- From: Roy T. Fielding <fielding@gbiv.com>
- Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2011 13:03:00 -0800
- To: Aaron Swartz <me@aaronsw.com>
- Cc: W3C TAG <www-tag@w3.org>
On Mar 11, 2011, at 9:04 AM, Aaron Swartz wrote:
> Does the TAG want to rewrite the Web specs so that certain kind of
> tags (e.g. embed and img, but not a) carry the implication "I have
> verified that the content published at this URL is not published in
> violation of copyright law"? That strikes me as insane; copyright laws
> vary significantly from country to country and even if we decide to
> limit the World Wide Web to just the US, the leading experts in the
> field agree that US law is so ambiguous there is no way to be certain
> whether a published work is infringing or not.
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. In almost all cases that I have read
(IANALbiswtmtwt), transclusion of unlicensed content for the
sake of profit is illegal. It doesn't matter where the bits
came from because the intent is clear and the effect on the
copyright owner (potential lost revenue) is clear.
To give you a summary of what exclusive rights may be owned
by copyright, we can look at the clause in the Apache License
that lists what is granted:
2. Grant of Copyright License. Subject to the terms and conditions of
this License, each Contributor hereby grants to You a perpetual,
worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable
copyright license to reproduce, prepare Derivative Works of,
publicly display, publicly perform, sublicense, and distribute the
Work and such Derivative Works in Source or Object form.
In other words, causing a public display of a copyrighted work
can be a violation of copyright law (at least in the US) even
if the reproduction comes from the copyright owner. IIRC,
that is why restaurants/bars have to pay more for cable TV
than residential customers.
At least, that's what I understand from prior (way too many)
discussions with lawyers on licensing. These things change,
and can be very specific to the details.
....Roy
Received on Friday, 11 March 2011 21:03:29 UTC