Legal restrictions

[Steve Swift]

Don't you just love sites that put up meaningless legal restrictions? I
just came across one that said "No part of this site may be used without
prior permission...".

I looked at the HTML, and discovered that they'd used <H1>... damn! I'm
in violation now, I'll have to use <H2>... damn! Another violation, and
another tag lost. I'll be in jail soon.

Still, they hadn't used the rarely seen <ABBRtag, so I'm safe with
that one for the time being. Although my pages may get a little
dull(er), you can be sure that I won't use any abbreviation without
explaining it in its first use.

--
Steve Swift
http://www.swiftys.org.uk/swifty.html
http://www.ringers.org.uk

[John Hosking]

Steve Swift wrote:

Don't you just love sites that put up meaningless legal restrictions? I
just came across one that said "No part of this site may be used without
prior permission...".

"Used?" That's not so bad. I mean, it's pretty lenient compared to these
guys: <http://www.boingboing.net/2007/10/17/lawfirm-copyright-pr.html>*.
And these are lawyers, so if you *do* view the source of their site,
then by God, they will hunt you down and sue you until you can't see
straight!

>
I looked at the HTML,

Living pretty dangerously, there. You might get sued if you keep that
kind of despicable, anti-social behavior up. ;-)
*not a direct link, but a BB post about dimwits with law degrees
--
John
Pondering the value of shooting all the lawyers
(or anybody who attempts to write a EULA)

[David E. Ross]

On 10/18/2007 12:46 AM, John Hosking wrote:

Steve Swift wrote:

>Don't you just love sites that put up meaningless legal restrictions? I
just came across one that said "No part of this site may be used without
prior permission...".

"Used?" That's not so bad. I mean, it's pretty lenient compared to these
guys: <http://www.boingboing.net/2007/10/17/lawfirm-copyright-pr.html>*.
And these are lawyers, so if you *do* view the source of their site,
then by God, they will hunt you down and sue you until you can't see
straight!

>I looked at the HTML,

Living pretty dangerously, there. You might get sued if you keep that
kind of despicable, anti-social behavior up. ;-)
*not a direct link, but a BB post about dimwits with law degrees

All this is quite different from claiming a copyright on the CONTENT of
a Web page. That is quite legitimate and enforceable.

I sometimes receive an E-mail message with the following warning:

"CONFIDENTIALLY NOTICE: This e-mail communication and any attachments
may contain confidential and privileged information for the use of the
designated recipients named above. Any unauthorized review, use,
disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended
recipient, please contact the sender by reply e-mail and destroy all
copies of the original message."

This is not enforceable. If someone sends me a restricted message by
mistake, that is their error for which they must suffer the consequences
if I choose to show the message to my neighbor or forward it to my
daughter. They cannot shift responsibility to me. In any case, a truly
confidential message should be encrypted before sending; but that's a
topic for the alt.security.pgp and comp.security.pgp.discuss newsgroups.

--
David E. Ross
<http://www.rossde.com/>

Natural foods can be harmful: Look at all the
people who die of natural causes.