Monday, February 25, 2002

Selling links?

I can't even sell a TV & Video cabinet. (Does that count as Gonzo Marketing? Any micromarkets looking for furniture in the SJ area listening?)

Backing up a bit, as we have a copyright lawyer in the house, can you confirm (or refute) my understanding of copyright law and the DMCA?
As I see it , copyright law is concerned with publication - showing things to people. Copying from one form to another, editing and quoting is not a breach of copyright; it is the act of publication that is. This is a sensible framing that makes it immune from technological innovation (until we get machines that can be classd as persons, I suppose).

The DMCA is all about copying data, whether or not a human ever sees it, which seems to extend the bounds of copyright much further, and to strongly limit the ability to edit and thus read only a subset of a work. Do I have this right, or not?

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