Re: Web Legal Issues

["Katherine Enos (Macrosearch Inc)" <a-kateno -at- MICROSOFT -dot- COM>]

Design and look-and-feel are also copyrighted and those who "take" HTML code
or steal designs are subject to copyright law. These laws do not simply
protect writers.

While I'm at it, I'd also like to comment that there have been a lot of
threads lately which are not too useful because people are speculating about
things they are not well-grounded in. One of these related to laws on
intellectual property, or perhaps it should have explicity be talked about
in those terms.

I also understand the "information wants to be free" origins of the
Internet, but what I'm going to say isn't based in my ideals of what should
be. It's based on what is. As more and more large companies have come onto
the Internet they have sought to protect their own interests by seeing that
the laws that have applied to other spheres also are applied to the
Internet. Some examples of these have been instances where companies sought
to prevent others from linking to their sites or from profiting off of
content they put onto the Web by simply using frames to pull it into another
company's Web site.

I know of instances where Web site code, even the whole Web site itself, has
been stolen and used for another firm. The offended company's attorneys were
quick to send a threatening letter. I was involved in a case where a Web
site I had helped to create for a community had been taken over to another
domain by two members of that community. There was no time wasted in
asserting the rights of the community (to whom my own efforts were donated)
by asserting ownership of the Web site's look-and-feel, it's HTML code and
design, as well as to the previous works of writers and photographers.
Often, when someone has stolen work from another site, a simply e-mail to
the ISP hosting that stolen work has quickly shut down the account of the
thief and done away from the problem. The most memorable case I know of
involved a person who stole a graphic from someone associated with the HTML
Guild. The graphic was traced by its owner, who quickly put up a Web site
that linked to the offending site, showed the original graphic that had been
stolen and slightly altered, and spammed numerous technical listservs to get
them to go to both sites. Since the offender in the situation was actually
using the pilfered graphic on his own *business* site, it was definitely in
his interests to rethink the expediency of stealing another's graphic
instead of making his own. The victim in this situation said that he would
remove the Web site after the offender took down the stolen graphic. It took
less than 24 hours for that to happen.

Also, with Photoshop 4.0 came an increase in the use of watermarking of
digital images for instant recognization. Thought the software existed
beforehand, Photoshop 4.0 popularized, at least among the professional
photographic community, the ability to trace your own images over the Web. I
haven't studied up on this recently so I don't know where things are at now.

Perhaps I know of more of these cases because I used to do a lot of Web
design and I've also been doing a private Web zine for about a year and a
half so I've had to consider looking out for the interests of contributors
as well as my own. The point, however, is that I think we need to remember
that most of us are not attorneys and when it comes to legal matters it's
better not to spread the word that there's nothing that can legally be done
about the theft of HTML code or design when, in fact, that is simply not
true.

There is so much good information on this list and I would prefer to see us
maintaining the level of quality  information by checking ourselves before
we get too much into speculation.

Thanks, and Happy New Year.
katherine

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