From srctran@world.std.com  Fri Dec 29 02:54:17 2000
Date: Thu, 28 Dec 2000 21:54:17 -0500 (EST)
From: Gregory Aharonian srctran@world.std.com
Subject: [Patents] Copyrights can be just as freedom threatening and abusive

For all the complaints about the abuses of patents and hypothetical losses
of freedom, copyrights can be just as abused and freedom threatening.

Greg Aharonian

>http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,40850,00.html
>
>    Free Links, Only $50 Apiece
>    by Declan McCullagh (declan@wired.com)
>    2:00 a.m. Dec. 28, 2000 PST
>
>    WASHINGTON -- Online news sites are turning to a novel way to make
>    some extra cash: requiring fees for links.
>
>    The Albuquerque Journal charges $50 for the right to link to each of
>    its articles. Localbusiness.com and Latino.com are more generous, and
>    permit one to five links without payment.
>
>    There's just one catch. Legal experts say no U.S. law or court
>    decision allows a website to successfully demand payment for links
>    to its content. Such linking is a common practice online and allows
>    services like search engines to exist.
>
>    "They have no right to use the legal system to stop the linking," says
>    Eugene Volokh, a professor of law at UCLA. "But if sites really want
>    to stop linking, they can easily do it by technological means, by
>    periodically shifting the file names of their pages, by delivering the
>    pages using CGI scripts rather than direct links, or by including HTML
>    code that checks the address of the site from which the user arrived."
>
>    The sites that limit unapproved linking rely on a service provided by
>    Renton, Washington, startup iCopyright.com. In exchange for a portion
>    of the licensing revenues, customarily less than 50 percent,
>    icopyright.com handles collecting payment for article reprints,
>    photocopy licenses or links.
>
>    Nobody questions a publisher's legal right to demand payments for
>    article reprints, at least for substantial quantities. But
>    iCopyright's license agreement, which is featured at the bottom of
>    articles at its partners' sites, says the company can selectively
>    grant or withhold "HTML Link permission (that) allows you to link
>    to a specified Web page."
>
>    The iCopyright.com license agreement also restricts what can be said
>    about the content of the linked-to article. If you sign up to pay $50
>    to link to, say, an Albuquerque Journal article, you agree not to say
>    anything "derogatory" about "the author, the publication from which
>    the content came, or any person connected with the creation of the
>    content or depicted in the content."
>
>    Because the agreement limits negative comments about someone
>    "depicted" in a news story, someone linking to an article about
>    President-elect George W. Bush and Vice President Al Gore would
>    not be permitted to criticize either one.
>
>    Paula Tobol, iCopyright.com's senior marketing manager, defended the
>    company's license agreements. "The license is to guarantee the link
>    and give you peace of mind that it will stay available for a specified
>    period of time," Tobol said in e-mail to Wired News. "Currently, the
>    legal issue of linking is somewhat unclear."




