Re: TotalNEWS & Derivative Works

Terry Carroll <carroll[_at_]tjc.com> wrote
>
> The sites whose content is being framed by TotalNews clearly provide at
> least an implied license for their content to be copied and displayed,
> i.e., by a user connecting directly to their site. Otherwise, you almost
> certainly have infringement even in the ordinary mode of viewing, for the
> copy being made, and possibly being publicly displayed.
>
> The question in my mind is whether such an implied license extends to
> permit the work to be copied, not standalone, but embedded into the work
> of others providers. If not, then the user is infringing by going beyond
> the scope of the implied license, and TN is contributorily infringing
> because its frame setup has no substantial non-infringing use beyond
> causing a user to exceed the scope of the implied license.

How about if I take the position that _I_ have absolute control over the _public_ display of my Web page, under US Section 210(a)(5). My Web page is a literary work, right? So I have the exclusive right to display it publicly. People can download a copy, view it, save it, whatever, so long as it is not publicly displayed. But if my page is aggregated with other pages in a framed page by, for example, you, then you are violating my exclusive right to publicly display my page.

Why would there be in implied license for public display? The use of frames is recent (in Internet years), and no one at the beginning had any knowledge of such a form of Web page design. How does the implied license then arise? My pages were all written with the idea that people would call up the page and view it on their computers, not that some company would incorporate it in their framed page for display to _their_ reading public. I think frames meet the second definition of public display of a work:

    (2) to transmit or otherwise communicate a performance or display of     the work to a place specified by clause (1) or to the public, by     means of any device or process, whether the members of the public     capable of receiving the performance or display receive it in the     same place or in separate places and at the same time or at     different times.

What am I missing here?

Phil Stripling
philip[_at_]crl.com Received on Wed May 14 1997 - 16:58:02 GMT