🚀 go-pugleaf

nemo@ctr.columbia.edu (Nemo Semret) writes:
>I was wondering, who owns the copyright for WWW homepages? Is it the
>institution which owns the machines (in my case the university) or the
>author of the content?
>
I think this raises another interesting point: Assuming, for the sake of 
argument, that the author is the owner of the Web page, how is the 
copyright law affected by the fact that the Web is a client-server 
system? Which means that the only way that you can read a Web page is to 
*copy* it from the server to your client PC? And since most Web software 
uses some kind of buffer, a copy of that Web page may reside on your PC 
long after you've terminated your Web session.

At what point are you in violation of copyright law? Obviously, not when 
you *look* at the page, even though to do so you have to make a copy; if 
that were a violation of law, the Web wouldn't be usable at all. (I think 
you could make a good case that everyone who puts a page on the Web must 
intend for that initial client-server copy to be made.) What if you like 
what you've seen, so you show it other people? What if you make some 
changes to improve on it? What if you make some changes and then claim it 
as your own work?

It seems to me that only my last example is a clear violation of the 
spirit of copyright laws. But there are many intermediate steps in 
reaching that point (the first of which is essential to the operation of 
the system); at what point have you broken the law?

I'm sure this seems like real nit-picking, but I predict that this will 
become a real issue sooner or later.

   Hank Mishkoff