[d@DCC] Unintended consequences of treating the anonymous part of the Internet as other than BY-NC-ND

[James McKinney]

mskala at ansuz.sooke.bc.ca wrote:

>On Mon, 23 May 2005, Russell McOrmond wrote:
>  
>
>>- Person A makes an image they are the copyright holder of available on
>>their site.
>>
>>- Person B makes a copy of that image on their own site.
>>
>>- Person C authors a HTML file which has an IMG reference to the file on
>>the site of Person B.
>>
>>Person C did not "copy" the image, only reference it, so as far as I am
>>concerned copyright should not affect this person
>>    
>>
>I don't think person C is liable for copyright infringement, because they
>aren't copying the file, distributing it, nor doing any of the other
>things that can infringe copyright.  However, person C could be liable for
>reasons other than copyright infringement, including but not limited to
>slander of title (against person A's copyright interest, but not
>prosecuted under the Copyright Act; the fact that it's a copyright whose
>title is being slandered is only incidental), defamation (against person
>A's reputation as creator of the image), theft of computer services
>(against person B's Web hosting), or mischief (against person A's
>copyright interest or person B's Web hosting or both).  Person C is
>probably also guilty of being rude, which is not against the law.  Proper
>attributon in person C's HTML file could mitigate some or all of those
>issues.
>  
>
If person B did not want person C hotlinking the image, he would have 
denied such activity. I believe he implicitly authorized hotlinking of 
the image by not denying it. Therefore, person C should nto be liable 
for "theft of computer services" which is completely non-sensical. That 
means Slashdot is liable for huge damages for inadvertently bringing 
down web servers. Also, the only alternative to this "theft of computer 
services" is for person C to make a copy to his web server, which is 
much more prosecutable as copyright infringement.

As for slander of title, defamation, and mischief, there is no reason to 
believe that person C knew of person A's copyright or should have know 
of person A's copyright. So person C should not be liable for that. 
Anyway, we're supposed to be talking about copyright, so I don't know 
why you stirred up that hornet's nest.

James