[Patents] Copyrights can be just as freedom threatening and abusive

[Gregory Aharonian srctran@world.std.com]

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."