This is a fascinating discussion; that part of it which deals with legal remedies for infringements of copyright has many money and time costs and should only be entered into where the loss is substantial. That has in effect been said many times and I agree.
But I was looking at a different aspect. That is the policing of misuse as is carried out by various bodies that watch the interests of composers and lyricists, story writers, broadcasters, playrights, painters and so on. Here the issue is less who actually owns the copyright, than that the misuser most definitely does not. And it is stamping down on that misuse which seems to me to have two advantages. One the actual prevention of mis-association, particularly with porn sites. Two the constraint upon the growth of mis-use. This latter seems to me very important. And the main place in which the mis-use takes place is the Search Engines. There is a case for the search engines to be worried about the spread of the mis-use practices since they will undermine the authority and usefulness of the engines. Also there are two aspects of copyright material. One is the sites themselves as original works; the other is the contents of the sites. Now I may say that anyone may copy the coding of my site even though it is entirely my own work, since it is simple in coding and design terms and probably would not be of interest to a site thief. Most of the others on this list are very concerned about their sites because of the highly sophisticated and skilled nature of their work. On the other hand most of you would not be overly worried about the actual words on the site (in these terms of copying) whereas for me that is the original part and for me as author and poet that is where the value is. In neither situation (and certainly not where both design and written content are very unique and valued) should copying or theft be something to allow unchecked. And my emphasis is on 'unchecked'. There is little point in becoming neurotic about the matter since that would quickly become counter-productive. Without the co-operation ofthe search engines no check would be possible. As I have not received replies to my letters over specific mis-use I am saying that currently the SEs pay insufficient attention to this matter. How would we wake them up to it? Joseph ____ � The WDVL Discussion List from WDVL.COM � ____ To Join wdvltalk, Send An Email To: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Send Your Posts To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change subscription settings to the wdvltalk digest version: http://wdvl.internet.com/WDVL/Forum/#sub ________________ http://www.wdvl.com _______________________ You are currently subscribed to wdvltalk as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
