IP: "threatens the very foundations of the Internet."

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

By CARL S. KAPLAN

Treat EBay Listings as Property? Lawyers See a Threat

Cncerned that a recent federal court ruling dangerously extends the ancient 
law of trespass to cyberspace, 28 leading Internet legal scholars are 
arguing in an appellate court that the decision "threatens the very 
foundations of the Internet."

The red-alert language of the professors is aimed in part at drawing 
attention to a legal dispute in California between auction giant eBay and a 
smaller rival, Bidder's Edge, that raises important questions about 
property rights in the digital age.

In May, Judge Ronald M. Whyte of the United States District Court in San 
Jose issued a preliminary injunction barring Bidder's Edge from using a 
software robot to crawl though eBay's computer servers without 
authorization. An aggregator of auction information from many sites, 
Bidder's Edge had used its robot, or "spider," to extract information about 
eBay's auction listings. Bidder's Edge then placed the information -- which 
is not protected by copyright because it is considered a set of facts -- in 
its own database so that its customers could search eBay's listings, and 
others, rapidly.

http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/yr/mo/cyber/cyberlaw/28law.html