COMMUNIA Workshop, Vilnius, March 31, 2008: Debate of Questionable Practices
Ricardo: Okay to Copy Offline
Andrius, in recent messages, you mentioned working on Intellectual Property
Rights issues, Creative Commons, Public Domain, etc.
I'd be interested to know what you think about IPR issues if we want
distribute complete copies of websites by Sneakernet, on CD, flash-
drive, etc.
I think it would be useful if there was some clear way to identify
those websites where the owner/copyright holder has given permission
for people to take a complete copy of the website, using an offline-
browser/copier program like HTTrack (http://www.httrack.com/ ).
It could be indicated by some sort of 'Logo', such as 'OK to Copy
offline', perhaps with a clickable link to a full legal statement.
Do you know what sort of copyright-license would be relevant to this?
Would it be all sorts of different licenses, not just one?
Is it unrelated to the type of license, just a question of the owner
giving written permission?
Is it re-inventing the wheel, when an existing license or mechanism
already covers offline copying?
This Logo mechanism would give anyone full permission to copy the site
to offline media, without each person having to apply separately to
the owner, to get written permission.
The scheme would need a publicity-drive, to promote it.
There are some issues that would need to be considered :-
1. An offline copy is just a snapshot at one point in time, so a CD
copy could become out-of-date. This is especially important if it's a
commercial website and contains adverts or price-lists for products,
time-limited special offers, etc.
2. What happens about any pay-per-click adverts, such as Google
Adwords or Amazon Affiliates? If someone is using the CD copy on a PC
with no internet-access, then it can't report 'false clicks' for out-
of-date adverts. However, if someone uses an old CD copy of a website
when they do have internet-access, it may register a click on an out-
of-date advert and charge the website owner for the click, but take
the user to an expired offer page, or a product that is now at a
different price to the advert.
It's tempting to take the easy way out and say "Well, we'll only
operate the offline website scheme for free public domain information
sites", but they aren't the most interesting sites, that people
actually want to look at. Many people would like to browse through
commercial sites offline, even if they are a few weeks old. We could
look at technical-means to deal with this pay-per-click problem.
3. For websites with multiple contributors, such as forums, the
website would have to say that ordinary users are either placing their
messages in the public domain, so that anyone can take a copy of their
contribution, or maintaining ownership under another license, but
giving their consent to copying their contributions. It may be
relevant to photo-sharing sites, shareware sites, etc.
Anyway, I just wanted to float the idea of an 'OK to copy Offline'
Logo, to see what you think of the idea and how it relates to IPR and
different licences.
Ricardo
Rights issues, Creative Commons, Public Domain, etc.
I'd be interested to know what you think about IPR issues if we want
distribute complete copies of websites by Sneakernet, on CD, flash-
drive, etc.
I think it would be useful if there was some clear way to identify
those websites where the owner/copyright holder has given permission
for people to take a complete copy of the website, using an offline-
browser/copier program like HTTrack (http://www.httrack.com/ ).
It could be indicated by some sort of 'Logo', such as 'OK to Copy
offline', perhaps with a clickable link to a full legal statement.
Do you know what sort of copyright-license would be relevant to this?
Would it be all sorts of different licenses, not just one?
Is it unrelated to the type of license, just a question of the owner
giving written permission?
Is it re-inventing the wheel, when an existing license or mechanism
already covers offline copying?
This Logo mechanism would give anyone full permission to copy the site
to offline media, without each person having to apply separately to
the owner, to get written permission.
The scheme would need a publicity-drive, to promote it.
There are some issues that would need to be considered :-
1. An offline copy is just a snapshot at one point in time, so a CD
copy could become out-of-date. This is especially important if it's a
commercial website and contains adverts or price-lists for products,
time-limited special offers, etc.
2. What happens about any pay-per-click adverts, such as Google
Adwords or Amazon Affiliates? If someone is using the CD copy on a PC
with no internet-access, then it can't report 'false clicks' for out-
of-date adverts. However, if someone uses an old CD copy of a website
when they do have internet-access, it may register a click on an out-
of-date advert and charge the website owner for the click, but take
the user to an expired offer page, or a product that is now at a
different price to the advert.
It's tempting to take the easy way out and say "Well, we'll only
operate the offline website scheme for free public domain information
sites", but they aren't the most interesting sites, that people
actually want to look at. Many people would like to browse through
commercial sites offline, even if they are a few weeks old. We could
look at technical-means to deal with this pay-per-click problem.
3. For websites with multiple contributors, such as forums, the
website would have to say that ordinary users are either placing their
messages in the public domain, so that anyone can take a copy of their
contribution, or maintaining ownership under another license, but
giving their consent to copying their contributions. It may be
relevant to photo-sharing sites, shareware sites, etc.
Anyway, I just wanted to float the idea of an 'OK to copy Offline'
Logo, to see what you think of the idea and how it relates to IPR and
different licences.
Ricardo
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