Book People Archive

Re: copyright

On Tue, 1 May 2001, Jeff & Paulina Miner <booksetc@[redacted]> wrote:
> I suspect that this is an old question. Perhaps I missed it. There are 
> people on the web who are publishing out-of-copyright works to the web who 
> nevertheless attach a "copyright" notice to it. They are attempting to 
> copyright the HTML coding. I realize that proofing and coding take a lot of 
> time -- but isn't that analagous to attempting to copyright the typesetting 
> of a book? I suppose that if a book, or even a website were exceptionally 
> beautifully illustrated (so that it constituted an art work in and of 
> itself) or if the redactor/editor added some substantial new material (an 
> introduction or notes), then the "work" (i.e. the new material) would 
> deserve a copyright notice. But HTML coding (I believe) does not deserve 
> such a notice.
> 
> 
> Also, I saw a web page that announced that the "look and feel" of it was 
> copyright. How can one copyright a "look and feel" of a website?

They are misusing copyright, out of ignorance, greed, or both.

They can claim copyright only in the new materials that they add to
the public domain works.  These materials must be creative and
non-functional.  Most of the HTML codes are functional and they
cannot claim copyright over the HTML codes.  Adding a tag "<P>"
to each paragraph is not creative because it is a function that
identifies a paragraph, nothing more, nothing less.  However,
some HTML codes are creative enough that they can claim copyright
in them.     

Most of the times, people don't want to identify which are
the new materials that they claim copyright in.

The "look and feel" is vague and means different things to different
people.  As a computer programmer, I know that most of the "look
and feel" are functional and therefore, cannot be copyrighted.
But, the web page that you saw may have different meaning for
"look and feel".

You may be surprised that W3C claims copyright in the specifications
for HTML and many other markup languages.  What do they mean by that
and whether they are using or misusing copyright, I do not know.

[Moderator: The poster later sent in a followup notice, the body
 of which I'll simply insert below. - JMO] 

Last night, I wrote my post in response to Jeff and Paulina Miner's
question.  I must add that none of what I said in my post is legal
advice.  Everything in my post must be taken as my general
understanding of copyright law and public domain.

Joseph Pietro Riolo
<riolo@[redacted]>