copyright infringement by google

[David Raleigh Arnold]

A question for an html guru:

I want people to download my pdf files, but I want them to
do it only from html links on my site, and not directly
thru links on a GOOGLE site. Is there a way of preventing
such unauthorized download links from working? Hopefully, daveA

 

[Neredbojias]

A question for an html guru:

I want people to download my pdf files, but I want them to
do it only from html links on my site, and not directly
thru links on a GOOGLE site. Is there a way of preventing
such unauthorized download links from working? Hopefully, daveA

Not html, more like server-side scripting. Try, for example, a php
group. It's pretty simple and I'd tell you myself but I don't feel
like getting into the acrimonious long debate which would inevitably
follow.

--
Neredbojias

82nd Academy Award Predictions:

Best Picture: Avatar
Actor in a Leading Role: Jeff Bridges
Actress in a Leading Role: Meryl Streep or Sandra Bullock
Actor in a Supporting Role: Christopher Plummer
Actress in a Supporting Role: Vera Farmiga or Maggie Gyllenhaal
Director: James Cameron

OK, I hedged on a couple, but there they are.

http://www.neredbojias.org/
http://www.neredbojias.net/

 

[Jukka K. Korpela]

A question for an html guru:

It's not an html issue, and linking does not infringe copyright.

I want people to download my pdf files, but I want them to
do it only from html links on my site, and not directly
thru links on a GOOGLE site.

You can shoot yourself in the foot that way (making it harder to people to
download something you want to make downloadable) by changing the server
behavior so that it checks for the REFERER header (in HTTP request headers).
The way to do that depends on the server software and on what you can do on
the server.

It won't be foolproof of course - you would sometimes miss your foot because
someone found out what you are doing and programmed his client software to
send whatever REFERER header your server regards as OK.

 

[David Raleigh Arnold]

*partial* top post:

First thank you all for your replies, which score very high on
a usefulness scale.

You could put the files in a password-protected directory on you server.

I think I could do that.

And not link to those files anywhere else on pages that are able to be
indexed.

Pages that are able to be indexed? Do you mean use robots.txt?

I have a few directories on my servers like that and they have
never been found by search engines.

Sounds good.

Other than that you haven't given us enough to work with in terms of
your environment.

I have just written html so far. I have web space on a linux server
running apache which provides at least javascript and php, which
languages I have never done anything with. My long suit is the site's
content. I wrote the site in a text editor. I hope that doesn't sound
too much like whining. Regards, daveA

 

[David Raleigh Arnold]

Not html, more like server-side scripting. Try, for example, a php
group. It's pretty simple and I'd tell you myself but I don't feel like
getting into the acrimonious long debate which would inevitably follow.

Thanks.

What, between php and javascript? I know the server (apache) provides
both of those, I don't really know what else. What do you recommend?
Regards, daveA

 

[richard]

A question for an html guru:

I want people to download my pdf files, but I want them to
do it only from html links on my site, and not directly
thru links on a GOOGLE site. Is there a way of preventing
such unauthorized download links from working? Hopefully, daveA

Might be possible to do with htaccess. Ban the search engines from those
pages.
Or redirect them to your home page.

 

[David Raleigh Arnold]

It's not an html issue, and linking does not infringe copyright.

Yes it does, because I am the owner and I say it does. It's that
simple. They have no permission to link it, and I am deprived of the
benefit of having content on my site and furthermore they are
stealing bandwidth. They are leeches.

You can shoot yourself in the foot that way (making it harder to people
to download something you want to make downloadable) by changing the
server behavior so that it checks for the REFERER header (in HTTP
request headers). The way to do that depends on the server software and
on what you can do on the server.

It won't be foolproof of course - you would sometimes miss your foot
because someone found out what you are doing and programmed his client
software to send whatever REFERER header your server regards as OK.

Thank you so much. I can't do anything on the server, so I must write
a php script? or javascript? Regards, daveA

 

[Jukka K. Korpela]

Yes it does, because I am the owner and I say it does.

Your opinions, feelings, and statements do not constitute copyright.
Copyright is defined by laws, and you cannot extend its scope by your
statements. Normal linking isn't a copyright matter any more than writing
the name or the ISBN number of a book in an article or referring to a statue
by its geographic coordinates.

Thank you so much. I can't do anything on the server, so I must write
a php script?

PHP is server-side only.

or javascript?

JavaScript can be used client-side too, but what do you expect to
accomplish? How could JavaScript on a web page affect anything that happens
between a client and a server at the HTTP level, without involving HTML the
least? The client asks for a resource by URL, and the server returns or does
not return a PDF document. There is no way you can affect this in HTML.

 

[Harlan Messinger]

Yes it does, because I am the owner and I say it does.

Copyright is what copyright law says it is, not whatever someone who
owns something declares it to be.

What in your experience is the basis for your notion that you have
dictatorial power over anything relating in any way to something you
own? Do you think that you can paint a portrait, hold it up in public,
and then sue people for looking at it without your permission--or for
telling other people (this is more comparable to the providing of a
link) that you're on such-and-such corner holding up the portrait?

It's that
simple. They have no permission to link it,

They don't need your permission to link to it any more than they need
your permission to list your phone number.

and I am deprived of the
benefit of having content on my site and furthermore they are
stealing bandwidth. They are leeches.

It's your responsibility to keep something you don't want seen away from
people's eyes.

 

[Jukka K. Korpela]

They don't need your permission to link to it any more than they need
your permission to list your phone number.

Actually, they need a permission to link _less_ than they may need to list a
phone number, at least if it's a private phone number. Displaying a phone
number on a web page may be construed (at least if you listen to the
Commission and the Court of Justice of the European Union) as processing of
personal data in a manner that normally requires permission from the persons
involved. The address of a web resource is not personal data.

 

[dorayme]

Copyright is what copyright law says it is, not whatever someone who
owns something declares it to be.

What in your experience is the basis for your notion that you have
dictatorial power over anything relating in any way to something you
own? Do you think that you can paint a portrait, hold it up in public,
and then sue people for looking at it without your permission--or for
telling other people (this is more comparable to the providing of a
link) that you're on such-and-such corner holding up the portrait?


They don't need your permission to link to it any more than they need
your permission to list your phone number.


It's your responsibility to keep something you don't want seen away from
people's eyes.

Usenet at its best. Here is a guy who, under God's Law, is
rightly pissed off and now he comes here to be taken literally on
everything he says as interpreted by Man's law.

 

[David Raleigh Arnold]

Might be possible to do with htaccess. Ban the search engines from those
pages.
Or redirect them to your home page.

Thanks. I'll have to check whether the server owner will allow
..htaccess. A bit of password rigmarole might do the trick too. I'm
just starting. There seem to be ways, even for the mere webmaster,
but choosing the best way is much harder than I thought it would be.

I was astounded to see that apache doesn't read all .htaccess
files at startup. It is a never ending self-made problem
that it has to load the information repeatedly, version after
version! I'm sorry I read that. ;-)

Regards, daveA

 

[David Raleigh Arnold]

Usenet at its best. Here is a guy who, under God's Law, is rightly
pissed off and now he comes here to be taken literally on everything he
says as interpreted by Man's law.

Hey, thanks for that. I learned by reading a decision in I-forget-who
vs. Palmer, Hughes, and the Alfred Music Company that the law is
what the judge says it is, not what the experts or govt officials
say it is. *If* leeching is legal now, it won't be forever.
Regards, daveA

 

[Andy Dingley]

Yes it does, because I am the owner and I say it does.

No, no more than knowing your address makes me a burglar.

If you want a law against linking, draft one and have your legislature
enact it. This will be a different law to copyright.

We've already gone through this situation. Copyright can't be applied
to some forms of valuable commercial intellectual property, because no
one could ever buy "Whizzo Bread" if we weren't allowed to use the
name. So instead a separate branch of IP law, around trademarks and
passing-off, has grown up as a complement to copyright. I can make and
sell Whizzo Mousetraps, I can even open a grocers and sell the fine
products of the Whizzo bakers for them, with a huge advert outside.
What I can't do is start baking my own bread and selling it as Whizzo.
Copyright doesn't apply, but there's a fine and learned branch of the
law to appropriately safeguard something else, the value of product
names.

As to linking, then try a read of Lessig's book, "Code and other laws
of cyberspace". Linking is good. Constraints on linking are bad. If
you object (quite reasonably) to others retrieving content from your
links, then it's incumbent upon you to use the many good "locks" out
there to protect against this.

 

[Andy Dingley]

<ROFL>

 

[Harlan Messinger]

Hey, thanks for that. I learned by reading a decision in I-forget-who
vs. Palmer, Hughes, and the Alfred Music Company that the law is
what the judge says it is, not what the experts or govt officials
say it is.

In most countries, what judges do is apply the law.

*If* leeching is legal now, it won't be forever.
Regards, daveA

Good luck with your assumption that there is a mass of
copyright-activist judges out there waiting for a chance to take up your
cause. Indicating the location of a resource *that you have made
publicly available* (which you have, by placing it on the World Wide
Web), isn't leeching. Copyright is and always has been about reserving
rights regarding *reproduction* of works. It's sheer fantasy for you to
imagine that a judge would suddenly decide that copyright law prevents
anyone from *reading* a work that its rightful owner *published on a
publicly available resource like the World Wide Web*. It's as though a
public lending library had bought a copy of a book you'd written and put
it on the shelf, and you were to walk in and tell them they weren't
allowed to lend it to anyone without your authorization. (Or maybe you
think public libraries are leeches too.)

You've joined a never-ending line of people on Usenet bellowing, "Yeah,
you'll see" when they have no grounds for their pronouncements.

 

[David Segall]

A question for an html guru:

I want people to download my pdf files, but I want them to
do it only from html links on my site, and not directly
thru links on a GOOGLE site. Is there a way of preventing
such unauthorized download links from working?

Change them regularly. I'm not an HTML guru so I may have missed a
flaw in this technique. If you put your PDFs in a directory and change
the name of the directory periodically only a dedicated fan of yours
will spend the time required to link to them from their site.

There is a flaw! If a "legitimate" visitor has saved a link it will
fail. You could keep each directory and replace the original document
with a document that directs the visitor to the page you want them to
visit.

 

[Dylan Parry]

A question for an html guru:

I want people to download my pdf files, but I want them to
do it only from html links on my site, and not directly
thru links on a GOOGLE site. Is there a way of preventing
such unauthorized download links from working? Hopefully, daveA

Seems that everyone so far has missed the obvious answer: robots.txt.

Create a text file called “robots.txt†and upload it to the root
directory of your website (ie. the folder that contains your site’s
index page). In that file put the following:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /folder-where-the-pdfs-are/

This tells “spidersâ€, that is the programs that Google and other search
engines use to find your site, not to look in the directory that you’ve
listed.

Simply change the second line to say where your PDF files are stored. So
if they were at “http://example.com/resources/pdfs/…†you’d change the
line to read “Disallow: /resources/pdfs/â€.

What this solution does is merely stops the likes of Google from listing
your PDFs in search results, and a knock-on effect of that is that no
one will download them via Google but only from your site.

 

[David Raleigh Arnold]

A question for an html guru:

I want people to download my pdf files, but I want them to do it only
from html links on my site, and not directly thru links on a GOOGLE
site. Is there a way of preventing such unauthorized download links
from working? Hopefully, daveA

Thanks again for your help. I have something to chew on for now.
I hope I can get back to you without prejudice. ;-)
IMO this is an important topic to many, not just me.

Stumbled on this, too:

http://wordworx.com/

Regards, daveA

 

[David Raleigh Arnold]

In most countries, what judges do is apply the law.


Good luck with your assumption that there is a mass of
copyright-activist judges out there waiting for a chance to take up your
cause. Indicating the location of a resource *that you have made
publicly available* (which you have, by placing it on the World Wide
Web), isn't leeching. Copyright is and always has been about reserving
rights regarding *reproduction* of works. It's sheer fantasy for you to
imagine that a judge would suddenly decide that copyright law prevents
anyone from *reading* a work that its rightful owner *published on a
publicly available resource like the World Wide Web*. It's as though a
public lending library had bought a copy of a book you'd written and put
it on the shelf, and you were to walk in and tell them they weren't
allowed to lend it to anyone without your authorization. (Or maybe you
think public libraries are leeches too.)

No doubt? It is as if the public library lent books by having people come
into my home and take mine.

I think you are wrong. I don't know the case law, but I'm not sure you
do either. I have read a copyright decision, though. Have you?
Regards, daveA