TechWag

Can you copyright looking at the HTML of a page? Or use copyright to suppress criticism of a web site? While this is fairly common in the DMCA take down land, and should be no surprise to anyone who follows anything having to do with the DMCA, when the problem rears its head, you have to sit back and wonder at the audacity of people when they take a draconian viewpoint of copyright.

Greg Beck this morning reports that Inventor Link has taken copyright in a browse click wrapper to a whole new level where even linking to the site without express written permission is hereby forbidden and will subject the person to a copyright violation. So much for their SEO statistics in the longer run because this means that every single link, from blog to search engine is a violation of copyright as far as the web site is concerned.

Let alone any negative press, and we believe that this whole idea is to suppress negative press for a web site rather than a real attempt to explicitly make things illegal. Most negative press includes a link back to the offending site so that people can go check it out themselves.

Dozier apparently believes in the enforceability of this kind of agreement, because the firm’s own website includes similar terms. The firm’s “User Agreement” prohibits linking to its website, using the firm’s name “in any manner” without permission (the license specifically provides that even clients cannot say they are represented by the firm without asking), or making “any copies of any part of this website in any way since we do not want anyone copying us.” These terms would appear to prevent even criticizing the terms themselves, as this post does, by linking to and quoting from them. And, very strangely, the terms prohibit even looking at the website’s HTML code: Source; Pubcit

In all these kinds of cases make for interesting fodder for both the copyright and anti-copyright lobbies because showing someone acting with bad behavior, or clearly against the rules of fair use, or even research can be problematic down the road.

Using the DMCA and Browse Click copyright prohibits in the longer run only reflect badly on the site that is originating the original agreement. The recent ATT case involving copyright and the major blow out of bad press actually got ATT to change their terms of service realizing that criticism is part of the game. And people will use snippets of a web site to prove their actual point. While snippets are small windows into various aspects of an issue, it is usually best to link back to the web site so that the reader can read the issue themselves and make a semi-informed decision about the issue.

Tying the readers and writers hands in the longer run does nothing for the web site. Linking can be good, even when it is negative information. The obvious SEO concerns in that a link is a link also weigh heavily on the web site that chooses to block linking by stating that it is a copyright issue. As pubcit says, it is going to be difficult to even deal with it because linking is not a matter of life and death. Many people will pass the issue by and stop worrying about it.

Tags: web 2.0, education //