Re: Arrested - re: TAG ISSUE-25 deep linking

> Copyright laws are not so much about the act of moving bits, but
> rather the ability to control revenue obtained from the use of
> copyrighted expressions.

I'm not sure it makes sense to get into a big legal discussion here
when none of us are lawyers, but that's not true. As you can see from
reading [the statute][1], copyright law is about reserving the ability
to copy, distribute, and perform certain works. That you didn't make
any money off it is sometimes a defense to a copyright infringement
claim (specifically, it's one of four major factors that allow you to
claim the fair use defense) but the ability to control revenue is not
at the core of modern copyright law.

[1]: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode17/usc_sec_17_00000106----000-.html

The restaurant/bar right you refer to is the public performance right,
which I don't think is really at issue here. It refers to activities
that do not strictly involve making a copy but have a similar effect
-- activities like projecting a movie on a large screen or performing
a play on a stage or broadcasting a song over the radio. In each of
these cases you're not making a copy for everyone in the audience, but
the work is still seen/heard by a large number of people.

The legal questions I've seen raised about transclusion are:

1. Who in the transclusion process is responsible for the making of a
copy? (Is it the person publishing the thing that's transcluded, the
person publishing the page with transclusion, or the person whose
browser requests the transcluded element?)

2. Does a page that transcludes another work constitute making a
"derivative work" of that work? If so, who is responsible for making
that derivative work? (Same three possibilities.)

Received on Friday, 11 March 2011 22:25:53 UTC