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> that scraping essentially requires creating an in-memory copy of this HTML before the user-produced content can be extracted, and thus is a violation of their
by drb91 8y ago
> that scraping essentially requires creating an in-memory copy of this HTML before the user-produced content can be extracted, and thus is a violation of their copyright.
Isn't copyright a bound on distribution? How would this work unless the HTML itself was distributed by the scraper? If you use SAX processing to stream it, does that change interpretation? (Not sure about how to interpret the in-memory copy.)
If they violate my copyright, can I sue them for royalties every time they rendered the image they never got a license for and distributed it to someone? I'd imagine their TOS/EULA precludes this by just equating uploading to refusing my license, but how enforceable is that? It neatly bypasses any consumer protections.
If facebook is acting this way, maybe I've been wrong all this time--maybe I shouldn't be paying for their service to avoid ads, maybe they should be paying me for the license to my content AND not showing ads.
- jim-greer 8y ago> Isn't copyright a bound on distribution? No, it covers any reproduction in a tangible medium, whether or not you distribute. I believe a court has ruled that RAM copies count. I'm not finding the case now though. I think the journalists would have a strong Fair Use argument...
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- drb91 8y ago> No, it covers any reproduction in a tangible medium, whether or not you distribute. What's the justification of this? How does this afford protection to the copyright owner if you don't distribute? Is it purely to protect against derivative works bypassing copyright?
- Kalium 8y agoCopyright is more or less what it says in the name - the right to legally control the making of copies. The ability to divide making a copy from distributing it is, to my understanding, mostly not relevant to copyright law. Distributing requires making copies, and copying involves distribution of sorts.
- drb91 8y agoUgh, it seems broken and not actually protecting rights, but rather forcing terms of service to apply in lawsuits.
- Kalium 8y agoI mean, we're talking about a system that was originally designed to apply to literal books printed with literal printing presses. It's going to be messy at best in this age.
- bobbles 8y agoYou may be thinking of when Blizzard used this argument for going after Bot creators in World of Warcraft: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2008/05/blizzard-attempt-to-kill-wow-bot-bad-news-for-copyright-law/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2008/05/blizzard-attempt-to-k...