[Air-l] SW to store webpages

[Dan L Burk]

Hi Gail --

Although you don't phrase your question in terms of Internet research, I
infer that is what you are thinking about.  There are certainly many
copyright suits in non-Internet research contexts, but most of the
automated data retrieval suits to date have occurred in a commercial
context.  I am in fairly regular contact with counsel at Google, where
demands to remove stored material occur pretty much daily.  

We (my co-authors and I) are anticipating that the focus on commercial
archives will change as 'bots are increasingly used as research tools.  We
are already aware of researchers who have recieved formal demand letters,
or have otherwise received objections from web site owners, after multiple
server hits.

As to "false light" claims for data mining: a little outside my area, but I
am not aware of such claims, and consider them unlikely.  Since data mining
by definition involves identification of trends in large data sets,
situations where the result is both false and affects individual reputation
would probably be rare.  To the extent that it might occur, I would expect
a claim to be more likely outside the U.S., where there is no actual malice
and/or publication rule standard to constrain the claim.  (There have, for
example, been some highly unfortunate hypertext defamation decisions in
Germany, where group defamation claims are sometimes possible.)

Regards, DLB

On 7 Jun 2005, GTa3411203 at aol.com wrote:
> Dan,
> 
> Thanks for sharing the information relating to copyright laws and web
pages. 
> I am aware of these limitations/restrictions which accounts for raising
the 
> questions. It would be interesting to know whether anyone conducting
research
> 
> has ever been sued for infringing on copyright laws or, on another
related 
> topic, slander due to data mining in a way that takes things from one
context
> and 
> puts them into another. Ideas?
> 
> Gail
> 
> -----------------------------------------
> Gail Taylor, Ed.M.
> Human Resource Education Ph.D. Student
> University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign


Dan L. Burk
Visiting Professor
Cornell Law School
Myron Taylor Hall
Ithaca, NY 14853 USA

Oppenheimer, Wolff & Donnelly Professor
University of Minnesota Law School
229 19th Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN 55455 USA
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