On Thu, Feb 06, 2003 at 04:09:14PM -0500, John Von Essen wrote: > This is definitely a very grey area. > > According the the EuroTV site: > > ... > Information contained on this server is copyrighted and may not be > distributed, modified, reused, re-posted, or otherwise used outside the > scope of a "WWW client" without the express written permission of B. On > The Net, owner of the EuroTV site. > ... > > Technically, the WWW::EuroTV mod is a "WWW client". Lets say instead of > using Netscape, I use my own perl script to display the information on > EuroTV.com within my terminal. My script is acting as a WWW client. > > At the same time, I could also use WWW::EuroTV to grab all the content > from the eurotv.com site and redisplay on my own site, johnstvguide.com. > This would go against their copyright statement.
I think you've hit the nail on the head here. IANALETMMTISB (I am not a lawyer even though my mother thinks I should be :-), but here's my two cents, for whatever they're worth. Based solely on the excerpt from EuroTV above, it seems clear to me that they explicitly allow you to download data from their site with any program that uses http. It also seems clear to me that *reuse* of that data is forbidden by that excerpt. Unfortunately, in practical terms, this isn't necessarily an issue. Maybe I've gotten a bit cynical from living in the USA my whole life, but the fact is, if you've got more resources to club your target over the head with a lawsuit than your target has to fight back, you've often won without even really fighting. The final outcome of a lawsuit in this matter might well set a precedent that would prevent this from happening again. In the meantime, the damage to the defendants could be staggering. I have come to realize that being a realistic idealist kind of sucks. :-) I do wonder, though, what would have happened if they'd politely asked for a resolution to this issue rather than threatening legal action. dha -- David H. Adler - <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> - http://www.panix.com/~dha/
