RE: [dvd-discuss] An interesting case from 9th Circuit Appeals co urt

[Ben <ballenf(at)yahoo.com>]

Aren't there two distinct issues here, one copyright and the
other some sort of "trespassing" (like the recent case of the
terminated employee found liable for "unauthorized" emails to
former co-workers - for trespassing his former employer's mail
server)?

That is, there are many people who could not care less that
millions of people can see their innocuous family photos out of
context of their web page, full sized or thumbnail.  While they
probably have the copyright in the images, they do not assert
them as they have no value to those outside the family (assuming
it's not a public figure).  Thus, maybe they have, to some
degree, impliedly granted a license to the world to view and
copy their photo.

However, those same people would probably be very upset if they
paid for their server's bandwidth and got a bill for several
hundred dollar's due to someone else's inline linking of a
family photo (don't ask me why anyone would want to do this).

The issue would seem to arise in cases of someone posting an
image of commercial value (public figures, pornography, etc.) in
which the poster does not own or have rights to the copyright. 
There, they cannot rightfully keep another from copying the
image any more than they can display it themselves.  However,
this person would still have a right, IMO, to keep others from
"trespassing" their server space by inline linking.

One more point.  If someone has a license that a web user must
click through (e.g., "you agree not to link or make copies of,
even thumbnails, images on my web pages") to see images, does a
spider or web bot's "clicking through" bind the owner of the
program to the license?

As someone new to the discussion, I hope my comments are not way
off-base...

Ben

> > From: Harold Eaton [mailto:haceaton@hotmail.com]
> > I disagree that embedding is bad. If you don't want your
> > images imbedded, then don't serve them to any page except
> > your refering page.  
>
> That is not in my power to accomplish.  My site is hosted
> by a service and I do not have that level of control.  (btw:
> how would you go about specifying that sort of restriction?)
 
> ... and if you don't want people xeroxing the text book,
> print it in black on red paper?
> 
> The whole point of copyright law is that you don't _need_
> barriers.  The whole existance of this list is due to the
> misguided attempt of some people to _create_ barriers where
> none are needed if existing law is enforced properly!

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