On 6/19/98, Max Dashu <maxdashu[_at_]lanminds.com> wrote:
>
> This is not my area of interest, but I thought others who deal in
> digital design proprietary stuff might be interested. A June 16 article
> entitled "Beginners Can Build Their Own Web Pages" openly recommends
> copying someone else's web page design:
>
> "For easy page design, look for pages you like on the Web, save
> them into your page-making program, then cut out the content on
> the pages and put yours in. Don't forget to change the addresses
> behind the links."
I assume by your tone that to follow the article's advice would be unlawful, but that is not clear to me. As general advice, it strikes me as very broad and open-ended and could easily get the poor novice into both technical and legal trouble, but, surely, we can copy many aspects of other people's web pages without fear of copyright infringement. For example, the components of HTML are standard. Just because one person uses meta tags doesn't prevent someone else from using meta tags, does it? And most pages have headers and bodies and fonts and various other standard elements. And, surely, you wouldn't say that a framed web site or a web site with tables has an exclusive right to frames or tables, would you?
Again, if you somehow end up with a website that looks precisely like some rather intricately designed and distinctive website, you might be in trouble. Or if you took copyrighted images from a website, you could be in trouble. So, yes, there are pitfalls for the unwary in following the advice, but as a former programmer who *knows* that most programs start by cloning other similar programs, it seems that the advice, with a few caveats, ain't all that bad.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.2.0 : Mon Mar 26 2007 - 00:35:30 GMT