AOL Adds a Cache

[Thomas Dowling]

-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Sauers <msauers at bcr.org>
To: Multiple recipients of list <web4lib at library.berkeley.edu>
Date: Thursday, April 16, 1998 1:51 PM
Subject: AOL Adds a Cache


>Fellow members;
>
>AOL has announced to add a cache to its system to "speed up the World Wide
>Wait."  When a popular Web site is requested by an AOL subscriber the on
the
>the AOL caches will be checked and if a copy of the site exists the user
>will see that  version, electronically closer to the user, and quicker to
>download. Read the full article @
>http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/content/zdnn/0416/307545.html )
>
>Anyone else got a problem with this?
>
>What about copyright issues in storing these sites en masse without asking
>the permission of the author?  What are the guarantees that the user will
be
>getting the most up-to-date version of the page if it comes out of the
>cache?
>
>Anyone have an opinion?
>



Did I miss something here?  I was under the impression that AOL has been
caching web pages for years, and
http://webmaster.info.aol.com/CacheFrameSet.html seems to support that.

I don't see a copyright problem, but then I'm not a lawyer.  Web documents
are cached by browsers, by corporate gateways, by other intermediaries; it's
part of How The Web Works, and I certainly hope no court would gut the
technology involved for the sake of a narrow copyright interpretation.

As for getting the most current version of a page out to users, that's
largely the author's responsibility.  Set an Expires date or set "pragma:
no-cache" if it's an issue.


Thomas Dowling
OhioLINK - Ohio Library and Information Network
tdowling at ohiolink.edu