6 ms·

Victoria's Secret's restrictions sound like they are trying to prevent someone from making a lingerie porn site consisting of nothing but penis enlargement ads

by dkarl 14y ago

Victoria's Secret's restrictions sound like they are trying to prevent someone from making a lingerie porn site consisting of nothing but penis enlargement ads and Victoria's Secret catalog photos. British American Tobacco may be trying to ensure they aren't liable for someone else presenting material from their site in a way that violates restrictions on tobacco advertising. When it comes to law, I'm never sure whether it's a case of too many lawyers or sensible paranoia.

001sky 14y ago
Question for the lawyers: How is it illegal to utter the words [XYZ]? A hyperlink is informational gibberish, its not a work of art in any way, not sure it should be copy-rightable (you cant copyright a public street address, for exampl). Its not a trademark (not public mark). Its not a trade-secret (once I know it). Or is it one of these things? Is this TOS some sort of confidentiality agreement?
- ceol 14y ago
  It sounds like British American Tobacco's ToS is more about hotlinking or embedding. Note this particular portion: > you may not make any part of the website available as part of another website, whether by hyperlink framing on the Internet or otherwise By their use of the example of "hyperlink framing," it's obvious they mean you can't embed the site, not that you can't share links.
tantalor 14y ago
To explore this idea a little further, if you download and host the lingerie porn, then this is obviously copyright infringement. But it's not clear if you only hotlink to the images, which may be what VS is trying to prevent here. Since they can't, they'd have to sue to try to enforce this license agreement. Were I the defense attorney in that lawsuit, I'd say VS can change the URL of their images whenever they want, CDN cache invalidation notwithstanding.

6 ms·

Victoria's Secret's restrictions sound like they are trying to prevent someone from making a lingerie porn site consisting of nothing but penis enlargement ads

by dkarl 14y ago

001sky 14y ago
Question for the lawyers: How is it illegal to utter the words [XYZ]? A hyperlink is informational gibberish, its not a work of art in any way, not sure it should be copy-rightable (you cant copyright a public street address, for exampl). Its not a trademark (not public mark). Its not a trade-secret (once I know it). Or is it one of these things? Is this TOS some sort of confidentiality agreement?
- ceol 14y ago
  It sounds like British American Tobacco's ToS is more about hotlinking or embedding. Note this particular portion: > you may not make any part of the website available as part of another website, whether by hyperlink framing on the Internet or otherwise By their use of the example of "hyperlink framing," it's obvious they mean you can't embed the site, not that you can't share links.
tantalor 14y ago
To explore this idea a little further, if you download and host the lingerie porn, then this is obviously copyright infringement. But it's not clear if you only hotlink to the images, which may be what VS is trying to prevent here. Since they can't, they'd have to sue to try to enforce this license agreement. Were I the defense attorney in that lawsuit, I'd say VS can change the URL of their images whenever they want, CDN cache invalidation notwithstanding.