Plagiarism and HTML

["Geoff Hart (by way of \"Eric J. Ray\" <ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com>)" <ght -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA>]

There's an intersting thread here re. whether copying HTML code
constitutes plagiarism, and the answer is (all together now): "It
depends!"

Although as writers, we tend to think that content is the only
important thing, that's clearly a mistaken notion. Presentation is
equally copyrighted, as any creative or graphic artist will tell you.
Proving infringement can be mighty tough, but it can be done (and has
been done, for example in a recent lawsuit against an artist in the
annual Corel graphics competition). Computer software is also
copyrighted against plagiarism, and the only functional difference
between software and HTML is that the HTML isn't compiled (it's
interpreted). So in a very real sense, a clever HTML hack is
certainly copyrighted, every bit as much as this message I'm writing.

How could HTML be unprotected, then? Well, there's a fairly clear
precedent in the computer software industry that well-known, freely
published and distributed algorithms contained in a standard are not
themselves copyrightable, because they're considered public domain.
The algorithm for a bubble sort, for example, is in the public
domain. At the other extreme, the security protocols published by RSA
cannot be used without a license. As well, the standard
programming language instructions for accomplishing a task can't be
copyrighted. For example, the phrase "LET A = 1" (in BASIC) isn't
copyrightable because it's part of the language definition, and if it
were copyrighted, nobody could program in BASIC without paying
royalties to the copyright holder. Similarly, if you automatically
coded something using FrontPage or AOLPress, everyone who produces
the same code would be safe against legal action unless someone could
prove that Microsoft or AOL had stolen their custom code and thus
turned every user of the software into inadvertent copyright abusers.

So, the bottom line: Where does HTML fit into copyright? That's up to
the original author's lawyer to discover. Nobody would ever sue me
for boldfacing using <b>word goes here</b>, but if they created a
carefully polished table or frameset and I used it unmodified, there's
be a pretty good court case against me, and I'd lose if the author
could prove I'd stolen the original code. Personally, I wouldn't want
to be the name that goes on the precedent-setting lawsuit. To be
safe, flatter someone by imitation, not by theft.
--Geoff Hart @8^{)}
geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca

Hart's corollary to Murphy's law: "Occasionally, things really do work right."