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[pages.alexa.com...]
Would Google go down this route?
OK, i thought the examples i gave covered it...
1. advertising revenue as you agree in principle
2. reduced sales revenue in selling later CD compilations of content that are now available freely from the Alexa disks even if i remove the pages from the public website
3. reduced sales revenue and royalties from the sale of print books which copy the best articles from our web archives. Now they can be gotten free on disk and printed out from an Alexa disk someone paid them for, so why buy the book or our own CD compilation
4. If a publisher decides to buy our website (to either merge wth theirs or to obtain rights to redistribute and republisgh content in other media) a lot of value depends on the original and copyright ownership of the articles displayed. If rights or copyright is not held by us that reduces the value of the website. In fact they could acheive a lot of what by simply copying our website like Alexa has done for free.
As far as i can see all the above situations means i will lose cash *in the future*. It also means the value of our assets are reduced. Are you saying that the legal system does not protect people from illegal actions (copying beyond the provisions of fair use) that reduce the value of their assets?
Finally permit another analogy. If some smart cookie decides (for example) to copy all of Dvorak's PC World articles (which are freely available or have been on the web), put them on a CD, slap a nice cover on the CD and sell them for $29.99 a pop, do you think the publishers of PC World will site back and do nothing? Do you think Dvorak will.
2nd example, if that same guy did the same with Neilsen's Use-It articles (again available "free" on the Web), do you think Jakob will not sue them?
Great! Sorry if I've been such a pain in the a** over this(!) but that's the kind of meat on the bone that I was after.
OK, i thought the examples i gave covered it...
May just have been me, but I was seeing subtle difference in analogies (mine were the same actually, that's not a criticism!) between some of the real world examples and the way things work on the internet - that's why I would like to look at internet-specific examples. I agree that involves a bit of guess work, but this is good stuff. Hey, it's an interesting thread if nothing else!
1. advertising revenue as you agree in principle
Yes.
2. reduced sales revenue in selling later CD compilations of content that are now available freely from the Alexa disks even if i remove the pages from the public website
Yes I can see that. Although I suspect Alexa's response would be "OK, tell us when it's no longer public and then we'll remove". But Alexa won't be the only ones preventing that (google's cache springs to mind - but it is possible to opt out of that).
3. reduced sales revenue and royalties from the sale of print books which copy the best articles from our web archives. Now they can be gotten free on disk and printed out from an Alexa disk someone paid them for, so why buy the book or our own CD compilation
But would they still be freely available on the internet? I think there is a point here, but it's a reduced one as Alexa could possibly say (playing devil's advocate now) "... as these articles are available for free on the internet, which has a massively larger market than our disc, how can you say that we're responsible for your lack of sales? And even if we are, we're only responsible for [userbase of Alexa disc]/[userbase of internet] percent of that loss".
4. If a publisher decides to buy our website (to either merge wth theirs or to obtain rights to redistribute and republisgh content in other media) a lot of value depends on the original and copyright ownership of the articles displayed. If rights or copyright is not held by us that reduces the value of the website. In fact they could acheive a lot of what by simply copying our website like Alexa has done for free.
That's a good one. But again it depends on that actually happening. There is the potential that you will lose, rather than an actual loss. It's a future loss - possibly a case for statutory damages as has been mentioned earlier.
As far as i can see all the above situations means i will lose cash *in the future*. It also means the value of our assets are reduced. Are you saying that the legal system does not protect people from illegal actions (copying beyond the provisions of fair use) that reduce the value of their assets?
No it does, but in a commercial world Plaintiff's and Defendants look at things in monetary terms also. Fighting principles is very expensive.
I'll give you an example - this is an actual case that I had. We had a client who was owed about £600 by a debtor (business). Our client wanted to sue, on principle, but on hearing that the costs involved in taking the guy to Court would likely exceed the debt, with no guarantee he would get his costs back (or even a penny after judgment), he decided against taking action. Writing the debt off was the commercial decision.
In discussing that with the client we also went through some other, more subtle, points. One of which was the premise that if you let this one go, other customers of yours get to hear about it and form the impression that you're a "soft touch". So others take advantage of the fact that you don't sue and start to mess you around when it comes to paying bills.
Now that's a point of princple, but it's also underlining a very commercial point.
I think you're making a similar point in relation to your following comments:-
Finally permit another analogy. If some smart cookie decides (for example) to copy all of Dvorak's PC World articles (which are freely available or have been on the web), put them on a CD, slap a nice cover on the CD and sell them for $29.99 a pop, do you think the publishers of PC World will site back and do nothing? Do you think Dvorak will.2nd example, if that same guy did the same with Neilsen's Use-It articles (again available "free" on the Web), do you think Jakob will not sue them?
That depends on Jakob's view as to whether or not it's financially worth it, not on the basis of direct loss perhaps, but on the basis that in not suing, other people consider his work to be "free game".
You have made this point also I think, and it is a good one, but it still comes down to a matter of cost. Can Jakob afford the cost of the litigation?
That probably won't scare Alexa all that much.
What would really scare Alexa is if some of the figures of actual financial loss made in your above points 1-4 actually make up a fairly large sum. That's what tips the balance with potential litigants. They have to make that commercial decision, and will generally only decide to sue if the end reward is worth the risk.
Otherwise, the commercial decision that Alexa have to make will be (or maybe already has been) "we will make more money selling the product than we will lose in litigation because 99% of people will not sue us on commercial financial grounds".
I know it's wrong for them to think like that, but that's why I'm interested in these actual losses.
Hope to be making my point a little better now, I appreciate that where I am coming from has changed over the course of this thread, but that's happened organically and because some good points have been made which have convinced me of certain other issues I hadn't thought of.
TJ
It would not bother me personally and others it was for non profit, however they are making money off it i believe it is only a matter of time till they will be sued.
My ultimate conclusion is that Alexa, especially in light of the fact that they are owned by Amazon, have probably thrown quite a bit of money at lawyers and accountants before doing this.
The fact that they're going ahead with it tells me that, on balance, they think that "maybe there's a risk, but the reward outweighs that risk".
A blind guess on my part, but an educated blind guess.
So it is probably going to happen.
I think, on commercial grounds, the decision for webmasters will probably be not to sue (unless they have really large losses and it becomes worthwhile) but instead to change their business model to adapt.
You touched on that already, with the idea that you make your most juicy or high value (in terms purely of $$) content available by subscription only. You reduce your financial loss and you live with the (non-commercial but irritating) fact that your work has been "stolen".
That may end up being the future at some point I think. Especially as massively high storage devices are coming down in cost all the time. What's the possibility of us all having a "local" copy of the entire internet on our hard disk in 10 years time?
And how would that affect our current business models, and in view of this step by Alexa is that something that we should be thinking about now?
TJ
It would not bother me personally and others it was for non profit, however they are making money off it i believe it is only a matter of time till they will be sued.
I agree and suspect that Alexa are expecting just that to happen.
The large fish who suffer large financial loss will sue. Alexa will write out a cheque.
Alexa's view is, I think, that those cheques that they write out will total less than this disc generates, therefore there is ROI and a profit.
TJ
I think there playing with fire...
PS: www.microsoft.com has no
/robots.txtand no robots meta tags.
>>You touched on that already, with the idea that you make your most juicy or high value (in terms purely of $$) content available by subscription only. <<
Legalities aside, this has to me quite frightening consequences re the future of the web. If the ultimate consequence is that nobody will put anything of any "value" on the web because they risk losing ownership, the web will become very different. The very thing that attracted people to the Web (free useful content), will slowly wither away, it will lose value as an information resource, and the Web will become nothing but a shopping/commercial directory sitting next to the TV.
Great for the neigbourhood librarian and print publishers, and newspapers i guess, so there's a bright side!
Legalities aside, this has to me quite frightening consequences re the future of the web. If the ultimate consequence is that nobody will put anything of any "value" on the web because they risk losing ownership, the web will become very different. The very thing that attracted people to the Web (free useful content), will slowly wither away, it will lose value as an information resource, and the Web will become nothing but a shopping/commercial directory sitting next to the TV.
Quite possible - and yes it is scary.
Maybe right now we're enjoying the internet in its best possible form?
It's like being able to walk into a Newsagent and take all the magazines you want for free.
Maybe that won't last forever.
TJ
I read through the whole thing, because I am quite fascinated by this issue. A couple of analogies/questions remain:
1. Suppose a freely available streetpaper was archived by a library, then that library decided to charge for its archiving work to the visitors of the library - surely that would not be seen as a copyright violation and surely they don't pay for the privilege of simply archiving free newspapers (I don't know whether they do or not, so would be happy to be set straight)? Isn't that a realistic comparison in the real world of what is going on with the Wayback machine?
2. A lot of the appeal of the internet is its immediacy. Cd-rom based content will invariably date and therefore has far less value than what you are publishing on your website. I realize a lot of content on the internet does not fit that mould, but wouldn't it be fair to assume that some webmasters at least would even get increased sales and benefits from having their old content published on a cd, just because people will be curious to know what's new on that website? After all, full credit is still given.
I can see both sides of the argument here and personally don't really like the idea of my site's content being redistributed without my permission. I'm very much not a lawyer, but I do have a fairly strong sense of what is wrong or right and this issue fascinates me because I can't quite work out what is 'right'.
Understand most of the points being made here, but again don't agree with the distinction being made here between mediums that it is being sold on. Alexis selling on CD or google selling with web technology are the same to me. Copyright is copyright and the moment Google sold the cache (lisence) to a third party it sold copyrighted material. This has yet to be challenged anywhere that I am aware of but they make money from their cache, which is your copyrighted material. Chiyo this is why I made my pevious comment that the only way to stop this today is to opt out of the cache. Unlike the MP3 situation this is being sold company to company not peer to peer for "personal" usage. Now if the distinction is that a company selling "en masse" on CD is more harmfull cannot disagree with that.
I can see that I picked the wrong career...should have went to law school and become a copyright lawyer:):)
By the way...have to thank all in this thread....for drawing me out of my lurking status :). Intelligent discussions on "grey" issue with point and counterpoint being made. We may agree to disagree and each has their opinions, and we may even change our positions as we learn or concur. Some great food for thought in this thread.
1. Suppose a freely available streetpaper was archived by a library, then that library decided to charge for its archiving work to the visitors of the library - surely that would not be seen as a copyright violation and surely they don't pay for the privilege of simply archiving free newspapers (I don't know whether they do or not, so would be happy to be set straight)? Isn't that a realistic comparison in the real world of what is going on with the Wayback machine?
charge for its archiving work to the visitors of the library
The above is what they're charging for, not the content. That's the way I see it anyway. Again, take the example of a magazine having a coverdisc on it with freeware on it.
The magazine is charging a cover price, which no doubt includes a charge for the CD, but that charge is for the disc, not the software.
But that could be argued either way (as has been seen in this thread)!
2. A lot of the appeal of the internet is its immediacy. Cd-rom based content will invariably date and therefore has far less value than what you are publishing on your website. I realize a lot of content on the internet does not fit that mould, but wouldn't it be fair to assume that some webmasters at least would even get increased sales and benefits from having their old content published on a cd, just because people will be curious to know what's new on that website? After all, full credit is still given.
Yes. But the point Chiyo made is what if that "free" content becomes something other than "free"? For example, Chiyo sited an example of offering, for sale, a CD with a "best of xyz.com" on it. There is an argument to say that, at least in part, having that available elsewhere decreases your potential sales.
In general however, I agree with you. That's why I want my site on this Alexa disc. It increases my "brand awareness" if you will. On a commercial site, if someone wants to buy something online, they still have to connect to the internet, there's no way of doing that locally, and therefore no online sales are lost.
So it depends on the nature of the site and what the particular webmaster wants to do with its content now and in the future (Chiyo's point in a nutshell).
(I) don't really like the idea of my site's content being redistributed without my permission
Out of interest, what's your take on it and why don't you like the idea in respect of your particular situation?
TJ
Absolutely.. For example for one of our sites which is a corporate site designed to sell our services we would have no problems with this. We dount that Alexa/Google selling this would really be of much advantage and give us any new leads, but heh, its free advertising and there is no loss. And if we created a new 30 second tv ad for our products, if a tv channel wants to display it free of charge that's great! - unless its out of context or damaging and of coure thats a different legal issue again. Same i guess for TJ's site which has no intrinsic value other than as a selling medium. However, if someone copied his site of an Alexa disk and assumed they had all rights to do that since TJ provided it for free, placed it on the web, and directed all links to their own affiliate codes or to their own products TJ im sure would have something to say! So the medium is an issue, as is the type of site as well as the purpose.
However we WOULD be concerned if by publishing our logo on our site for people to view for free, means we give up our exclusive rights to use that logo, which was one the earlier issues re whether providing info on the Web for free legally automatically makes it public domain. Im sure Coca Cola for example would not publish their logo on the WWW, if it meant that a new soft drink company could display it on their products and advertising... Same for our articles. By publishing them for personal use on the internet, we don't expect that act to change that material into public domain where anybody else can repackage it or use it commercially. We still have authors and creative people to pay, and managmenet fees, All Alexa's expenses are to copy it and merchandise it. The people who created it are not recompensed and will no doubt not do it again. What is the brand value of the Coke logo, im not sure but i think the coke brand as a whole is valued at several billion dollars. That is not something that you will risk losing by publishing it on the Internet (which they do)
However, if someone copied his site of an Alexa disk and assumed they had all rights to do that since TJ provided it for free, placed it on the web, and directed all links to their own affiliate codes or to their own products TJ im sure would have something to say!
Damn right, but that's illegal under common law as a "passing off" and is not such a fine-line point as the one we're discussing about reproduction of content in it's original form.
The same applies to your "logo's" point.
Digressing slightly, let me give you some interesting food for thought. Ignore the fact that Alexa are *reproducing* our websites. Just roll with me on this for a bit, as I think this is the crux of the matter (from my point of view), and let's assume that a judge at some point declares that what Alexa are doing is not a breach of copyright. That's what I suspect, but rather than argue that point (and we know good argument can be made either way) let's assume that happens, that assumption being on the basis that if the judge finds against Alexa, there is no further discussion anyway as everyone's happy. Let's assume the worst.
So, this judge has made that ruling. Where does that leave the future of the internet?
Personally, I'm of the opinion that the "reproduction" point is a red herring. Sure, some people are a bit annoyed with the fact that their hard work is being "copied", but what they're most annoyed about is the fact that some organisation is making money out of their efforts, right?
Let's look at how the internet works today, I'll use myself for the benefit of an example.
I have, at home, an ADSL internet connection which costs me about £30 a month. For the most part want that internet connection for surfing the web. I would say, it's about 20% to have e-mail and about 80% to have the web.
So, 80% of my £30 is being paid to an ISP for the benefit of viewing all of the websites that you guys built, and the content in there that you sweated over creating.
That's about £24, per month, that I am paying to my ISP so that I can view *your* content.
Does that p*ss you off? Or are the ISP's just providing me with "access" to that content for my £24 a month? I think that's also Alexa's argument.
Let's look at another real-world example staying within the realms of publishing but this time publishing of music.
Everytime a radio station plays a song they have to write out a cheque to the MCPS who are a worldwide organisation that ensure that the original copyright/publishing right holders of the music get their fair share of the $$.
The MCPS collect all of these cheques and every quarter they send out cheques to artists, being a % of the total monies that they received (not just radio but PRS licenses etc). The % that the artists get is directly related to their success or popularity, so, purely as an example, Elton John, U2, The Rolling Stones and The Beatles probably get a fairly large cheque each quarter. Thelonious Smooth and the Mellowtones (please God tell me there isn't actually a band with that name! lol) probably get a very very small cheqeue.
So the radio stations make their money from advertisers, offer a facility whereby the public get access to hear music and the funds are distributed accordingly amongst the musicians/publishers/songwriters by the MCPS. The radio station makes a profit *out of your music* but heck they're providing access to the artists "content" so why shouldn't they?
Alexa are doing the same, except rather than advertising they are selling their service of copying all this stuff onto a disc. And then not paying the artists.
And that annoys you guys, and fair enough.
But, what's the difference between Alexa doing that, and an ISP offering essentially, exactly the same thing, but actually better as it's "live" and still not paying you?
The difference is they're not "reproducing" the content. But does it really make that much difference? At the end of the day, the ISP's are still taking my £24 every month so that I have the ability to view your content.
So where do we draw the line on what is OK and what is not OK?
Are we likely to have an "MCPS" for the internet, dividing up royalties according to a websites popularity, or are progams like google's AdSense already achieving the same kind of thing (the commercial websites are paying for the benefit of having the content websites available on the internet).
So my original statement a few posts up where I said:-
(the internet at the moment) is like being able to walk into a Newsagent and take all the magazines you want for free
is actually wrong. It's not free, I pay £24 a month for the "subscription".
And how much of that £24 a month actually goes to the guy who writes all the content that I read?
Zip.
But do I hear anyone complaining?
TJ
I banned Alexa years ago but if I hadn't and they were redistributing my site for whatever reason I would sue and win. Of course they would cave first and pull the site from their archives before it ever got that point. Now class action lawsuit- that's got to make their lawyers cringe.
Saying an ISP is your subscription to everything on the net is a lot like saying the fare students pay a cab or bus to get to the public library to plagarize articles for their term papers is legit.
Sorry, I don't follow. Can you explain? The fare charged by the taxi or bus co. *is* legit as far as I can tell in your example? They're not providing access to the content, the library is. Now, if you had to pay a fee to the library to access the content, should part of that fee go to the authors?
Of course they would cave first and pull the site from their archives before it ever got that point. Now class action lawsuit- that's got to make their lawyers cringe.
But they're not cringing.... so what do they know that you don't?
TJ
The fare charged by the ISP *is* legit as far as I can tell in your example? They're not providing access to the content, the Website is.
They're not providing access to the content, the Website is.
The website *is* the content.
TJ
No, the website points to a server which contains a hard drive which holds my content.
Er, ok. Well my website isn't like that. My website is a collection of pages of content and if someone wants access to that content they have to pay an ISP.
My website can't be accessed without paying an ISP. I have no control over who accesses it. It's not private, it's on the internet.
TJ
[edited by: trillianjedi at 6:13 pm (utc) on Aug. 10, 2003]
Sure you do. :)
So you're suggesting I ban everybody from accessing my website that's not paying me to do so?
TJ
You can't compare transportation to a site via an ISP to a site that has copied, distributed, transmited, displayed, reproduced, published, licensed, transfered, or sold any information from another owner's site like Alexa and others have done.
Whether or not you are allowed in is another matter.
I don't pay my ISP to let me "travel" to a website so that I can negotiate with it's owner as to whether or not I can access it.
If websites were like that, I wouldn't pay my ISP a penny.
I pay my ISP so that I have access to your content. Without paying my ISP, I don't have access to your content.
To fit your first posting, how would you feel if I *had* to pay the taxi driver to be able to look at the books in the library? So the taxi driver is providing me with a service that's a bit more than just transport - I have to pay him to be able to read the books.
TJ
I don't pay my ISP to let me "travel" to a website so that I can negotiate with it's owner as to whether or not I can access it.
Whether you like it or not, you do. It just so happens that most websites allow your ISP access saving you the hassle of negotiation. Does your ISP guarantee you access to every site you wish to visit? Of course not. They don't have any control over that.
Pretty cut and dry, I think. No other way to twist this issue around.
Whether you like it or not, you do.
To date I've never had to, because:-
It just so happens that most websites allow your ISP access saving you the hassle of negogiation.
Now you're getting warm....
And for this access to content service I pay my ISP a fee. It saves me the hassle of "negotiating" with you, and it saves me the hassle of paying you a fee to view your content. I just pay my ISP the money instead.
Does your ISP guarantee you access to every site you wish to visit?
Let's face it, it's 99% of them.
They don't have any control over that.
I agree - no-ones holding a gun to your head and saying "don't make your website pay-per-view".
Pretty cut and dry, I think.
I can see that you do.
TJ
And for this access to content service I pay my ISP a fee. It saves me the hassle of "negotiating" with you, and it saves me the hassle of paying you a fee to view your content. I just pay my ISP the money instead.
Paying an ISP a fee doesn't save you the hassle of negotiating with me or any other Webmaster. If we are charging the visitor a fee to view our content, they will pay regardless of how much they pay their ISP. That is unless the ISP negotiates a separate deal with the Webmaster.
Or we may ban ISP for reasons other than money. Remember when Google banned portions of Comcast's users? I betcha there was a lot of negotiating in that matter. :)
If we are charging the visitor a fee to view our content, they will pay regardless of how much they pay their ISP.
Bingo! And maybe that's the website model of the future?
But with the internet in its current form, we (99% of webmasters) don't charge visitors a fee.
That is unless the ISP negotiates a separate deal with the Webmaster.
But they don't do they.
They offer users the ability to view your content, for a fee. None of which goes to you, the author.
TJ
