Re: A Legal Web Page Issue

[tcmay@netcom.com (Timothy C. May)]

L. McCarthy wrote:

> The text of the actual copyright notice seems to have a much friendlier slant.
> It resembles a GNU or FSF-type freeware license. Apparently you're just not
> allowed to charge *more* than a flat fee:
> 
> - From the bottom of the cited Web page:
> "Copyright 1994 by Pepper & Corazzini, L.L.P. All rights reserved. 
> Reproduction is permitted so long as no charge is made for copies, no copies
> are placed on any electronic online service or database for which there is a
> fee other than a flat access charge, there is no alteration and this 
> copyright notice is included."

He (Friedman, on the Cyberia list) mentioned that they found
some site that was charging an unacceptable (nonflat?) rate, and sent
them a letter asking for a fee to be paid.

This is what I'm really getting at, the notion of placing material on
a publically-accessible ftp or Web site and then claiming that
additional rules apply. To put it more clearly, it's a bit like me
posting my phone number and then attaching a claim that anyone may
call me provided they are not a member of, say, a corporation.

Or suppose I attach a "legal notice" in my sig someplace, saying that
while anyone may be able to send mail to me, law firms are required to
pay me $100 every time they send me a message. An unenforceable rule.
(In anarcho-capitalist terms, a la "Snow Crash," I could _try_ to
enforce this, by hiring my own collection agencies, but even Uncle
Enzio's Protection Racket, Inc. would likely scoff at such an attempt.)

A Web site that wishes to impose fees or set rules should do so with
_technological_ methods, not invoke the creaky old copyright system
and bring in the judicial system to enforce a basically unenforceable
policy. Note that Netscape's "Web server" product is basically this
technological approach, wherein Web sites that wish to set access
policies and perhaps charge for access are able to.


And enforcement is tough, in any case.

Since their page can of course be accessed from Russia or Burma or
Upper Ruritania, how can their "no non-flat fees" policy be applied to
all accesses except by charging admission at the gates, themselves?

--Tim May


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