Re: [syndication] (Random Thoughts) Content syndication and content "cleansing"

["Kevin A. Burton" <burton@relativity.yi.org>]

Eric Bohlman wrote:
<snip> 
> Have you taken a look at the XML Document Navigation Language (XDNL) Note
> submitted by NEC to the W3C (<URL:http://www.w3.org/TR/xdnl>)?  It
> addresses some similar issues.

Just breezed over it... but will check it out again. :)
 
> > Thoughts?  What is the legality here?  Technically it wouldn't be used
> > to rip out advertisements but to only display this content to devices
> > that couldn't originally see it anyway.
> 
> IANAL, but I'd have to guess that the legal issues are similar to those
> surrounding a translation service like Babelfish.  Translation of a work
> from one language to another is definitely a reserved right under US
> copyright law; I'm not sure what the status of re-rendering it by proxy
> would be (although any *editorial* transformation, like deleting
> "irrelevant" navigation information, would almost certainly constitute
> preparation of a derivative work and thus be infringing; even
> freely-copyable documents often come with the restriction that they must
> be reproduced in substantially identical form).

Yes... I guess everyone has a different opinion on this.  The issue here
is would I (or the Apache Software Foundation) become liable or would
the *user* become liable?  Apache is just providing software to the
user.  The user would then use it to "cleanse" content.  It might be
possible to sue the user but then they would be suing their customers.

Then again if Yahoo or someone big took Jetspeed and ran it as their
Portal software with the cleansing enabled then might be logical that
they would get sued if it wasn't their content.

I guess it is similar to the Napster issue.  Technically they aren't
breaking any law, they are just building a network that happens to lend
itself *very* well to privacy.  But isn't this basically the Internet
where piracy lives? :)

Kevin

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Kevin A Burton (burton@apache.org)
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