CPAC Quotes Templeton

Those of you who have been following the efforts of CPAC and their
associates to render homeless certain web sites which they feel might be
frequented by thought criminals might find the following an interesting
case of "strange bedfellows."

It is apparent that CPAC doesn't like opposing points of view,
particularly when they are seen in public forums hosted by CPAC on the
Web.  Messages which don't toe the CPAC party line mysteriously vanish and
forums are frequently erased in their entirety when anything resembling a
discussion appears.

Now CPAC has claimed some new territory in their war to silence their
critics.  They maintain that no one who does not agree with their agenda
may show a link to any of their publicly available resources on the Web,
and that doing so constitutes theft of their bandwidth. <giggle>

They quote as their cite for this concept a piece by Brad Templeton,
ClariNet owner, who apparently shares their view that links can constitute
copyright infringement under certain circumstances.  Fortunately, Brad 
does not restrict linking to the article in question, from which I offer
the following tiny snippet under the "Fair Use" doctrine. 

 > I, and many other people initially had the intuitive feeling that it
 > could never be a violation of copyright to make a link to a web page.
 > Of late, I've come to think that this might be wrong. 
   
Now what CPAC objects to is people who post messages saying, essentially, 

"Look at the silly CPAC people rant and froth.  <Click Here>"

I would suggest that CPAC is a political organization, with a very 
well-defined social agenda, which I have every right to comment on, 
and that illustrative hyperlinks in my commentary constitute "Fair Use"
of their content.

Am I on firm legal ground here?

--
     Mike Duvos         $    PGP 2.6 Public Key available     $
     enoch@zipcon.com   $    via Finger                       $
         {Free Cypherpunk Political Prisoner Jim Bell}

Mike Duvos writes:

> [Brad Templeton:]
>  > I, and many other people initially had the intuitive feeling that it
>  > could never be a violation of copyright to make a link to a web page.
>  > Of late, I've come to think that this might be wrong. 
>    
> Now what CPAC objects to is people who post messages saying, essentially, 
> 
> "Look at the silly CPAC people rant and froth.  <Click Here>"
> 
> I would suggest that CPAC is a political organization, with a very 
> well-defined social agenda, which I have every right to comment on, 
> and that illustrative hyperlinks in my commentary constitute "Fair Use"
> of their content.
> 
> Am I on firm legal ground here?

If you merely point to someone else's content, I don't see how you
can possibly be found to have violated their copyright.  The "linkee"
site is the one publishing the information guarded by copyright, not
the "linker" ("publish" == to desseminate or make available to the
public).  IMO, you don't even need to cite "fair use" for this;
*you're* not publishing it, they are.  This is just an intimidation
tactic.  (Of course, if they have lawyers and money and motivation,
and you don't, it may very well work.)

BTW, do you have an URL to the Brad Templeton piece?


-- Jeff (IANAL, etc.)

I wish I'd heard about this issue a few days ago, as I was just at a party
at Brad's house on Saturday.

At 1:27 PM -0700 8/19/97, Mike Duvos wrote:

>They quote as their cite for this concept a piece by Brad Templeton,
>ClariNet owner, who apparently shares their view that links can constitute
>copyright infringement under certain circumstances.  Fortunately, Brad
>does not restrict linking to the article in question, from which I offer
>the following tiny snippet under the "Fair Use" doctrine.
>
> > I, and many other people initially had the intuitive feeling that it
> > could never be a violation of copyright to make a link to a web page.
> > Of late, I've come to think that this might be wrong.
>
>Now what CPAC objects to is people who post messages saying, essentially,
>
>"Look at the silly CPAC people rant and froth.  <Click Here>"
>
>I would suggest that CPAC is a political organization, with a very
>well-defined social agenda, which I have every right to comment on,
>and that illustrative hyperlinks in my commentary constitute "Fair Use"
>of their content.
>
>Am I on firm legal ground here?

I think so. Even quoting _blocks_ of someone's text is usually considered
"fair use," and there have never, to my knowledge, been any cases in which
a reference or pointer to a text was considered copyright infringement.
References, as in bibliographies, are in fact just that, references or
pointers. Saying "Go read Joseph Finder's "The Zero Hour"" is not an
infringement of any sort.

As for Web pages, it seems clear that the same logic applies. Someone who
makes their material available to anyone who follows a link cannot object
when someone else publishes that link, no matter in what context.

So, I think Brad Templeton is clearly wrong. Though, in fairness to Brad,
his views may be more nuanced than the brief excerpt above.

This topic came up a couple of times on the Cyberia-l mailing list, with
the consensus, as I recall, being that "of course" pointers and citations
are not copyrightable. They fail all the tests of length, the reasons for
copyright, etc.

--Tim May

There's something wrong when I'm a felon under an increasing number of laws.
Only one response to the key grabbers is warranted: "Death to Tyrants!"
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
tcmay@got.net  408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Higher Power: 2^1398269     | black markets, collapse of governments.
"National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

Tim May <tcmay@got.net> writes:
> >[hypertext links not copyright infringements]
> >
> >Am I on firm legal ground here?
> 
> I think so. Even quoting _blocks_ of someone's text is usually considered
> "fair use," and there have never, to my knowledge, been any cases in which
> a reference or pointer to a text was considered copyright infringement.
> References, as in bibliographies, are in fact just that, references or
> pointers. Saying "Go read Joseph Finder's "The Zero Hour"" is not an
> infringement of any sort.
> 
> As for Web pages, it seems clear that the same logic applies. Someone who
> makes their material available to anyone who follows a link cannot object
> when someone else publishes that link, no matter in what context.

You can get creative about how you reference material with the web
though.

For example say that you set up a page which contains your criticisms,
plus large chunks of, or the whole copyrighted document, using some
kind of inline web text directive.

It's the users web browser which is putting the parts together, the
copyright holders web server is serving some parts of the page, your
server is serving other parts.

For a visual example of this, check out:

	http://www.obscura.com/~shirts/

The inline image is in the UK, the rest of the page is on Lance's
machine.  The reason for this one is that the image is ITAR/EAR
sensitive, and Lance's machine is in the US.

Is it possible to include text in a web page?  I know you can do
images (as in the above example) by doing:

	Look what the silly copyright police are doing...

	<IMG SRC="http://copyright.police.com/copyright-image.gif">

	isn't that a daft claim?

And copyright.police.com is serving their own image so they have no
grounds for complaint.  (Moi? I just referenced it... it was Joe Q
Publics web browser which combined my text and your copyrighted
image).

Now I don't think you can do

	<TEXT SRC="http://copyright.police.com/copyright-article.html">

directly, but I'd be willing to bet you could do it with javascript/or
java, in such a way that the viewer wouldn't really figure out where
the various parts of the current "page" were coming from.

Anyway, the copyright police, WIPO, SPA etc. are the enemy in my book.
The difficulty of trying to applying these old laws to the internet
where they hardly make sense, suggests that copyright is going to have
to "give" longer term to adjust to reality.  Legislation against
gravity never works out long term.

I was kind of hoping eternity might become a small contributing factor
for this cause.  1 copyrighted text so far.

Adam
-- 
Have *you* exported RSA today? --> http://www.dcs.ex.ac.uk/~aba/rsa/

print pack"C*",split/\D+/,`echo "16iII*o\U@{$/=$z;[(pop,pop,unpack"H*",<>
)]}\EsMsKsN0[lN*1lK[d2%Sa2/d0<X+d*lMLa^*lN%0]dsXx++lMlN/dsM0<J]dsJxp"|dc`

On Wed, 20 Aug 1997, Adam Back wrote:

> Is it possible to include text in a web page?  I know you can do
> images (as in the above example) by doing:
> 
> 	Look what the silly copyright police are doing...
> 
> 	<IMG SRC="http://copyright.police.com/copyright-image.gif">
> 
> 	isn't that a daft claim?
> 
> And copyright.police.com is serving their own image so they have no
> grounds for complaint.  (Moi? I just referenced it... it was Joe Q
> Publics web browser which combined my text and your copyrighted
> image).

Right, so this isn't an infringement on their so-called rights because your
document does not contain the image but just the link. The problem, I think,
is in thinking of the HTML document as a completed work and not a set of
instructions, for which it is. The completed "page" exists soley on the
screen of the browsing party, and the copyright-image.gif graphic in
question was obtained from the copyright.police.com web site and not yours.

Plus, I think it could be further argued that by putting any information on
the Web implies that you are allowing any other party on the Web to link to
it in any way they so choose.

> Now I don't think you can do
> 
> 	<TEXT SRC="http://copyright.police.com/copyright-article.html">
> 
> directly, but I'd be willing to bet you could do it with javascript/or
> java, in such a way that the viewer wouldn't really figure out where
> the various parts of the current "page" were coming from.

A very useful program would be one which could obtain a portion of text from
any page, or obtain the text from a page _starting_ at a certain point, not
unlike the <http://somplace.com/somedoc.html#foo> notation, but without the
<a name="foo"> tag having to exist. Then, any portion of text from any page
could be easily referenced.


> Anyway, the copyright police, WIPO, SPA etc. are the enemy in my book.
> The difficulty of trying to applying these old laws to the internet
> where they hardly make sense, suggests that copyright is going to have
> to "give" longer term to adjust to reality.  Legislation against
> gravity never works out long term.

For sure. In a geodesic network, the center will not hold.

m

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