Re: TotalNEWS & Derivative Works

Phil Stripling <philip[_at_]crl.com> wrote:
>

>...

Ok.

> Or if someone made an <img> link to my photograhs so that they
> appeared in that person's Web page everytime that person's page was
> viewed by a viewer/reader, I would expect that to be considered an
> infringement of my copyright.

That's not an infringement of copyright, but it may infringe upon other rights of yours.

> But when we get to frames and a link which displays my page and its
> images as part of a frameset, we get a different answer.

Same answer as immediately above: That's not an infringement of copyright, but it may infringe upon other rights of yours.

> It appears to be acceptable to several people on this list to incorporate
> my work as part of a framed Web page, when my page is caused to be
> displayed by a company that uses frames to provide menus and advertising,
> along with displaying the content of other authors.

I not sure that most of the people who are disagreeing with you have stated whether they find it acceptable; they have merely stated that they don't think that it infringes upon your copyright.

I think that there are three main arguments that have been brought against your position (and I'll apologise to the proponents of the arguments for simplifying them extremely):

1. If you put something on the Web, you should expect it to be copied and incorporated into other works.
2. If any infringing is going on, the Reader is the principal infringer, but he can't be, because you give him license to read it--thus there is no infringment.
3. If any infringing is going on, You (or CNN) are the principal infringer, because your server answered the request for information-- thus there is no infringement.

I go with number 3, but I think that number one really flows out from number 3--your server is doing the sending, not TotalNews's. I don't see how you can be a contributory infringer against yourself, therefore there is no infringement. I think that you've got to think "What if Phil S., the human being, answered all those requests for his web page himself, rather than trusting an automatic server? Then, I think that clearly you would feel that if you personally pushed the button to answer a request that was framed by TotalNews, then TotalNews would not be infringing. I suggest that you get a server that will monitor readers' requests for your web page and use the same criteria that you personally would use to decide who gets the page and in what manner.

Keith Handley kehandley[_at_]amherst.edu

p.s. I really am sorry about the summaries. Received on Tue Jun 10 1997 - 15:16:19 GMT