Re: Transclusion

Tim Bray wrote:
> 
> All this is orthogonal to Terry's point that silently including someone
> else's stuff raises some difficult and important issues in the area
> of intellectual property rights.

Not to mention excess server load. I've seen sites 
that protest silent linking and actively record 
hits to determine if their competitors are doing that.
Copyright payment per initial hit is fine but 
a hit to a site that is included by a site that 
is already collecting fees has to include the 
payment to the included site (eg., divvy the 
subscription fees or create rings of sites under 
a single subscription similar to waiter and waitress 
tip pooling).

Pornography sites prove the potential of pay for play.
Look at the counters.  It does work given compelling content.
The model of freebies plus paid access by 
subscription works if profit, not necessarily rigid copyright 
enforcement is primary.  Rigid copyright enforcement isn't 
possible now in other media and the Web doesn't change that as 
much as exacerbate the problem.  The lawsuits 
against some pacific rim companies for copyright 
violations are legendary.

So?  We have direct broadcast.  Problem?

In one model, each site signs content like current record labels 
sign bands. The artist/server sites take on both 
publication and broadcast rights.  They also 
collect payments and that is actually a problem 
for the current publishing culture.

Direct pay to play eliminates royalty collection 
and distribution organizations, e,g., BMI, ASCAP, etc. 
Certain well vested groups are most unhappy about that.
Right now, complex formulas are used to determine royalty 
distribution which enable top grossing artists to divide 
almost all royalties and starve independents.  Server 
side accounting with direct deposit stops that cold.
To get a feel for what is happening here, consider that 
the ftp lyrics sites are being contacted at this 
time by the music industry and being told to remove 
all published lyrics or be subject to legal redress.

Between the ease of publication production and 
broadcast, and the distribution, whole segments 
of the industry peel away.  That lowers costs 
enormously.  The number of HANDS OUT FOR NO VALUE 
in the music industry alone would stun you.
So, content acquisition costs come down unless 
as with the CD sales today, artificial means 
are used to keep prices high.

As for XML helping with the copyright, 
perhaps catalogs and FPIs have another use?
If XML includes the formal public identifier, 
and these are registered... hmmm... 
VRML uses a WorldInfo node for copyrights, 
so this looks like a per language issue.

While we are off topic, a question:  if content is streamed, 
is it cached?  IOW, on a multimedia site, are some content 
types capturable and others not?

len bullard

Received on Saturday, 21 December 1996 20:33:04 UTC