Re: re-presenting other people's web pages.

["Lawrence F. London, Jr." <lflondon@mindspring.com>]

On Tue, 25 Jul 2000 12:16:47 +1000, Pacific Edge Permaculture
<pacedge@magna.com.au> wrote:

>
>Hello April and others...
>
>on 25/7/00 11:37 AM, askpv at askpv@ozemail.com.au wrote:
>
>> I found Plants for a Future being re-presented on a new web page.
>> at first i thought, GREAT, some new, additional resources for people,
>> but no, it was good old Plants for a Future...
>> 
>> It is illegal and unethical to re-present someone else's web pages.
>
>Sometimes web pages may be 'mirrored' on another website in another
>location.

PFAF itself is using two servers to host its website: its server in
the UK and also, recently, MetaLab.

>To get to your point, April, this is done in agreement with the original
>website.
>
>I know people might be full-up with copyright issues regarding the
>discussions to clarify copyright over the use of the permaculture logo, but,
>April, your email raises the issue once again.
>
>Under the terms of the Copyright Act (Australia) and, as I understand it,
>the Berne Convention on international copyright under which national
>copyright legislation is enacted, the creator of the webpage (in this case,
>the content producers and website designers for Plants for the Future or the
>organisation itself if the creators have signed copyright over to them)
>would have to agree that their work can be republished on another website.
>only then could the new site 'legally' copy and publish the information.
>
>The issue is pertinent, possibly, to websites using frames. It has been
>suggested, but never tested to my knowledge, that these websites, by
>bringing in information produced elsewhere and  formatting it within the
>frame set-up, might be co-opting copyrighted material and republishing it as
>the frame-websites own.

As long as it is clearly _linking_ to a designated site it can't be
accused of coopting or republishing. This is good for both sites as 
one wants as much traffic from linking sites as possible, noone can
deny that and it is easy for the linking site to remove any shadow of
doubt that it is only _linking_ to a specified site. There's another
interestinmg twist for the web: SSI, server side includes, offered by
Apache server software (much used these days on LINUX or UNIX hosts).
SSI allows a creative webmaster to create collaborative projects - 
someone's site may be linked to from a SSI page but appear to
originate from that page as a component of a collaborative project;
further scrutiny would quickly reveal that all the components of a SSI
page are indeed discrete remote websites owned by their individual
webmasters. For example Permaculture Institute USA could create an
umbrella PC website that would creatively collect and arrange
disparate PC resources from a multitude of other's PC websites
and present that to the public as a general overview of global PC
activity without violating copyright and giving credit to all sources
plus add considerable traffic to those linked PC websites.
Lots of interesting possibilities here. Good to think about these
things before getting too involved in looking for copyright
violations; might throw the baby out with the bathwater otherwise.

LL


 >
>
>> I have had this happen to my page many times over
>
>How did you deal with this, April?
>
>Regards to all...
>
>...Russ Grayson
>
>
>---------------------
>PACIFIC EDGE
>Permaculture & Media
>Russ Grayson and Fiona Campbell
>
>PO Box 446, Kogarah NSW 2217 AUSTRALIA
>Phone/ fax   02-9588 6931   (IDD-61+2+9588 6931)
>Email: pacedge@magna.com.au
>WWW: http://www.magna.com.au/~pacedge/
>
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>
>
>

Lawrence F. London, Jr. Venaura Farm ICQ#27930345
lflondon@mindspring.com  london@metalab.unc.edu
metalab.unc.edu/intergarden InterGarden
metalab.unc.edu/permaculture PermaSphere
metalab.unc.edu/intergarden/orgfarm AGINFO