Alexa and copyright

[Greg MacGowan]

I am not a lawyer either, but from what little I understand of it, this
really does sound like copyright infringement. I could understand the
argument of implied license permitting Alexa (or any user) to make a copy
for personal use, but they seem to have situated themselves as
re-publishers of the material, rather than just pointing users to an
appropriate page as a search engine would. I don't see a difference between
what Alexa is doing and if I were to copy all the back issues of JAMA and
sell them at the reference desk. 

I suppose the only way to stop them is through legal action, but that would
mean someone caring enough (probably because they are losing money from the
lack of royalties) that they don't mind spending thousands of dollars in
legal fees.  )-:

Greg MacGowan
Brandeis University Libraries

At 06:01 AM 3/26/98 -0800, Harry Kriz wrote:
>
>A few columnists in the computer press have enthusiastically described a
>new Web utility named Alexa. You can read about it at
>
>http://www.alexa.com/
>
>The company Alexa Internet is archiving the entire Web periodically. it
>claims to have an 8 terabyte database of Web pages. If a Web page becomes
>unavailable for any reason, Alexa will provide a copy from its archive.
>
>This practice strikes me as the largest violation of intellectual property
>rights and copyright law in the history of civilization. But then I'm not a
>lawyer, just a librarian and Web publisher. Alexa did not ask my permission
>to archive my Web sites, nor to republish them on demand even when I
>withdraw pages from publication.
>
>I'm curious about your opinions concerning Alexa's Web archive,
>intellectual property rights, and copyright law.
>
>--Harry
>
>
>
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--------------------------------------------------------------
Greg S. MacGowan
Information Technologies Coordinator (and Webmaster)
Brandeis University Libraries
Brandeis University
Waltham, MA  02254-9110

phone: (781) 736-4690 (W)
fax:    (781) 736-4719 
email: macgowan at Brandeis.edu


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