A Legal Web Page Issue
Someone on the Cyberia mailing list has announced that his URL on legal matters (http://www.commlaw.com/pepper) can only be accessed by sites which charge a "flat rate." I'm not at all clear what he means by a flat rate here....is is flat rate per month, or per access, or what? In any case, I sent him (and the Cyberia list) a note saying I had already added it to my home page and that the nature of the Web is that URLs ripple out, either by linking with other pages or by publicizing the URLs (as he did, and as I have just done here). So, give it a browse and add it if you find it interesting. When he sees a bunch of accesses (assuming his system has logs he can look at) from sites over which he cannot possibly hope to set policy for, he may realize the futility of this. (He can stop accesses, or charge admission, with various means--maybe not yet fully developed, or with commercial Web servers such as Netscape is developing--but he cannot release the URL and then enforce his ideas of who can access it. God forbid we have people trying to "copyright" their URLs and then collect royalites anytime the URL shows up in someone's list of interesting places.) This experiment in guerilla ontology brought to you by, --Tim May -- .......................................................................... Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@netcom.com | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero | knowledge, reputations, information markets, W.A.S.T.E.: Aptos, CA | black markets, collapse of governments. Higher Power: 2^859433 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available. Cypherpunks list: majordomo@toad.com with body message of only: subscribe cypherpunks. FAQ available at ftp.netcom.com in pub/tc/tcmay
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Tim May writes:
Someone on the Cyberia mailing list has announced that his URL on legal matters (http://www.commlaw.com/pepper) can only be accessed by sites which charge a "flat rate." I'm not at all clear what he means by a flat rate here....is is flat rate per month, or per access, or what? [...] So, give it a browse and add it if you find it interesting. When he sees a bunch of accesses (assuming his system has logs he can look at) from sites over which he cannot possibly hope to set policy for, he may realize the futility of this.
The text of the actual copyright notice seems to have a much friendlier slant. It resembles a GNU or FSF-type freeware license. Apparently you're just not allowed to charge *more* than a flat fee: - From the bottom of the cited Web page: "Copyright 1994 by Pepper & Corazzini, L.L.P. All rights reserved. Reproduction is permitted so long as no charge is made for copies, no copies are placed on any electronic online service or database for which there is a fee other than a flat access charge, there is no alteration and this copyright notice is included." -L. Futplex McCarthy; PGP key by finger or server "The objective is for us to get those conversations whether they're by an alligator clip or ones and zeroes. Wherever they are, whatever they are, I need them." -FBI Dir. Freeh -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBLyNP/2f7YYibNzjpAQHRWwP/YWLgxcrc2PH/J+X8fRLAv4/0GHie6nHK kM5g0Qmbn7jp352aUmAlOQFgudgLSgx/cQeGKcHU9K6gDRjEYAPQc23PB6pWLL1Y l8SBfvtJ5ttykIKrMSEFN+XfMfU/aT9Kl6e6EhIluWAEA4KCalGMDQ5h3eQ4VHCl EHGjwZCE7KM= =pDG/ -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
L. McCarthy wrote:
The text of the actual copyright notice seems to have a much friendlier slant. It resembles a GNU or FSF-type freeware license. Apparently you're just not allowed to charge *more* than a flat fee:
- From the bottom of the cited Web page: "Copyright 1994 by Pepper & Corazzini, L.L.P. All rights reserved. Reproduction is permitted so long as no charge is made for copies, no copies are placed on any electronic online service or database for which there is a fee other than a flat access charge, there is no alteration and this copyright notice is included."
He (Friedman, on the Cyberia list) mentioned that they found some site that was charging an unacceptable (nonflat?) rate, and sent them a letter asking for a fee to be paid. This is what I'm really getting at, the notion of placing material on a publically-accessible ftp or Web site and then claiming that additional rules apply. To put it more clearly, it's a bit like me posting my phone number and then attaching a claim that anyone may call me provided they are not a member of, say, a corporation. Or suppose I attach a "legal notice" in my sig someplace, saying that while anyone may be able to send mail to me, law firms are required to pay me $100 every time they send me a message. An unenforceable rule. (In anarcho-capitalist terms, a la "Snow Crash," I could _try_ to enforce this, by hiring my own collection agencies, but even Uncle Enzio's Protection Racket, Inc. would likely scoff at such an attempt.) A Web site that wishes to impose fees or set rules should do so with _technological_ methods, not invoke the creaky old copyright system and bring in the judicial system to enforce a basically unenforceable policy. Note that Netscape's "Web server" product is basically this technological approach, wherein Web sites that wish to set access policies and perhaps charge for access are able to. And enforcement is tough, in any case. Since their page can of course be accessed from Russia or Burma or Upper Ruritania, how can their "no non-flat fees" policy be applied to all accesses except by charging admission at the gates, themselves? --Tim May -- .......................................................................... Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@netcom.com | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero | knowledge, reputations, information markets, W.A.S.T.E.: Aptos, CA | black markets, collapse of governments. Higher Power: 2^859433 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available. Cypherpunks list: majordomo@toad.com with body message of only: subscribe cypherpunks. FAQ available at ftp.netcom.com in pub/tc/tcmay
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