleting the electronic copy can affect the legality of creating the print-out unless some quite weird term is implied in the licence to reproduce. It is clear that a licence is given to reproduce the document in order to view a Web document using a browser. I would argue that it is also clear that any incidental reproductions necessary to view a Web document are also authorised (including reproductions in caches and proxy servers although there are members of this list who seem to disagree). It is less clear (but I think pretty safe) that a licence is also given to create a print-out for personal use (as opposed to further publication).

Any other basis for establishing the legality of printing a Web document is going to lead to the implication of a very complex licence agreement and courts quite rightly tend to apply Occam's razor to implied terms and agreements.

Greg's analysis of (c)(i) I agree with completely. There is no further reproduction. The same HTML code is simply being viewed using different display rules.

Tim Arnold-Moore, LL.B. (Melb)        | Multimedia Database Systems, RMIT  |
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