IP: Washington Post sending lawyer letters to copyright

[Dave Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>]

Date: Fri, 12 Apr 1996 15:58:46 -0800
From: Wulf Losee <WLosee () Getty Edu>
To: lorracks () dworkin wustl edu
Cc: farber () central cis upenn edu
Subject:  IP: Washington Post sending lawyer letters to copyright  
  
               violators -Reply


If Lorrie Cranor doesn't want to be hassled by lawyers with search
engines, she should have her Web administrator change the
configuration the robots.txt file on her Web server.  The robots.txt file
can be set to tell well-behaved search engines to avoid cataloging web
pages that she'd rather the public not know about.  


Of course, the _Washington  Post_ lawyers might have their own search
engine running -- one that might ignore the robots.txt file.   I've heard that
some publishers, fearful of copyright infringement on the Internet, have
financed their own search engines.  In that case the best course would
be to see if the Web administrator could implement some sort of
passworded access to class-oriented web pages (certainly some, if not
all, the web server brands offer that option).


Of course this doesn't address the ethics of the situation.  Fair use is a
gray-area -- and I'm not so sure her use of the _Washington Post's_
material was fair.  But if Lorrie Cranor wants to continue placing reprints
of copyrighted material on her web pages, she might want to implement
these precautions to avoid future hassles from copyright lawyers.


Hope this was helpful...
--Wulf
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      /   =      Network Analyst               
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