Subject: RE: [hackers-il] Re: A plug-in that can view attached comments on web-pages

From: Chen Shapira <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 24 Aug 2000 12:53:32 +0200

> Concept #2, leaving notes and messages on sites is quite different.
> Amazon.com's user's comments on items are a great example of 
> both why this
> is a very useful concept, and also why it has problems. When 
> I buy stuff in
> Amazon, I usually look at the comments people write about the 
> products. I
> even wrote two reviews myself. People may leave comments on 
> what they thought
> about this product, how it compares to other products, what 
> is missing in
> this product, and so on - the same can be done with websites, 
> and you can
> come to a site and find a note saying "This is a lousy site, look at
> www.anothersite.com", or a note saying "what this page says 
> about this-and-
> that is wrong, it should be so-and-so.".

Ofcourse this is why sites loudly object to such programs, to the point of
taking companies to court.

A site advertising product Y wouldn't won't its disgruntled customets (or
competition) writing on its own site that his product is shit. 

Site owners claim that such system must be illegal since the material on
site is copyrighted and those notes are considered modification and
therefore illegal.

The question remains open. Is adding messages to a site via a special
program considered a modification to the page?

Chen.

---

From: "Nadav Har'El" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 24 Aug 2000 14:29:30 +0300

> program considered a modification to the page?

I doubt they have a case. Browsers long had buttons like "what's related"
that can take a viewer to a competitor's site, and search engines gave more
authoritative ratings of sites (e.g., yahoo's selected sites, and google's
attempt of finding the "best" sites). I doubt a site owner can object to
a user downloading a program that adds a button to the browser, labeled
"what others said about this page". I don't see how this can violate any
copyright.

The same thing, it is legal to publish book reviews - these are not
"modifications" to the book, and do not break any copyright laws.

-- 
Nadav Har'El                        |        Thursday, Aug 24 2000, 23 Av 5760
[email-masked]             |-----------------------------------------
Phone: +972-53-245868, ICQ 13349191 |I have a great signature, but it won't
http://nadav.harel.org.il           |fit at the end of this message -- Fermat