On Sat, 02 Aug 1997, "Dan L. Burk" <burkdanl[_at_]shu.edu> wrote:
>
> If publication is a distribution of copies, and the Copyright
> Office does not recongnize web pages as having been published, then
> either they deny that there was a "distribution" or that there were
> "copies," or both.
>
> If one believes MAI, then RAM reproductions are copies. If the
> copyright office accepts that, but denies that web pages are
> published, then it has to explain how the RAM reproductions --
> copies -- of your web page got into my machine without being
> distributed. The only sensible interpretation of their position
> is that they deny that RAM reproductions are copies in the first
> place.
I have two points to make. First, why do we need to even address the RAM issue? Copies of the web page (or at least its components) are made on one's hard drive and remain there, often for quite some time. At least in Netscape and Internet Explorer, one sets the size of the hard drive cache, and my guess is that most people set it large enough to accommodate many web pages worth. Does it matter, for the purpose of the definition of publication, whether the distribution occurs to 100 users or 1000 users, assuming some small quantity of users who set the hard drive cache to 0 or very low? While the web page components are on one's hard drive, they are *much* more accessible to anyone, even a judge or an official at the Copyright Office, than they are while they are momentarily in RAM.
The second point is a minor one. There is a difference between loading operating system software in RAM and loading data (web pages) in RAM. Assuming one leaves the machine turned on, the operating system software will remain in RAM the whole time, while the web pages will probably be quickly replaced by other data. Therefore, the web pages are considerably more transitory (all transistors being equal) than the OS. Would the court in MAI still consider the data to be fixed? One can't be sure, of course, but the language in MAI is fairly strong, so there's a good possibility they might.
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