Re: Stealing Technical Writing (Was: Using...)

Subject: Re: Stealing Technical Writing (Was: Using...)
From: Tim Altom <taltom -at- IQUEST -dot- NET>
Date: Tue, 9 Sep 1997 11:53:37 -0500

Stephen Martin Replies, In Part:

>
>> But how about links to specific topics *inside* proprietary help
>> files? I may not be able to steal your exact wording and put it in
>> my own help file, but what's the legality of _linking_ to that
>> topic, which is, in essence, using the wording for my own
>> commercial purposes? Can the help file owner forbid this? On one
>
>The question is, why would the help file owner want to forbid it? In
>Mendler's case the linking consists of, "If you want to know about this,
>that or the other about third-party product X, go here". Wouldn't the
>third-party product owners be more likely to get upset if their
>documentation was re-written without their permission?
>
>> If the Web is any indicator, the answer is "maybe". Just because you
>
>The answer is "no". In any opinion I've seen or heard postings to
>mailing lists, newsgroups, the Web, etc., are judged to be copyright and
>under the protection of the copyright act along with all of the "fair
>use" and other provisions.
>
The point to any legal intellectual property protection isn't to safeguard
words; it's to safeguard your rights to make money on your stuff. Sheer fact
and information, by contrast, isn't protected. It's free for the taking.
From that point of view, it's indeed murky what you can "steal" and what you
can't.

A help file owner invests lots of money developing that file. You obviously
can't just copy it onto a disk and resell it. That would be theft. You can,
if you choose, open a topic, digest the contents, and reword them until the
serial numbers don't match anymore. That's not theft.

But can you give the user your own link to a topic *within* a help file
already on the hard drive, just to save yourself from having to recreate it?
Is that a violation of copyright, since you're essentially forcing the
system to "copy" the victim's topic without paying him for it? Or, rather,
are you simply providing a path that the user could take anyway? This is
where my analogy to the Web came from. On the Web, only a fool creates a
page and then tries to restrict anyone from linking to it. You can refuse
access *beyond* the first page, but not *link* access to that page. And the
analogy is a difficult one because you're not just accessing my website, you
know; you're accessing my server, where I rule supreme. Help files aren't on
somebody else's server; they're generally on a local one. Do you have
unrestricted rights to link to any darned thing you please on your own
server or not?

If I was the help file owner and my help file was being "appropriated" for
somebody else's application that I knew nothing about, I'd be picking up a
phone, especially if the usurper is making money on me without my knowledge
or consent. But maybe he can do it legally. There are lots of ways of doing so.

I think tech doc'ers need to be concerned about this, because few of us have
lawyers working in nearby cubes, and even lawyers aren't often up on this
law, because there isn't much "law" in place right now. Often it's up to us
to help guard our organizations from mistakes that lead to lawsuits. As the
first poster noted, document files of many types are dumping on us like a
cartoon avalanche and we're being constantly encouraged to "think hypertext".



Tim Altom
Vice President, Simply Written, Inc.
317.899.5882 (voice) 317.899.5987 (fax)
FrameMaker support ForeHelp support
FrameMaker Conversions
PDF Consulting and Production

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