[Am-info] Re: Am-info digest, Vol 1 #1137 - 3 msgs

[Marcus de Geus]

In reply to a message from "John J. Urbaniak" <jjurban@attglobal.net> dated
2002-05-28 19:08:40 -0400 (Tue):

> I'd love to quote a small excerpt and link to the article in my website,
but I'll be damned if I'm going to pay them.

John,

First of all, their terms appear to state that the fee for including an HTML
link to their article is nil. On the other hand, they seem to imply that
permission is required for including such a link. I'm not a lawyer, and
certainly not an expert on copyright law, but as far as I am aware, the
situation is like this:

As long as you do not include (large parts of) the target text in the source
code of your own web pages, you're simply including a reference to an
existing publication, which is perfectly legal. Note the publication bit:
the text has become publicly available (which is what publishing a web page
amounts to). This does not necessarily mean that the text itself is
available at no extra cost (most books aren't either), but it does mean that
it is on offer to the general public, and that therefore you are at liberty
to include references to it in other texts, and even to quote excerpts --
within reason, and acknowledging the source of course. As far as I am aware,
no prior permission from the author or publisher is ever required for such
references. Hell, book reviews would all be favourable if it was!

Go ahead -- add the link. They should be paying you for the publicity you're
giving them!

Regards,

Marcus de Geus
--
marcus@degeus.com
http://www.degeus.com